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Soundtrack: TOEM — written 90 percent pretty, 10 percent playful, for a game about walking
TOEM is an observation-and-exploration puzzle game where you walk a black-and-white, papercraft-like town taking photographs. Composed by Jamal Green and Launchable Socks (Joost Kraaijenbrink), the score is checked against a Game Developer interview: deliberate silence and ambient sound placed between tracks, and a stated "90 percent pretty, 10 percent cute" philosophy. Doremi listens for how the camera's unhurried pace and the music's unhurried pace line up.
Soundtrack: Quern - Undying Thoughts — a score that doesn't rush you, so it can protect your long thinking
Quern - Undying Thoughts is a Myst-like puzzle game built around studying mechanisms and reusing the same tools with new meanings. Composed by Marcell Kerepesi, its official soundtrack runs 38 tracks over roughly 115 minutes. Doremi checks reviews that praise its unrushed, meditative score, and listens for why it never steps on the machinery sounds that are themselves the puzzle clues, and how its tempo balances against a puzzle design built on returning again and again.
Soundtrack: Infinifactory — the factory sound that never rushes you, no matter how many rebuilds it takes
Infinifactory is Zachtronics' puzzle game where an abducted human builds factory lines for unseen aliens. The score is by Matthew S Burns, the same composer behind EXAPUNKS and SHENZHEN I/O. Scoring only happens after you run your build, and the loops sit at an unhurried 67–98 BPM. I, Doremi, take apart what a composer can learn from a soundtrack built never to rush you.
Soundtrack: The Witness — the seven-year decision never to write a score
The Witness's soundtrack is designed by refusing to exist. Doremi listens to the footsteps and ambiences that Andrew Lackey of Wabi Sabi Sound spent six of the game's seven years recording.
Soundtrack: Terra Nil — music written for an ending, on a wasteland
The music of Terra Nil was written by French ambient composer Meydän. Its track titles trace the game's own arc — purify, plant, leave — and this "0 BPM" score, unusually, even writes itself an ending. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, dig out what a composer can steal from it.
Soundtrack: The Vanishing of Ethan Carter — chords with the third removed, built to make you walk
For a mystery you wander with no map and no HUD, Mikolai Stroinski wrote a score of fourths and fifths that never commit to major or minor, seeding a solo-piano theme, Ethan's Theme, through the rest of the album in disguise. Doremi, coffee in hand, takes apart the hidden link between a game built from scattered memories you must reorder and a score built from a single theme's fragments you can't quite name.
Soundtrack: Firmament — the memory of one synth, filling a rusted planet
Maclaine Diemer chose the same synthesizer Myst's composer Robyn Miller once played, and carried that sonic memory forward into a new generation. Including the story of how he first met Firmament as a single Kickstarter backer and later became its composer, I, Doremi, take apart the 'almost entirely synth, with two or three exceptions' score of this single-tool first-person puzzler — with a black coffee in hand, through a lens you can carry home to your own composing.
Soundtrack: Dorfromantik — a breath of sound that never keeps score
For Dorfromantik, a game about nothing more than laying hexagonal tiles, Laryssa Okada and Pygoscelis (with Only Sound) laid down a carpet of sound that never announces a win or a loss. No fanfare rings out for points, no tension spikes at a perfect fit. Roughly counting the BPM, black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, trace this design of 'never sounding off' back through the label credits and developer background.
Soundtrack: Monument Valley — An accompaniment, not a guide
The music Stafford Bawler, Obfusc and Grigori wrote for ustwo games' optical-illusion puzzle Monument Valley never pushes to the front with melody. What accompanies the short journey of rotating isometric monuments into paths is soft-edged ambient and a single chord that rings each time you turn a column. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take it apart through one lens: how does music that stays pure accompaniment become something you can touch?
Soundtrack: Myst — the presence that flowed into an island that had decided against music
Cyan's Robyn Miller first intended to put no music in Myst at all, believing it would get in the way of the puzzles. But a few tests showed that sound did help 'the mood of the places' — and so roughly forty minutes of music, written on a single synth across two weeks of evenings, later flowed into the island. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take apart a score that began from the side of subtraction, and the Selenitic mechanism where sound itself becomes the key.
Soundtrack: Timelie — Rewindable music, built for scrubbing time
A girl and a black cat escape by scrubbing time itself back and forth like a media player. Under that board you hear piano, a music box, and — sounds sampled from an array of clocks. Pongsathorn Posayanonth and Aun Jessada wove 'the sound of time' into the score. Black coffee in hand, I take apart music written on the assumption that the player will constantly rewind, in a form you can carry home to your own work.
