Ice levels. Frost planets. Civilizations of snow. They’re a video game tradition going back to the earliest days of the form, because of the cool visuals, the gameplay possibilities (slipping and freezing), the coding challenges (footprints, snowdrifts) — and the music. You can switch up the atmosphere at these moments, introduce a note of hush and introspection. A blanket settles over the landscape, there’s a moment of calm, you can hear a pin drop, and the music gently rises with the mood: twinkly, or majestic, or desolate.
In compiling some of the best winter-scene compositions from game soundtracks, I wanted to avoid anything too jolly or Christmassy. (I considered banning jingle bells, but this proved to be impossible.) Beauty and wonder is fine, even a little excitement, but seasonal cheer is out. We are not racing sleds or throwing snowballs. That is not the vibe. The holiday season has been and gone; we are in the dead of winter now, alone in the tundra, struggling up the mountainside, or trapped in a maze of ice. More than anything else, these songs are about landscapes, the intrinsic and often literal link in games between the music playing and the space laid out before you in all its wintry glory.
(I would love to have put together a dedicated Spotify playlist for this article, but Nintendo’s decision to silo all its music in its own app sadly makes that impossible.)
Metroid Prime — “Phenandra Drifts”
Composers: Kenji Yamamoto, Kouichi Kyuma
Ominous washes of synth, glints of piano, a mournful melody: “Phenandra Drifts” is perfect scene-setting for a video game snow level. But it goes beyond that when the stuttering digital drums introduce a note of urgency, and a heavy, descending bassline adds a concluding gravitas. A classic, looping epic of game music.
Pokémon Gold and Silver — “Ice Path”
Composers: Gō Ichinose, Junichi Masuda
8-bit chiptune is the original video game music sound, but its harsh tonality is not particularly well suited to this genre, which is more about atmospherics than percussion and melody. Nevertheless, “Ice Path” summons the determination of pushing through a wintry landscape with its steadily churning bassline and descending arpeggios that whirl around each other like snowflakes in a snowstorm.
I Am Setsuna — “Voices of Winter”
Composer: Tomoki Miyoshi
You could pick almost any track from the soundtrack to this 2016 retro-inspired RPG for this list; the whole game has a snowy theme, and the music fully embraces its wintriness. Rather than lean into the chiptune sounds or martial orchestral stylings of the game’s ’90s inspirations, Miyoshi goes for a deeply melodic and wistful piano score in the style of Joe Hisaishi, exemplified by this short but gorgeous intro.
Stardew Valley — “Winter (Nocturne of Ice)”
Composer: Eric Barone (ConcernedApe)
Simple but beautifully effective. A catchy, looping glockenspiel melody over chiming synth chord sets the scene for winter on Stardew Valley’s farm. Everything is drenched in a wintry echo. The track then calmly deconstructs into washes of synthesized bass, string, and noodling woodwind. Pure winter peace.
Composer: Jeremy Soule
The vast, cold isolation of the North is a major visual theme for Skyrim, so of course there are great evocations of it in Jeremy Soule’s much-loved score. “Tundra” rejects melody almost completely for atmospheric swells of strings, an ominously insistent bass tone, and that classic signifier of the sadness and beauty of winter: a wordless choir.
EarthBound — “Snowman”
Composer: Keiichi Suzuki, Hirokazu Tananka
The wonderfully smooth tonality and gift for instrumentation of the SNES’ sound chip is shown off in this lovely loop from EarthBound/Mother 2. A spirited, piping melody line soars over a waltzing bass and, yes, jingle bells for a winter track that stays the right side of chintzy and has a gorgeous innocent quality. The tune layers up and briefly swirls with stammering synths before coming back down to earth, appropriately enough.
Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom — Lanayru Temple
Music director: Hajime Wakai
It may be a middling Zelda, but Echoes of Wisdom has one of the best soundtracks of recent years. Like the rest of this outstanding score, this ice temple theme is surprising and deceptively complex, blending expected winter elements like choir chants and tinkling triangles with isolated woodwind and cello lines, and a strange, halting rhythm. There’s an almost bewildering range of moods here: eeriness, mystery, hope, confusion. Must be a Zelda dungeon.
World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — “Mountains of Thunder”
Composer: Glenn Stafford
For wintry landscapes described with full-bodied orchestral drama and sweep, you can’t do better than the soundtrack for World of Warcraft’s winter-themed 2008 expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. This piece soundtracks the Storm Peaks zone and underlines the beauty and majesty of the mountains with stabs of fearsome brass.
Okami — “Wep’keer II”
Composers: Masami Ueda, Hiroshi Yamaguchi, Rei Kondoh, Akari Kaida
The soundtrack for this late winter zone in Capcom’s wolf adventure comes in two movements; the first, “Wep’keer I,” is a spacy, atmospheric winter tune like many others here, only using traditional Japanese instrumentation. “Wep’keer II” moves this soundscape along by adding drums and acoustic guitar that bring a stirring sense of urgency to the scene.
Donkey Kong Country — “Northern Hemispheres”
Composers: David Wise, Eveline Novakovic, Robin Beanland
One of the most effective winter soundscapes ever is also one of the strangest — especially for a cheery platformer like Donkey Kong Country. “Nothern Hemispheres” is fragmented and almost scary, setting eerie synth lines over a stuttering, cracking sound, like snow crumbling before an avalanche. Then the song phases through yammering percussion, piano, and futuristic synth arpeggios before cycling back. This is the beauty and the threat of the snow level in the raw.
