Scoring a memory: the soundtrack behind the silence
Tim Shiel on tape hiss, cicadas, vintage synths and writing music that sounds like it's already being remembered — the story of gaming's softest score.
The brief Tim Shiel gave himself was one sentence: 'The music should sound like it's already being remembered.' Not nostalgic — remembered. There's a difference, and it took him most of a year of vintage synthesizers and field recordings to find it.
The result is a score that sits slightly behind the action instead of on top of it — music as weather, not commentary. Players consistently describe it as the thing that made the ending land.
Studio Editorial
Long-form writing from the Gardens Between World team — guides, essays and the occasional confession from development.
In this article
- Instruments that already sounded old
- Music that waits for you
- The ambient mixes
- Where to get it
Instruments that already sounded old
Shiel tracked the score on ageing synths run through actual tape machines — hiss left in deliberately. Field recordings from Melbourne suburbs supplied the rest: cicadas, distant trams, rain on a tin roof recorded in the composer's own backyard during the same kind of storm the game is about.
The main theme's melody is a music box — an instrument that only plays memories by design. Shiel has said he bought three broken ones before finding the one whose mechanism 'limped the right way'.
I didn't want players to hear a score. I wanted them to half-remember one.— Tim Shiel, composer
Music that waits for you
The score is mixed to leave space — islands breathe in long quiet stretches where only the weather plays. When the music does arrive, it arrives like a memory surfacing: mid-phrase, unhurried, already partway through a thought.
The ambient mixes
Two tracks exclusive to the portal's album release stretch the game's themes into long ambient pieces — the storm suite alone runs twenty-two minutes. Shiel built them for the players who kept asking for a 'sleep version' of the ending theme.
Listening notes
- Play 'Are We Dreaming?' on headphones — the storm is mixed just under the melody.
- 'Your Memory Lane' works standalone; several players use it as a focus track.
- The ambient mixes are exclusive to the bought album — nowhere on streaming.
Where to get it
The complete soundtrack ships DRM-free in FLAC and MP3 through this portal — including the two ambient exclusives and liner notes from Shiel's production diary. It's also inside the Deluxe and Complete editions at no extra cost.
Keep reading: The Original Soundtrack album · Deluxe Edition — album included