Soundtrack: Taiji — Choosing to keep the sound on, inside a lineage of silence
Taiji descends directly from The Witness. But where its ancestor threw out music and bet on environmental sound, this island lays down an ambience that never quite ends. It was composed by the developer himself, Matthew VanDevander, and rewoven into a finite album by Grzegorz Bednorz. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take apart why the choice to keep the sound on fits a puzzle of pure observation — in a form you can carry back to your own composing.
Soundtrack: Etherborn — gravity changes direction, but the music never falls over
Walk onto a curved surface and only your own gravity flips — Etherborn's puzzles are quiet and never rush you. As a voiceless, translucent being you gather orbs of light and climb Escher-like abstract architecture. Inside that inorganic geometry, the one thing that sounds with body heat is Gabriel Garrido García's music: a string quartet, clarinet, bassoon, and soprano recorded live in Barcelona. Exactly seven years after its release today, I, Doremi, take apart the sound of this small gem over a black coffee.
Soundtrack: Riven — On an island where you stand still, the music refuses to conclude
Cyan's Robyn Miller returned after 27 years to re-voice, for the 2024 remake, the music he first wrote for Riven. On an island you can wander freely, the score is not allowed to swell — and in a puzzle-adventure of observation and note-taking, water and machinery, not melody, take the lead. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take it apart.
Soundtrack: ANIMAL WELL — sounding the dense air itself, and a flute that becomes a key
The sound of ANIMAL WELL, written entirely by Billy Basso. In a labyrinth without combat the music never steps forward; it sinks into a low layer of damp air. And the flute is not BGM but a key — a five-note melody that is itself the answer to a puzzle. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, break down this design — a limited-palette aesthetic moved into sound — in a form you can take back to your own composing.
Soundtrack: SHENZHEN I/O — music that names your concentration in its titles
SHENZHEN I/O is a programming puzzle where you write terse assembly for a fictional Shenzhen manufacturer. Matthew S Burns, who wrote its story and art, wrote the music too. The nine track titles — 'Enthusiasm,' 'Concentration,' 'Patience' — name not the scenery but the stations of the solver's mind. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take apart this 'music for thinking' through a lens you can carry back to your own composing.
Soundtrack: FRACT OSC — solve the puzzle and the music grows back
The music Alex Taam (Mogi Grumbles) wrote for FRACT OSC is not playing as a finished piece from the start. Each puzzle you solve in its ruined synthesizer world switches on one more layer - a bass, a pad, an arpeggio - until the player's own hands have assembled the score. Using the composer's own statement that he kept every piece in C pentatonic minor as a thread, black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take it apart through a lens you can bring back to your own composing.
Soundtrack: The Gardens Between — Music that never plays backward, even when you rewind time
Even though The Gardens Between is a game about rewinding and advancing time, Tim Shiel's music itself is never played in reverse. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take apart why 'sound that never turns back even when time does' works so well for a memory puzzle, through a lens you can carry into your own composing.
Soundtrack: IMMORTALITY — recording a theme together with its dark underside
You chase a vanished actor through her unreleased films by scrubbing footage — and for Sam Barlow / Half Mermaid's live-action mystery IMMORTALITY, Nainita Desai wrote three orchestral themes, one for each of the three films. What is really interesting is that each theme carries shadows: a 'subverted' version and a 'supernatural' version, and which one sounds is switched by the metadata of the footage you are on. I, Doremi, black coffee in hand, take apart this design of building a theme together with its twin underside, in a form you can carry home to your own composing.
Soundtrack: Viewfinder — music that breathes with the hand that places a photo
Take a photograph, paste it into the world, and the two-dimensional image becomes solid — the music Aether (Jason Taylor) wrote for Sad Owl Studios' Viewfinder is downtempo that keeps company with this strange act without ever rushing it. The track names split into Lounge and Domain, mapping the very skeleton of the game. Including the fact that the composer is legally blind and builds by ear, I, Doremi, take it apart, black coffee in hand, through a lens you can carry home to your own composing.
Soundtrack: Superliminal — The most suspicious sound is the one that soothes you
You wake in the waiting room of a dream-therapy program. What Matt Christensen wrote for Superliminal is lounge jazz that could be playing in a hotel lobby, carried by pianist John Reeves' hands. The comfort is both the weapon and the biggest misdirection — just like the puzzles where perspective changes an object's size. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take apart how this no-fail first-person puzzle meshes with music that never rushes you, through a lens you can carry back to your own composing.
Soundtrack: TUNIC — Music that turns like the pages of a manual
The 60 tracks Terence Lee (Lifeformed) and Janice Kwan wrote for TUNIC lean on the memory of retro game music without hiding inside the quotation. Built from samples of stray cats and summer wind recorded in the alleys of Taipei, it lives between the artificial and the organic. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take apart how this game of gathering fragments to read a world meshes with its music, through a lens you can carry back to your own composing.
