Review Summary: > Slay the Spire
Ring of Pain is a roguelike deckbuilding game for PC and the Nintendo Switch, developed by Twice Different and released on October 15th, 2020. The goal of the game is to veer through 16+ circular rooms, collecting items which will help you defeat a plethora of deranged and unsightly enemies, until you reach the final boss(es). The setting of the game, which is not textually elaborated on in-game barring a few cryptic poems, appears to be a dark, underground dungeon, with the only escape being to navigate through its ring-like rooms. It is in these rooms where Belinda Coomes sets the foreboding tone, with ambient passages that vary with which rooms you enter, and how far around the greater ring of rooms you travel.
Belinda Coomes is a video game music composer from Melbourne, Australia, who specializes in horror games. As soon as you Google her, you see a picture of her with a big, bright smile on her face, which is hilariously contradictory to how dark and sinister her music sounds. While I have unfortunately not been able to delve into her other work due to lack of accessibility compared to Ring of Pain’s OST (other games she has worked on include Game For Peace, Tiberian Sun Rising, and the upcoming Twice Different game Winnie’s Hole), I can say from playing Ring of Pain that she prefers ambience, with little to no percussion, and with either base, natural sounds (such as rainfall, bug-chirping), or a vague piano or synthesizer melody.
The soundtrack itself is nearly an hour long, across eighteen different tracks. Of all the video game OSTs that I’m fond of, Ring of Pain’s is the easiest for me to listen to while working on other tasks, such as writing this review. As with any quality ambient music, it can be enjoyed as either an active or a passive listening experience, from start to finish. Although there are a few shorter tracks that are intended for certain, brief periods of the game, they don’t disrupt the flow of the soundtrack. One of my biggest gripes with certain OSTs is when they include every last short, irrelevant sound-bit from the game, but the Ring of Pain OST is free of any unwanted disruptions.
Over the last six or so months since I’ve discovered Ring of Pain, it has become one of my favorite games of all time. While the addictive, roguelike aspect of it is what keeps me coming back, the experience would not be as enjoyable without Belinda’s creepy contributions to the game. I personally play it on the Switch in handheld mode, and if there is ever a reason why I cannot play it with the sound up, then I will not play the game at all, as it is simply just not the Ring of Pain without the music.
