Sanctioned
If, like me, you've never heard of this first-person tower defense shooter released in 2011, then according to Metacritic you've hardly missed anything. A futuristic Orcs Must Die! without its charm and instead with mediocre graphics and generic enemies? Well, color me surprised! The responsible Coffee Stain Studios may have been on the road to success with popular games such as Goat Simulator or Satifactory, but Sanctum failed to make the breakthrough.
A quick look at the OST by art and sound director Gustaf Tivander (also known as 'Gstfs'), who also wrote the music for other games by the developer studio, revealed the following: There's not much to criticize about the twelve tracks for Sanctum. In just under 50 minutes, the Swede goes through the basics of background ambience, ranging from relaxing (Skye’s Theme) to subtly hectic (Loek 3).
The collection of electronic synth beats (Glider Hunt) and low-fi strings (Below, Spore Gas Serenade) may not offer much to think about in terms of content, but it is correspondingly easy to digest and fits in with the hybrid game concept. In Meat Grinder some dupstep sneaks onto the parade, but in my search for acoustic highlights, I still come up empty-handed with Sanctum . So I can only recommend the score for this game to people who find the early Need for Speed-scores too fast-paced or who were too lazy to search for “Electro Ambient” on YouTube or Spotify.
