Music for Gaming
Calm game soundtracks to play over the one you muted — grinding music, base-building ambience and tavern loops for long sessions and tabletop nights.
Play Music for GamingRelax Gaming, Old School RuneScape, Terraria and 18 moreRelax Gaming — Chill Video Game Soundtracks
Chill video game music from cozy indies like Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing and A Short Hike. Acoustic, gentle soundtracks to relax to after a long day.
Old School RuneScape — Classic Relaxing Music
Two hours of 2007-era RuneScape MIDI by Ian Taylor: Flute Salad, Newbie Melody, Scape Soft. Relaxing nostalgia for grinding, or for falling asleep to.
Terraria — Full Soundtrack for Building & Focus
Scott Lloyd Shelly's complete Terraria score. Bright chiptune-adjacent themes for overworld days and quiet caverns, made for very long building sessions.
Minecraft — Calm C418 Ambient Soundtrack
C418's Minecraft soundtrack — Sweden, Subwoofer Lullaby, Wet Hands. Sparse ambient piano from Volume Alpha that a generation of players did their homework to.
Stardew Valley — Relaxing Farm Music
ConcernedApe's Stardew Valley soundtrack in one calm pass — Overture, Cloud Country, Grandpa's Theme. Pixel-farm music for study and slow evenings.
Heroes of Might & Magic III — Full Official Soundtrack
The full Heroes of Might and Magic III score by Paul Romero, Rob King and Steve Baca — pastoral Rampart to Necropolis requiem. Strategy game music for long focus.
World of Warcraft - Journey Through Azeroth
Slow flyovers of every World of Warcraft zone over the original music by Jason Hayes, Russell Brower and Tracy W. Bush. Fantasy game soundtrack for quiet evenings.
Morrowind — Peaceful Solstheim Ambience
Three hours crossing the ash and snow of Solstheim with Jeremy Soule's Morrowind score underneath. Slow Elder Scrolls atmosphere for reading and deep work.
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Remastered — Relaxing Music & Ambience
Jeremy Soule's Oblivion score over remastered Cyrodiil — Reign of the Septims, Auriel's Ascension. Relaxing fantasy game music to study or sleep to.
Elden Ring — Limgrave Ambience for 10 Hours
Ten hours of the Limgrave overworld: wind across open grassland, distant strings and nothing hunting you. Elden Ring ambience without the boss fights.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Peaceful Night in Toussaint
A slow night flight over Beauclair with the Blood and Wine score — moonlit vineyards and lantern light across Toussaint. Witcher 3 music to relax or fall asleep to.
Red Dead Redemption 2 — Relaxing Wilderness Campfire
Three hours at a campfire in Rockstar's American West: crackling wood, night insects, Woody Jackson's score drifting underneath. Western ambience for slow evenings.
Fallout 4 — Walking the Commonwealth in 4K
Three and a half hours walking post-apocalyptic Boston at a slow pace, in-game score left underneath. Wasteland ambience for work and sleep.
Diablo II: Resurrected OST — Dark Ambient & Gothic
Matt Uelmen's full Diablo II soundtrack, remastered for Resurrected — the Tristram Theme's 12-string guitar, then dark gothic ambient all the way down to Hell.
Diablo II — Soundtrack with Rain Ambience
Matt Uelmen's Diablo II score with rain running underneath — two hours of Tristram guitar and dungeon drone for dark, quiet work.
Animal Crossing — Relaxing Music with Rain Sounds
Kazumi Totaka's hourly Animal Crossing themes with rain laid over them — the most-played cozy game mix on YouTube. Relaxing loops to draw or wind down to.
Kingdom Come Deliverance II - Relaxing Ambient Music
Jan Valta and Adam Sporka's score for Kingdom Come: Deliverance II — lute, hurdy-gurdy and choir over Bohemian meadows. Relaxing medieval music for focus.
Synthwave — Retro 80s Electronic Vibes
Retro 80s synthwave in the Kavinsky and Mitch Murder mould — gated drums, arpeggiated bass and neon synth leads. A steady pulse for late-night coding.
Skyrim Ambience - Tavern by the Fire
A Skyrim tavern by the hearth: crackling fire, a blizzard outside, Jeremy Soule's lute and dulcimer kept low. Cozy fantasy ambience for reading or D&D nights.
Medieval Fantasy Tavern | D&D Fantasy Music and Ambience
Medieval tavern music and ambience for D&D nights: Celtic fiddle and lute over a crackling hearth, mixed quiet enough for the table to talk over.
Dungeon Synth — Medieval Dark Fantasy Music
The Last Guardian of Ithar — melodic dungeon synth in the Mortiis and Burzum lineage: lo-fi keyboards, old fantasy-cover mood. Music for solo tabletop and writing.
Almost everyone who searches for this is doing the same thing: turning the in-game music off and putting something else on. There are good reasons for it. A game score is written to react — it swells when a fight starts and drops when it ends — and after forty hours those cues stop being atmosphere and start being noise. Somebody else's soundtrack has no idea what you are doing, which is exactly what makes it work.
The picks here are sorted by the kind of session rather than by franchise. RuneScape MIDI and the Diablo II score are grinding music, built for repetition and never asking for anything. Minecraft, Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing suit base-building and farming, where you want warmth rather than momentum. The Azeroth and Cyrodiil mixes carry an open world well. The tavern and dungeon synth loops at the end are for tabletop nights — they were made to sit under conversation, which is the one requirement a D&D session actually has.
One deliberate outlier: the synthwave stream is not from a game at all. It has been the default background for PC gaming for a decade anyway, and on a long session it holds up better than most scores do.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What music should I listen to while gaming?
- Something that ignores what is happening on screen. Dynamic game scores are designed to react to gameplay, so layering one over another fights the pacing. Long instrumental mixes — other games' ambient soundtracks, synthwave, lofi — stay level throughout and let the game's own sound effects come through.
- Is it bad to turn off the in-game music?
- Not at all, and most people playing anything for more than a few dozen hours end up doing it. Keeping sound effects on matters far more than keeping the score — footsteps, reload cues and ambient warnings carry actual information, while the music mostly carries mood you have already absorbed.
- What is good background music for D&D?
- Tavern ambience and dungeon synth, mostly. Both are quiet, loop indefinitely, and have no dynamic swings that would cut across someone talking. The practical test for a tabletop mix is whether the table can hold a conversation over it without anyone raising their voice.