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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: Machinarium — The arithmetic of loops that never go stale in a rusty world
The music Tomáš Dvořák (Floex) wrote for Amanita Design's dialogue-free, hand-drawn adventure Machinarium is a strange alloy: the body heat of piano and clarinet fused with a dirty analog synth and the clatter of scrap metal. In a game where you stare at the same screen for minutes on end, why do these loops keep living in your ear? Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take it apart through the lens of 'the mixing ratio of abstraction and melody.'
Soundtrack: Baba Is You — A small loop that never scolds you for being wrong
The music of Baba Is You is chiptune written in a tracker (OpenMPT) by Arvi 'Hempuli' Teikari, who made the entire game alone. It is a game you retry hundreds of times, yet the music announces neither victory nor defeat — it just keeps spinning a bright little loop. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take apart why this 'music that never scolds' keeps trial-and-error feeling light, through a lens you can take home to your own writing.
