Hey, I was just curious how you came up with the soundtrack/playlist for this game? Did you just look for and find songs you liked and resonated with the theme?
thanks for the question!
One of my very first design ideas, as Long Haul was still taking shape, was: What if you could level up a character by listening to a song?
“Your character gets stronger by listening to the Staples Singers” was an early part of my pitch.
I knew I wanted an ambient soundtrack, so I began researching early ambient and experimental electronic music.
For the pop music that appears during gameplay, I knew that I wanted songs that were very specific to the period — stuff that was released in 1982 and early 1983 that could reasonably appear on a radio — but nothing that felt like your generic “80s music.”
It’s part of a larger attempt to sketch out an early 80s setting that wasn't defined by the common neon/vaporwave/synth aesthetics.
(These trappings are universalized, despite their deep connections to particular class, age, race, & regional identities. I wanted to move beyond that.)