Album Review: dren mcdonald – Stay: Forever Home – Vol. 2 Cozy (Original Game Soundtrack)

dren mcdonald has established a niche for himself in creating game soundtracks that work just as well outside the audio-visual experience.

Known for his work on games like Skulls of the Shogun and Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Commander, his soundtrack for Stay: Forever Home operates on a very dissimilar level.

The game, released by indie game studio Windup Minds, focuses on the evolving relationship between the player and Ember, their magical pet. Within the game, this evolution often occurs during quieter moments, like watching a waterfall or engaging with floating orbs of light as they pass by.

The album is the soundtrack to those segments, magical and mystical, enhancing the mood of the part of the game being played, but – unlike, say, first-person shooter (FPS) games – dren mcdonald has to embody moments of calm and reflection, rather than heighten the tension.

Working with vocalists Sophia James and Amelie Anna, mcdonald utilises his experience as a composer to create longer pieces than you’d get in a game.

So, you get pieces like Night Time Explorations, which is akin to an out-of-body experience, a resonant hum akin to a cello slowly changing tone as the wordless vocals glide over a melody that verges on the monophonic.

A personal favourite on the album is Back Home Sleepytime. It comes across like a variation on Night Time Explorations, the movement more noticeable for sure, the piano not just capturing the sensation of falling to sleep but likely to induce something close to it. The track has a feeling of safety to it, of pure love set to music, a lullaby for peaceful moments.

The emotions evoked by The Otherland’s Floating Music Spore are more vibrant, for all the ambient textures it employs. I’d compare it to dawn slowly breaking, life slowly stirring as the sun rises, warming the world. Amelie Anna gifts the track a hallowed air, folk and early church music touching nature as it renews for another day.

A Floating Portal In My Room, by contrast, has a more noticeably electronic aspect, like electricity or bees buzzing lazily overhead, as a lilting flute, gentle acoustic guitar, and the vocals of Sophia James move the track into terrain where movement is easier to discern yet remains gradual in nature.

I’d wager that album is constructed to work within specific points in the game, enhance but not intrude, and work outside that as an art in its own right. Not only that, but the nine tracks need to work individually and as a whole. And if that is the case, dren mcdonald and his collaborators have succeeded in style. If you like the recent releases of Purity Ring and the ambient works of Dead Can Dance, Philip Glass, or Brian Eno, you won’t need to be a gamer to appreciate what this album offers you.

For information on STAY: Forever Home, head to Windup Minds’ Discord server. Stay: Forever Home – Vol. 2 Cozy (Original Game Soundtrack) is out now via appearing records and can be downloaded on Bandcamp and is streaming on Spotify.