I’m just a casual gamer, I absolutely loved the score in Skyrim and Oblivion but when trying to find other good ambience music for caves/ruins/dungeons I was a bit stumped. I’ve found people creating this kind of ambient soundtracks and that’s great, but I’m still curious about the videogame ones. I tried searching for that and failed.
I’m looking for eerie, natural or mysterious types of tracks, nothing too high energy. The platform or genre of the game doesn’t matter.
Have you got any good examples?
The Mines of Narshe music from Final Fantasy VI still comes to my mind whenever I’m wandering around someplace suitably grim.
I like the demon door music that plays in Fable. Not really sure that counts as either (tho sometimes the demon doors lead to caves or maybe dungeons?)
World of warcraft.
I haven’t seen anyone recommend Minecraft but I succinctly remember the very few times I was deep delving only to be met with the soundtrack
Cave noises are fire, but ambience in general is sometimes pretty bad. You’ll often hear happy/calm music while something intense is happening, and there are very few true ambient noises
Older ones, but Might & Magic 6 through 8 had amazing soundtracks. Especially the sixth one. I sometimes listen to them as a background music when working.
Hollow Knight and its sequel, Silksong, have done of the best OST in history. Though those games can be, and are, the most beautiful headache inducers around.
Caves of Qud, specifically:
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of Chrome, and How (Sultan’s Song)
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Substrate
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Clam Dimension
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Legend of Grimrock had a decent soundtrack IIRC.
Look up the guild wars 1 soundtrack. Same composer I believe.
I think the Donkey Kong Country OST has some good ones. Especially aquatic ambience and stickerbrush symphony.
Everybody loves aquatic ambience!
Give Sunless Skies a shot. Great ambience and the setting is awesome.
One of the OGs: Diablo II.
The Witcher series also has a great fantasy soundtrack in that vein
, if you don’t mind the artists allegations…(got confused, it’s actually The Elder Scrolls soundtracks composer, Jeremy Soule, with the sexual misconduct allegations)Other than that the Baldurs Gate 2 Soundtrack was also pretty good iirc.
Ohhh nooo… What allegations? Can’t find anything
Damn, my bad! Confused the composers. It’s Jeremy Soule, the composer of the Elder Scrolls soundtracks, that has sexual misconduct allegations 😬
insert sigh of relief
For really old-school, the 1980s Commodore 64 game Trolls & Tribulations. Vaguely Metroidvania-esque in a medieval/dungeon/fantasy setting, but the music is Bach/Albignioni-adjacent baroque arranged for the SID chip.
Hyper Light Drifter’s soundtrack is a masterpiece!
