--- title: The Sound and Music of 'Hyper Light Drifter' [video] description: Hyper Light Drifter composer Rich Vreeland (Disasterpeace) and sound designer Akash Thakkar share a behind-the-scenes look at the game's audio design. Over... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/the-sound-and-music-of-hyper-light-drifter-video--er14yobla twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: The Sound and Music of 'Hyper Light Drifter' [video] | daily.dev og:description: Hyper Light Drifter composer Rich Vreeland (Disasterpeace) and sound designer Akash Thakkar share a behind-the-scenes look at the game's audio design. Over... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/the-sound-and-music-of-hyper-light-drifter-video--er14yobla og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/eR14Yobla.png og:image:alt: The Sound and Music of 'Hyper Light Drifter' [video] og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # The Sound and Music of 'Hyper Light Drifter' [video] **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 1 min read · 1 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Hyper Light Drifter composer Rich Vreeland (Disasterpeace) and sound designer Akash Thakkar share a behind-the-scenes look at the game's audio design. Over three years, the neon, nightmarish soundscape was crafted through countless revisions, with the talk covering how creators can achieve massive emotional impact through audio in games. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 13 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-09-14). **TL;DR:** Commenters are largely enthusiastic about Hyper Light Drifter's audio and the composer Disasterpeace, praising the game's haunting soundscape and emotional impact, while a few note that Heart Machine has since struggled and that the HLD soundtrack is slightly less memorable than Disasterpeace's Fez work. **Sentiment:** 80% positive · 15% mixed · 5% skeptical **The case for** - The game's pixel art, sound design, and musical transitions create profoundly haunting and emotionally impactful moments. - Disasterpeace is praised as both artistically and technically skilled, with a pioneering style that HLD takes to the next level. - The game is seen as a peak example of indie 16-bit revival arthouse. **The pushback** - Some feel the HLD soundtrack is not as individually memorable as Disasterpeace's earlier Fez work. - Heart Machine appears to have largely dissolved, with laid-off devs posting on LinkedIn and little activity from the studio. - Hyper Light Breaker, a follow-up game, failed to make it out of early access and is considered not worth its price. **By community** - hackernews (positive): Commenters celebrate the game's audio craftsmanship and Disasterpeace's talent, with minor debate over whether HLD surpasses his Fez work, and sadness over Heart Machine's apparent decline. **Hottest debate:** Whether the HLD soundtrack surpasses or falls short of Disasterpeace's celebrated Fez soundtrack. **Open questions** - Will Heart Machine recover and continue making games? **Highlights** > This is a highly impactful game: the pixel art style is haunting, as is the sound design and musical composition -- transitions of the musical composition leads to profoundly interesting moments. As might be well-known, Alx (the lead dev) suffers from heart disease, and the game communicates something of this experience. Really couldn't recommend it more. > — [mccoyb on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49227629) > If you liked HLD this is your reminder that Heart Machine made three other games. Solar Ash - rail-grinding and schmoovement, with a joyfully colorful visual style and a melancholy story, well worth the ten bucks or so it is on Steam right now Hyper Light Breaker - free-roaming online roguelike, did not make it out of early access, really not worth the twenty bucks or so it currently is Possessor(s) - a very pretty and melancholy metroidvania, a great value for the two bucks it's priced at on steam Last I heard Heart Machine seems to have pretty much evaporated, their bluesky is pretty much nothing but nine-month-old reblogs of their laid-off devs posting their Linkedins. Maybe it will return but I'm not holding my breath. > — [egypturnash on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49228489) > It's the same composer: Disasterpeace. But I think HLD takes his pioneering style (chip tunes but also more and better) to the next level. The launch trailer is worth watching: https://vimeo.com/806155790 Also, there was a super interesting talk about how they made Hyperlight Drifter using GameMaker. What they built in GameMaker wasn't the game directly, but a game editor. Doing this let them edit and playtest in one very tiny run-edit-play loop.. I argue all games (and even apps) should follow this Smalltalk-y approach. https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1024062/-Hyper-Light-Drifter-S... > — [nielsbot on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49229024) > Disasterpiece is a fantastic composer. His work on Fez is probably some of my favorite video game soundtrack work on any game ever. I remember hearing that he was working on Hyper Light Drifter when it was on Kickstarter and I was thrilled and while it's not as individually memorable (in my opinion) is still great work. > — [b0rbb on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49227868) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49179352) · 44 points · 13 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - ["I get very excited about trying to invent something new" – Assassin's Creed composer Jesper Kyd reflects on his three-decade career](https://daily.dev/posts/i-get-very-excited-about-trying-to-invent-something-new-assassin-s-creed-composer-jesper-kyd-ref-brgwndgi3) · GamesIndustry.biz · 1 upvotes · 1 comments - [From pixels to beats: the making of the F1 Games sound design](https://daily.dev/posts/from-pixels-to-beats-the-making-of-the-f1-games-sound-design-vodxsjgyv) · Atlassian · 3 upvotes · 0 comments - [This Dystopian Game Will Have You Exploring the Underwater World](https://daily.dev/posts/this-dystopian-game-will-have-you-exploring-the-underwater-world-ire6iww4n) · 80 LEVEL · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#game-development](https://daily.dev/tags/game-development) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/the-sound-and-music-of-hyper-light-drifter-video--er14yobla) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"The Sound and Music of 'Hyper Light Drifter' [video]","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-sound-and-music-of-hyper-light-drifter-video--er14yobla","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/the-sound-and-music-of-hyper-light-drifter-video--er14yobla"},"datePublished":"2026-08-09T05:00:20.163Z","dateModified":"2026-09-14T09:19:23.200Z","description":"Hyper Light Drifter composer Rich Vreeland (Disasterpeace) and sound designer Akash Thakkar share a behind-the-scenes look at the game's audio design. 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