Chill AF Music in Chill AF Games - ft. 'Satisfactory'
There is nothing quite like setting up a perfectly automated factory with the right musical ambience *cough* Lofi Girl *cough*
After being unnecessarily overstimulated by playing Satisfactory quite a bit in the last month or so, it seems apt to talk about some of its undersung features and how these are opportunities that solve bigger gaming music-related quandaries.
By the end of this Substack, I’d hope you would understand the scope of this opportunity, and perhaps play Satisfactory if you wish to have all your spare time deleted. Just like starting a factory, you need to know exactly where to start and where to end, so here are the contents of this one:
So what is Satisfactory?
Satisfactory’s Boombox
My idea to take this further
1. So what is Satisfactory?
Satisfactory is a first-person factory-building game developed by Coffee Stain Studios (who also made Goat Simulator and Sanctum). This game is ranked as ‘Overwhelmingly Positive’, with 96% positive reviews from over 160,000 Steam players.
This is a resource-management game where you…manage resources. Let me explain.
Resource management games challenge players to gather, allocate, and optimize resources to achieve specific goals. In Satisfactory, this gameplay is woven into a narrative where you play as an employee of FICSIT Inc., a massive corporation tasked with terraforming an alien planet. Your mission is to extract resources, construct factories, and automate production to meet the company’s escalating demands. Balancing efficiency and creativity, you build sprawling industrial systems while fulfilling vague and humorous corporate objectives.
Depending on your ability to plan/willingness to rebuild/OCD, you can build some impressive automations given the ability to build anywhere on the giant map.
For reference, the music was composed by Jannik Reuterberg aka Sleeper's Delight.
The developers deliberately avoid adding certain mechanics, like creatures attacking your factory, to maintain its design philosophy. This game has no time requirements either, encouraging you to build at your own pace, with your own designs and in your own location, as you can literally build anywhere.
But ultimately, its quite a relaxing game. There is a clear expectation of what the game wants the player to experience with this game, despite it having the versatility.
It’s relaxing enough that you can approach a little alien ‘doggo’, befriend it and have it hang out with you. You can also buy a ‘FICSIT’ themed mug as an equippable item to digitally sip on a fictional beverage while you look at all the hard automation work in the factory you just made, or just by taking a break while you figure something out.
Long story short - the pace of the game is determined by the player. Pace and ambience are closely linked, which makes me think that music can be an important component in Satisfactory.
2. Satisfactory’s Boombox
During the game you can recycle unwanted parts to get ‘tickets’ and with these ‘tickets’ you can buy cosmetic items that you don’t really need, but help you make your factory look nicer or neater. Tickets get you items like street lamps, roofs, colour packs, but also a boombox.
Alongside the boombox, you can ‘buy’ soundtracks (using tickets again), most of which are from the games that are also made by Coffee Stain Studios, or find more tapes hidden across the map. This is likely possible due to Coffee Stain Studios having access to the rights to the other games, whether this is full ownership, or permission to have derivative usages across games from the same publisher, or just by asking.
As we all know, if you want to listen to your own music while playing a game, you could easily go into your options, reduce the music volume, and play your own music on any device you want. But given the boombox is also a weapon, and there are tapes you can purchase/find in-game this item becomes more dynamic, and perhaps more enticing to stay ‘sound-on’.
So, what difference does it make that Satisfactory has other soundtracks in it?
Well, It’s a prompt.
Spotify’s approach to introducing new music to you is remarkably average—your homepage just rehashes what you’ve already been listening to, wrapped up in “new” playlists. Lately, I’ve been leaning more into YouTube-made or SoundCloud mixes for their unpredictability and fresh takes.
Games can be a prompt, or even a seal of approval, to identify music amongst the infinity of a streaming service. Games can ‘curate’ their own sound to align with how they want the player to experience the game. With this in mind, why would you stop at just soundtracks when the gaming company has an opportunity to choose what music their players can listen to through the game, using their curated influence?
