Here’s our selection of video game soundtracks released in March 2022.
This is a non-exhaustive list without any classification hierarchy. We invite you to discover new soundtracks that will brighten up your day! 🙂
Holà, we’re off again towards a great month with great surprises in terms of video game soundtracks.
FAR: Changing Tides, A Total Immersion
Composer: Joel Schoch
4 years ago (2018), Okomotive teams gave us a great story. The story of an extraordinary journey through the desert on steampunk-looking vehicles. It was FAR: Lone Sails. Set to music by composer Joel Schoch with the help of talented artists and real musical instruments.
This year, Okomotive is back in action and is giving us a sequel to this adventure. FAR: Changing Tides, published by Mixtivision, takes up the gameplay of Lone Sails, but this time, we forget the desert valley to now travel on a boat through a world where forgotten ruins, stormy waters and abyssal depths come together.
The composer Joel Schoch is once again in the spotlight for this adventure. He brilliantly puts the story to music, and it’s the player who can vary the soundtrack according to their game. As you can see, this is adaptive music.
The composer’s musical style makes it easy to enter the world of FAR. He took care to mix the timbre of the acoustic instruments with some sounds that remind us of the sounds of machinery and the landscapes we encounter. Excellent work from this artist who creates a total immersion in this wonderful adventure.
Our favorite is the track, “Survived” and its melancholic melody.
Gunborg: Dark Matters, A Neo-retro Aesthetic
Composer: Cato Hoeben
Gunborg: Dark Matters is a small indie game directed by Rickard Paulson and published by ORMIT Productions. The story takes place aboard a gigantic spaceship and the player will have to make it across while avoiding hordes of aliens and traps of all kinds. Gunborg presents itself as a 2D platform action game on PC with a neo-retro aesthetic that we rather like! 😉
Go back to the 80’s with a synthwave soundtrack composed by Cato Hoeben. We missed the mythical sounds of synthesizers of that time period such as the Prophet, the Jupiter 8 or even the CS-80! It’s great to hear melodies again with this sound grain.
The synthwave genre is always a safe bet for this type of game. The music fits well with the universe and the retro 80’s neon aesthetic is rather pleasing to the eyes and ears.
In total, there are almost 18 tracks on the game’s album, with 6 bonus tracks. But we fell in love with “Firestarter“!
ANNO: Mutationem, From Synthwave To EBM And Even Psytrance
Composers: Vanguard Sound (Haloweak, Moto, GhostFinal, CoyDe, RabbitJ)
ANNO: Mutationem is the latest game from the Thinkingstars group published by Lightning Games. We’re still under the neon lights with this game that has a cyberpunk atmosphere. ANNO’s gameplay mixes action-adventure with some RPG elements.
The heroine that we play here is Anne Flores, an ultra-trained fighter evolving in a teeming metropolis. As the cyberpunk universe suggests, the player will rub shoulders throughout the game with cyborg humans, disproportionate mega-corporations or criminals, each more vicious than the next, trying to find a place in this futuristic city.
The developers called on the Vanguard Sound team to produce the ANNO soundtrack. Many sub-genres of electronic music are mixed together on this superb soundtrack. You can go from synthwave to EBM and even psytrance! Vanguard Sound, which is a team of sound designers and musicians led by Haloweakm, composed a total of 46 music tracks.
As we mentioned above, we were surprised to hear a bit of psytrance with the title “Absalom“. But we actually liked it and it became our top pick. Special mention to the choirs which make this song even more epic!
Obviously the soundtrack has been removed from Spotify but you can get it via Steam.
TUNIC, Very Soft And Pleasant To Listen To
Composers: Lifeformed & Janice Kwan
TUNIC is a game developed by the TUNIC Team with Andrew Shouldice at its head. The work is presented as kind of Zelda-like where we embody a little fox traveling from country to country. We find all the mechanics of the Nintendo franchise, namely, trigonometric aerial view (we don’t count Zelda in TPS of course), puzzle solving, combat with creatures, etc…
However, make no mistake. Despite the game’s cute aspects, the adventure through the universe of TUNIC is not as easy as it seems. The game doesn’t reveal all its secrets at once. Whether it’s how to fight, where to go, etc… The player will have to show ingenuity to decipher TUNIC.
Throughout the adventure, our ears will be rocked by Lifeformed & Janice Kwan‘s compositions. In total, a soundtrack of more than 3 hours is to be discovered. This soundtrack can be described as ambient electro, very soft and pleasant to listen to.
A composition of titanic proportions was provided for the development of this soundtrack. We also learn on the soundtrack’s Steam page that they spent 7 years designing it.
Obviously, with so many songs to choose from, it’s difficult to choose just one. This is why our selection will focus on these two tracks: The Heir and Ruin Seeker.
Submerged: Hidden Depths, Piano, Violin And Some Catchy Ethnic Percussion
Composer: Jeff Vand Dyck
The latest project from independent studio Uppercut Games, Submerged: Hidden Depths is, like the previous Submerged, a game without a combat phase. Instead, the player is invited to discover the beauty of the landscapes strewn with the ruins of an ancient civilization half swallowed up by the waters. Submerged: Hidden Depths is described as a serene exploration adventure.
In order to gently cradle the player while they discover ancient mysteries, Jeff Van Dyck composed an orchestral soundtrack that really invites adventure and exploration. There are no war drums here, no overpowering taïkos like you might come across on the Total War compositions… The composer preferred to make room for piano, violin and some catchy ethnic percussion.
This whole combo of sounds is perfectly in tune with the overall aesthetic of the game. The player doesn’t feel aggressive, post-combat tension, but rather a tremendous desire to navigate, climb and discover new ruins.
The song, “Hope” particularly moved us. Its soft melody carried by the piano is conducive to daydreaming.
The whole album is available thanks to this Distrokid link. But also via the playlists below. Happy listening 🙂