Welcome to Soundtrack Sunday, where a member of the PC Gamer team takes a look at a soundtrack from one of their favourite games—or a broader look at videogame music as a whole—offering their thoughts or asking for yours!
So after months of living exclusively out of my Liked Songs folder and Spotify Radio, I finally went ahead and made a brand-new playlist a few weeks ago. One that could serve as the perfect ambience for my day-to-day life: working, cooking, cleaning, and unwinding with a glass of wine and my Steam Deck.
And what better fodder for my super chill, super relaxing playlist than videogame music? After all, its entire purpose is to create ambience. It’s vibes personified. Instead of telling you how it’s feeling, it’s trying to tell you how you should feel. Ooh, don’t you feel so fuzzy and nostalgic as I play the flute in this quaint woodland village? Isn’t the sul ponticello on this violin making you scared? You get my point.
I have long championed soft piano pieces from JRPGs as the ultimate relaxation music, but I’ve found myself branching out to some less likely candidates as of late. The Minecraft soundtrack has been absolutely rinsed in my household over these last few weeks—one that I feel makes some sense—but I’ve also really been digging Danganronpa’s library of tunes.
Yeah, I know, the anime murder game. Wait, wait! When there’s not a dead body or life-or-death trial being a real party pooper, it’s a trilogy of games stuffed with some surprisingly dreamy pieces. A little soft jazz number, a little ambient sound. It’s a soundtrack that’s so hard to pin under one genre, but tracks like Danganronpa 2’s Beautiful Ruin (Summer Salt) and Danganronpa V3’s Cool Morning have become my new go-to wind-down tracks.
But what about you? If you’re seeking out some videogame music to destress to, which composer, videogame, or specific tracks are you reaching for? Do you reach for the cosy nostalgia of games like Old School RuneScape and Skyrim, or is your playlist flooded with twinkly farming sim songs?
Tell us about your go-to relaxing videogame music in the comments, and why you think it’s so darn good.