3. My idea to take this further
How can Satisfactory enhance the boombox feature to encourage players to engage with in-game music? The goal is to offer a curated selection of tracks integrated into the game’s narrative, enriching the overall experience while using music as a unifying element to strengthen the sense of community among players.
This is also an opportunity for music that compliments the games aesthetic, and that integration is a great way of connecting with audiences that traditional music marketing campaigns may not.
I’ll split this between what music I’d choose and how I would integrate it.
—The Music
Chilled instrumental music, like Lofi Girl, would be a perfect fit for Satisfactory. It creates a relaxing, predictable atmosphere that complements the game’s pace and intent. The absence of distracting lyrics lets players focus on tasks like planning resources, while tracks like Lofi Girl’s Synthwave already align well with the game’s existing soundtrack.
This is ideally integrated into the game somehow to encourage to stay in-game for music. I would say that there would be a new cassette item from the shop that, when put into the boombox, would feel like it plays like the live stream does.
"Why not just embed the live stream?" you might ask - well, you can listen to this by lowering in-game volume anyway. However, the real focus is on getting the product right, alongside working out the rights and licensing to ensure a fair and mutually beneficial arrangement for every party involved. Having a set number of tracks delivered rather than a live stream would also give rights holders better data and clarity on usages, making a sync agreement more precise and easier here.
If Coffee Stain Studios / Lofi Girl wanted to add in some sort of achievement to acquire this, similar to what they do for ‘quality of life’ improvements, then they could use in-game achievement processes like increasing the purchase requirement, finding this through a M.A.M update tree, or even launch an event similar to FICSIT Christmas. I’d say sticking with having it as easy as possible to access unless both Coffee Stain & Lofi Girl decide creatively otherwise.
—The context
Satisfactory could implement this into its story as if it was a ‘wellness’ measure to ensure maximum productivity - which works both for the story as well as the ‘dark humour’ of ensuring high productivity with a funny ironic twist.
If Satisfactory wanted to go even further, they could introduce this as a wellness cassette series instead, and treat these like in-game compilations, enabling Coffee Stain to work with other lo-fi rep holders such as Chillhop or The Jazz Hop Cafe, and even potentially create an ironic-not-ironic product line similar to Marks & Spencer’s Percy Pig merchandise. They already have FICSIT merch available, so e-commerce and distribution is already covered.
It would be easy to have this integration also be an advertisement for the music too. Everytime you hit a benchmark or identify something new, your ‘AI Assistant’ called ADA speaks to you about your latest benchmark. Some ideas of what she could say include:
“This is ADA, your loyal assistant and part-time wellness guru.
Building the future is hard, so FICSIT is thrilled to launch the FICSIT Wellness Cassette Series, Volume 1. Featuring lo-fi beats designed to optimise your performance.
Put it into your boombox, hit play, and get back to work. Remember: the more relaxed you are, the fewer mistakes you’ll make, and fewer mistakes mean fewer disciplinary reports. It’s really a win-win.
Cassettes are now available at your local HUB terminal. No refunds if they mysteriously disappear into a resource sink. That’s on you.
Enjoy responsibly, and as always, remember—FICSIT thanks you for your service.”
This approach works beautifully because it integrates music into the core mechanics of the game without feeling overbearing. Features like discovering new cassettes as rewards for exploration or the Boombox's unique mechanics—such as its area-of-effect audio that lets other players hear the music and its non-lethal, playful pushback ability—add depth and fun to the experience. Expanding this concept with curated lo-fi tracks would align even further with the game’s aesthetic and lore, enhancing immersion while keeping the tone consistent. This kind of thoughtful integration is a blueprint other games worldwide could adopt to create engaging, community-driven experiences.
TLDR
Satisfactory is chill AF and could use chill AF music. Instead of the infinite choice Spotify offers, Satisfactory could curate music that matches its aesthetic and ambience, like curating playlists, for their players.
Satisfactory could directly embed similar-vibe music choices, like Lofi Girl, into the gameplay with an angle on its narrative. I think players would like this curated addition, and artists would benefit from curated recognition with this audience.