Soundtrack: Opus Magnum — A loop that never insists, beside an optimization that never ends
For Zachtronics' alchemy puzzle Opus Magnum, Matthew S Burns wrote both the story and the music. Seamlessly looping machines, and a lounge-style loop that hides its own seams. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take apart how this music turns an optimization that never ends into a place you want to stay — through a lens you can carry back to your own composing.
Soundtrack: Obduction — Music that changes its timbre from world to world
Robyn Miller, who wrote the music for Myst and Riven, came back to Cyan's worlds after twenty years. The music of Obduction changes its very timbre each time a world changes. Including how he made it — looping footage of someone walking on his iPad and finding the themes on his piano — I, Doremi, take it apart with a black coffee in hand, through a lens you can carry home to your own composing.
Soundtrack: The Swapper — a cosmos built from a freezer and an old tape
A derelict space station. In The Swapper you clone yourself and swap control to advance, and its sound was assembled single-handedly by Carlo Castellano — music and effects alike. The groan of the ship came from a microphone shoved inside his freezer; footsteps came from crumpling an old VHS tape. What does it mean to lay handmade sound over a clay-model world? Per-room ambience managed procedurally, and the improvised piece 'Recreation.' Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take apart sound that refuses to keep a beat.
Soundtrack: Manifold Garden — Music that returns even when you fall
Choose your gravity, fall to the bottom, and you return from the ceiling: an endless architecture. The music Laryssa Okada wrote for it is built from strings and pads that never resolve, shaped much like the looping space itself. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take apart why this music loops yet never sounds like mere repetition, through a lens you can carry back to your own composing.
Soundtrack: FEZ — the music that carried 8-bit into the present
The music Rich Vreeland (Disasterpeace) wrote for FEZ keeps the vocabulary of chiptune, yet sands its corners down with reverb and bitcrushing and carries it into the spaciousness of New Age. Dynamic scoring that shifts with altitude and time of day, plus a trick where images are hidden in the spectrogram so that the sound itself becomes a puzzle. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take it apart through a lens you can bring back to your own composing.
Soundtrack: Antichamber — Music that grows a layer the deeper you go
The music Siddhartha Barnhoorn wrote for Antichamber is neither a loop nor silence. Thin layers crossfade and stack, never repeating the same combination twice, thickening as you push further in: a living ambient bed. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take apart why this sound follows you through impossible spaces without ever coming undone, through a lens you can take home to your own composing.
Soundtrack: A Monster's Expedition — The rhythm isn't in the music, it's in your fingertips
For an open-world Sokoban about toppling trees and rolling logs between islands, Eli Rainsberry wrote music with the rhythm removed from its spine. So where did the beat go? It moved into the UI — into the sounds your own actions make. Fifteen guitar-and-piano tracks drift like the sea of your thinking, while the rhythm is tapped out by your hands. Black coffee in hand, I take this division of labor apart in a form you can carry home to your own composing.
Soundtrack: Blue Prince — A manor where even the music gets drafted
The music of Blue Prince is dark jazz by Dutch duo Trigg & Gusset. Almost no percussion, mostly silent exploration, music that rises only in particular rooms. The composer wrote sketches; the developer drafted them into the manor. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, dig out what a composer can steal from this design that refuses to ring.
Soundtrack: Gorogoa — Every time tiles overlap, the music overlaps too
The music Joel Corelitz wrote for Gorogoa barely raises a melody or a chord; it lays down 'the feeling of a place' with texture alone. And the small pieces tied to each tile combine according to rules of overlap — the very puzzle of rearranging pictures is happening in sound too. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take its design apart in a form you can carry home to your own composing.
Soundtrack: The Talos Principle — A paradise built on one long sustained tone
After sixteen years of writing wall-of-sound music for Serious Sam, Croteam's Damjan Mravunac scored a philosophical puzzler by deliberately giving up rhythm and melody, laying down one long sustained track instead. Why does this music survive fourteen hours of listening in a counterfeit paradise of sacred choirs? Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, read the blueprint of its two-layer design.
Soundtrack: Patrick's Parabox — the sound unspooling as the boxes multiply
The music Priscilla Snow wrote for the recursive sokoban Patrick's Parabox sits exactly between electronic and ambient: a calm, inquisitive accompaniment. The timbre updates each time a new mechanic appears, and the track titles are literally the names of those mechanics. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take apart why this sound never gets in the way of long thinking, through a lens you can carry home to your own composing.
Soundtrack: Lorelei and the Laser Eyes — piano cutting through hotel dark
In Simogo's dense observation puzzle Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, the music by Daniel Olsén and collaborators centers a piano grounded in Debussy and Satie while melting the digital into the acoustic. Doremi reads, from a composer's angle, how the sound supports long thinking and quietly agrees with the visuals.
