Music is an integral part of the gaming experience. Try playing a game, and turning off the soundtrack - it feels rather eerie and quiet. I was playing Borderlands the other day while listening to a record, and when it ended, I suddenly felt as if I had stepped out of the immersion and into an unsettling silence. Music serves as a vital backdrop, allowing the game to paint it's immersive atmosphere and narrative. The right soundtrack can elevate a player's experience highly. Today, I will explore albums that pair well with games, through shared moods and narratives.
Stardew Valley - Iron and Wine's "Our Endless Numbered Days"
Sometimes, the best games don't contain flashy skins, loot crates and mass chaos. They take you to a place of creative tranquility, away from the craziness of caged modern living. A vibrant world where you are the brain, choosing what to do and where, with no rules. Stardew Valley is one of those games, and Iron and Wine's "Our Endless Numbered Days" is it's perfect sister.
Covered in acoustic fuzz and beaming with a burning human warmth, this album is perfect for the mellow nights farming your pixel crops. Music like this is unpretentious, easygoing, simple. It's easy enough to do it well, but because there aren't any creative flourishes or effects pedals, it makes it difficult to do amazingly.
The imperfections that shine through each guitar pick, each crackle of the egg shaker and tap of the stripped back percussion create an album that is pleasantly mellow, and imperfectly human, and paired with Stardew Valley, creates a perfect combination.
Honorable mentions - Elliott Smith, Nick Drake, Piero Piccioni
Borderlands - The Heavy "The House that Dirt Built"
Now this choice is slightly cheating, as the song "Short Change Hero" was used in the intro to Borderlands 2, but even without the obvious link, the entire album fits the crazyfun "cheerful wasteland" aesthetic of Pandora perfectly.
"How You Like Me Now" is a soulful gem that i remember being on the Driver: San Francisco soundtrack, and little me thought it was some old mad 70s funk group. I was pretty surprised when I researched this album and found out it was released in 2009.
The whole album oozes with a biker-esque confidence and swagger, infusing elements from different backgrounds and genres to create a listening experience that focuses more on enjoyment than an overarching story. This mirrors the feel of the Borderlands franchise, which has a good story, but is not as "in your face" as other story-focused games.
Instead, it lets you focus on the chaos, the looting, and the wild, unpredictable ride across the wastelands. Just like The House That Dirt Built, the game’s charm lies in its blend of attitude, unpredictability, and pure unbridled, unapologetic fun.
Honorable Mentions - Kasabian, Cage the Elephant, Clinic
Spore - Boards of Canada "Music Has the Right to Children"
Spore is a strange game. You start as a small organism drifting through the primordial gloop, and develop and grow through each stage of life, witnessing your species evolve. It is a very unconventionally set game, blending genres like real-time strategy, simulation, and even space exploration in a way that no other game does.
"Music Has the Right to Children" may not exactly fit these terms, but what is it does share with Spore is an abstract innocence, full of exploration. The albums beams with hazy, nostalgic tones and ambient fields, evoking a similar feeling of curiosity and open-ended possibility.
Just like in Spore, where you start simple and become complex, the music on this album feels like a journey through growing up from youth to adulthood, kind of a sonic evolution.
Honorable Mentions - Casino Versus Japan, Tycho, Peshay
Red Dead Redemption - Neil Young "Harvest"
Some games are a perfect blend of action and intricately crafted downtime, allowing the player to soak in a deeply immersive pool of world-building and storytelling. This is very much the case for Red Dead Redemption. As you wander through rugged terrains, witnessing the slow fading of the American frontier, there’s a quiet beauty in the game's world.
Each road, each small windy path the player traverses through feels historic and real, and each town oozes with character and charm. Much like Red Dead, Neil Young's "Harvest" encapsulates the same hazy sense of nostalgia, reflection, and progression from the old ways of the American West into a new age.
"Harvest" explores life's simple moments through vivid imagery, echoing the themes of connection and loss that resonate throughout the game. The acoustic melodies and heartfelt lyrics of songs like "Old Man" and "Heart of Gold" evoke a similar spirit to the wandering gunslinger, contemplating the vast landscapes and the stories written in every corner of the frontier.
Honorable Mentions - Sandy Bull, Willie Nelson, Townes Van Zandt
Fallout New Vegas - Queens of The Stone Age "Songs for The Deaf"
New Vegas is a game of loneliness - from the moment you are dropped into the derelict world of the Mojave Wasteland, you’re confronted with a landscape that feels both vast and desolate. The remnants of civilization lie scattered between sand dunes, rock formations, and straight roads. As you wander through crumbling towns and abandoned structures, a sense of solitude envelops you.
A little known fact about Queens of the Stone Age's "Songs for the Deaf" is that it is a concept album about leaving Los Angeles to Joshua Tree, while listening to the radio. Each song is presented as a radio broadcast, in between short intermissions of different radio hosts.
Fallout New Vegas mirrors this feeling throughout its first half - You begin in Goodsprings and have to fight and find your way through each bandit group, settlement, town and highway. Civilization feels like short intermissions that scatter your fight to get to the New Vegas strip, much like "Songs for the Deaf".
The album opens with "You Think I Ain't Worth a Dollar, but I Feel Like a Millionaire," which sets a tone of rebellious energy and urgency. This mirrors the initial experience of New Vegas, where you are thrust into the chaotic world of the Mojave and must quickly adapt to survive. The driving guitar and drums that punch like a horses kick all throughout reflect the danger that lurks deep in the Wasteland.