Soundtrack: Donut County — The most reassuring music in the middle of destruction

Introduction — The gentlest music for a hole that eats the world

In Donut County (2018) you play a hole. You swallow everything in town, and the hole keeps growing.

The music is by Daniel Koestner. AllMusic credits it as a collaboration with Ben Esposito, who also developed the game.

Boston Hassle's review called it something like "Forest Swords meets Animal Crossing": strings, metallic clangs and Moog-like melodies over loose beats.

By my rough ear, the tempo sits in a relaxed middle range. Even while everything is being destroyed, your shoulders drop.

Donut County screenshot (from the Steam store page)

Not scoring the destruction — the paradox of comfort

Boston Hassle describes the music as comfort in the middle of destruction. The apocalypse unfolds in a cute, Richard Scarry-like town, and the music softens the contrast.

That fits a puzzle game. While you plan the order of what to drop in, the screen falls apart, but your head wants to stay quiet. Music that doesn't push you leaves room to think.

According to Wikipedia, the idea began with a 2012 game pitch from the parody account Peter Molydeux: you play a hole and make things fall into the right targets. Esposito built it into a game-jam toy, a "reverse Katamari."

Instead of growing by rolling, you grow by swallowing. I see the same shape in how music is built: the more you add, the more the whole grows.

A habit of making — the constraint of building your own samples

Under the name Vulpixic, Koestner calls his own work "experimental folk-hop," a phrase quoted by Boston Hassle.

According to the Composer Code podcast page, his influences include folk artists like Sufjan Stevens and Beirut, and lo-fi hip-hop in the line of J. Dilla. The episode title also mentions ukuleles and composing under constraints.

The same page says he insists on making his own samples. Other reviews mention found sounds such as claps and marbles shifting in a hand.

I could not find public details on how individual tracks were made. From here on, it is my own reading as a listener.

Making your own source material keeps the texture of the music and the sounds consistent. That may be why the game feels like it has one pair of hands behind it.

Puzzle analogy — the hole grows, and so does the music

Boston Hassle also writes that each track starts simple, slowly adds new motifs and juxtaposed rhythms, and shifts between styles while staying in a warm, cartoonish world.

That is very close to how the hole grows. At first it can only swallow pebbles. Soon it takes people and houses.

This part is my own take, but the player's head moves in the same order. At first you think about one move. With practice you stack several moves ahead.

A track that adds layers can sit beside that growth of thought. It neither rushes nor leaves you behind. The pace of long thinking and the density of the stacking sounds run slowly side by side.

(In Komugi's review the difficulty is "easy," playtime is about two hours and the score is 7. Donut County review)

Donut County screenshot (from the Steam store page)

Tracks to hear

The one official source I could confirm is a track on the auto-generated channel "Daniel Koestner - Topic."

"Garbage Day." Frenetic tapping percussion meets synth strings far back in the mix. Near the end the sound glitches apart, as if things were vanishing from the screen.

(This description follows the beautifulsongoftheweek article, which says the synth strings add depth that the game's context did not require.)

Closing — what I would steal

What I would steal is the design of adding one thing at a time. Keep the first eight bars as simple as possible.

Then add a single motif. Each time, the listener feels the piece has grown. The world widens without adding a loud sound.

One more: deciding to make your own source material evens out the texture of a piece. A constraint is the cheapest way to get a personality.

Where do you decide to stop adding? When you relisten, do it while thinking, as if stacking blocks.

My Hidden Folks entry (sounds made by mouth) pairs well with this one as another story about making your own material.

Sources

・AllMusic: Donut County [Original Soundtrack]

・Boston Hassle: Donut County Original Soundtrack Review

・Beautiful Song of the Week: Garbage Day by Daniel Koestner

・Composer Code Ep 22: Daniel Koestner

・Wikipedia: Donut County

・Steam: Donut County