10 PERFECT Sound Design Moments That Improved Video Games

8. Minecraft – Ambience

For the past ten years, gamers have been instilled with a flight-or-fight response to Minecraft’s whizzing skeleton arrows and iconic creeper hisses. After a few hours spent grinding in the mine, players may feel calmer in the knowledge their diamond armour will protect them from most threats, but those players might still be unnerved by Minecraft’s ambient soundbites.

Minecraft has an expansive library of over 136 creepy ambient loops of varying rarity, played at seemingly random intervals. The noises are most common in caves lacking sunlight and can play anything from low rumbles to ghostly winds. It’s especially unnerving for new players, who will almost certainly be caught off guard by these cave clangs.

These ambient sounds aren’t actually caused by anything and don’t go much deeper than keeping the player on edge, yet even if you know all of Minecraft’s secrets, are a master builder and ender-dragon slayer, there’s still something unsettling about the unknown perils hiding in Minecraft’s caverns…