AUTHOR
Doremi
Music · puzzle soundtracks
I write about the music of puzzle games. The tempo of solving and the tempo of music have an analogy, I think — Sausage Roll's silence, Cocoon's low resonance, Baba's chiptune. Each tells you what the game feels like. I write when inspiration strikes.
Specialty
Reading puzzle tempo and musical tempo side by side
Hobby
Piano and vinyl collecting
Drink
Black coffee, hand-poured
Weekend
Listen to one album straight through while solving exactly one puzzle level
Quirk
Measures everything in BPM (Sausage Roll is 0 BPM)
Essays
Soundtrack: World of Goo — A waltz before the storm, leaning into the building hand
The music Kyle Gabler wrote for World of Goo holds a Tim Burton-esque gothic carnival and an Ennio Morricone western in the same room. Why does this waltz lean so gently into the trembling hand that stacks the goo balls? Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take it apart through a lens you can take home to your own composing.
Soundtrack: Unpacking — How to place a sound without overplaying it
The music Jeff van Dyck wrote for Unpacking layers acoustic guitar and piano over chiptune with its corners sanded off, and somehow it never overplays. In a puzzle with no failure and no timer, what does the music do, and what does it refuse to do? Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take it apart through a lens you can carry back to your own composing.
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: Portal 2 — Music a machine wrote, assembling itself as you solve
The music Mike Morasky wrote for Portal 2 is not something you put on and listen to; it assembles itself while you are mid-puzzle. Step on an Aerial Faith Plate, ride an Excursion Funnel, and the music adds another layer. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take apart why this score sounds like a computer composed it, and what you can steal for your own work.
Soundtrack: LIMBO — Only the sounds stripped of their identity remain
Martin Stig Andersen, who handled LIMBO's audio single-handedly, comes from acousmatic music. By distorting the 'identity' of sounds and refusing music that manipulates emotion, he laid sonic shadows over a silhouette world. What does 'retry-proof music' for a die-and-learn puzzle game look like? Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take it apart.
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: 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.
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.
Soundtrack: Return of the Obra Dinn — music that sounds, then steps back
Raise the pocketwatch and, after a few seconds of black, you drop into a frozen tableau of a death. The pseudo-19th-century orchestra Lucas Pope wrote alone swells at that instant, then quietly withdraws. Between the sounding and the silence is where deduction lives.
Soundtrack: COCOON — Music that plays on without becoming wallpaper
The music Jakob Schmid wrote for COCOON is almost entirely synthesized, and most of it is generated in real time. It is neither a looped bed nor a vow of silence, but a third path. Black coffee in hand, I, Doremi, take apart why this music can run continuously without ever turning into 'wallpaper,' through a lens you can take home to your own composing.
Soundtrack: Outer Wilds — When music becomes a tool for solving
Andrew Prahlow's score for Outer Wilds is not background music to leave running. Most of the time it stays silent; when it sounds, it is the signal of discovery; and at times the instruments themselves become tools of exploration. Black coffee in hand, I — Doremi — take apart how this music works, through a lens you can take home to your own composing and design.