Loop Hero Soundtrack

Loop Hero Soundtrack, Aleksandr Goreslavets, 2021

2021’s first great indie breakout was undoubtedly Loop Hero. First presented at the 2019 Ludum Dare jam, Loop Hero was developed by Russian team Four Quarters into an engrossing exercise in world-building, its gameplay as repetitive as it was addictive. Built on a simple premise — the protagonist completes the same loop over and over, even without direct player input — Loop Hero folds unusual ideas into its rogue-like structure. Players can alter the outcome of each loop by placing cards onto the board, and it is here that the game’s narrative ambition comes into focus. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, Loop Hero asks players to rebuild a vanished universe one card at a time, with its protagonist the only survivor who still remembers reality as it once was.

It is an unusual premise, but one that clearly struck a chord, as Loop Hero sold more than 500,000 copies in its first week alone. Another revealing statistic was that the soundtrack became major indie publisher Devolver’s fastest-selling score ever at the time, and more than one reviewer singled out the music’s role in intensifying the game’s atmosphere. That close connection between sound and design was no accident. Composer Aleksandr Goreslavets, also known as blinch, was not only responsible for the music but was one of the game’s co-creators and designers. Though he had relatively few formal game credits to his name, Goreslavets had already been active as a composer for years, with his earliest Bandcamp release dating back to 2012. Discussing his work on Loop Hero, he noted that he “didn’t try to reflect the loop”, since the protagonist’s world is constantly changing around him, and that the music’s melancholy was a natural response to the collapse of that world.

Indeed, if one adjective most immediately suggests itself when listening to the Loop Hero soundtrack, it is “melancholic”. Opening track “Lich is Unbreakable” establishes the game’s atmosphere with striking authority and does so within seconds. Forlorn chiptune arpeggios echo into the void, perfectly capturing both the game’s cosmic setting and its desolate mood. A steady pulse pushes the music inexorably onwards, mirroring the hero’s apparently endless journey from which there is no escape. Against this moody backdrop, Goreslavets sets up a finely judged interplay between repetition and change. He finds exactly the right balance between melodic growth and hypnotic recurrence, chiefly through the drum patterns and chiptune ostinati that also function as counterpoint. This is music that makes repetition its strength, weaving a mesmerising spell without becoming monotonous, because Goreslavets always introduces new hooks at precisely the right moment.

The result is music that is deeply atmospheric while still placing clear melodic lines at the centre of its appeal, capturing the game’s forsaken ambience while remaining melodically inviting and, crucially, moving. Loop Hero’s narrative ambitions are obvious, with each enemy offering a fragment of backstory before battle, and the soundtrack supports this world-building through music whose scale arises from its immovable ostinati and darkly emotional melodies. At first, it may be tempting to hear the score as an example of chiptune minimalism. Yet although it consciously builds much of its effect on repetition, the arrangements are relatively lush, with three or four melodic and rhythmic lines often unfolding in parallel.

In that sense, Loop Hero more closely resembles an RPG score filtered through an unusually mythical sensibility, stripped down to essentials in a way that suits the game’s surreal end-of-the-world setting. Goreslavets’ instinct for melodic development also ensures that the soundtrack’s drifting atmosphere remains spellbinding rather than vague. Much of the score presents variations on the formula introduced in “Lich is Unbreakable”, and it is a testament to his compositional skill that he finds so many subtle ways of reworking that template.

“PathLoot Crusaders” moves slowly and methodically through the darkness, its sense of exhaustion propped up by unceasing determination, with melodies that sound more burnt out and blurred than those of the opening cue. “Loop Blues” and “Road Chariot” stretch Goreslavets’ method past the five-minute mark with ease, heightening the trance-like effect of the score’s hallmark rhythms while preserving their mechanical, but never alienating, character. “Road Chariot”’s minimalist middle section, with its lead reduced to a simple, unrelenting pulse, may be the score’s most downtrodden yet focused passage. “Anamnesis of the World’s Sin” surprises with a ringing guitar melody and lighter percussion than usual, suggesting a flicker of hope that the increasingly smeared and distorted guitar timbre quietly undermines. The hauntingly world-weary “Entropic Rhapsody” fully earns its title, as every musical gesture that seems about to emerge from the amorphous void is immediately distorted and swallowed again.

Descriptions like these may make the Loop Hero soundtrack sound abstract or forbiddingly heady. In practice, however, Goreslavets’ melodies keep drawing the listener in, making the hero’s struggle to restore light to a dead world feel poignant and recognisably human. Some relief comes on the cues accompanying pauses in the endless loops, particularly “The Grateful Afterlife” and “Singularity’s Dream”. Both are wistful rather than fully despondent: moribund, perhaps, but still touched by glimpses of hope. “The Grateful Afterlife” drifts through the ether on a dreamy ostinato and wispy lead notes that zigzag like electrical impulses through the void, while a bass drone reminds the listener that danger never fully recedes. “Singularity’s Dream” offers a similarly calm oasis, with swelling and ebbing synth chords that suggest vintage Vangelis, surprisingly gentle and almost entirely free of distortion.

The opposite is true of the soundtrack’s battle music. Shifting convincingly from the stupor of the exploration cues to the intensity required by boss fights is no small challenge, but Goreslavets handles it with considerable assurance. The music retains its fixation on persistent rhythm, which now transforms almost seamlessly from brooding to muscular and anthemic, with stomping drums supporting simple, declamatory synth motifs. What keeps these adrenaline-driven pieces anchored within the score’s wider sound world is the ghostly, dissonant quality of their lead figures: pained rather than heroic, and possessed of an otherworldliness entirely suited to the setting. Those harsh harmonies also give the cues an edge that turns their relentless energy into something more compelling than straightforward bombast.

Final boss track “Universe’s Storm (Omega Bossfight)” departs from the formula somewhat, placing greater emphasis on powerful bass grooves and more direct melodic writing. In doing so, it loses a little of the intrigue that makes the earlier battle cues so distinctive, but it also delivers a more overtly empowering experience just in time for the last push against oblivion. It is a fittingly spectacular conclusion to a chiptune score that dares to imagine a desolate universe on a large canvas and in sombre grandeur.