Longer Music Loops

[viblym]

While I really appreciate and love that DST has been getting new title screen art and music, I'm noticing an issue that feels a bit prevalent with more recent-ish updates (recent as in when Klei started giving each update their own unique menus, so a few years now.) Is that the music loops are VERY SHORT. The current loop for the beta is only 19 seconds long before it repeats, it's cute, it sounds nice, but it is so repetitive and it starts driving people insane. Remember the Woodie, Wolfgang, & Wormwood skill tree spotlight? That menu music persisted for months, even into the Cult of The Lamb crossover, I have several friends who really loved that menu music, but can't listen to it anymore because they started to hate it after the 500th time. I installed a mod my friend made that lets you just change the menu music during that time because I couldn't stand it. It's a minor issue in the grand scheme of things but booting up my game and trying to load up my world asap or just outright muting it to get around a repetitive loop is very sad. The sound design in DST is fantastic and the music is fantastic as well, it just needs to be slightly longer. 

[crushcircuit]

Hi, i'm friend. Or, the person who made the configurable main menu mod. I made it mostly out of a desire for proper archival (the previous menu animations have generally been pretty poorly documented, and what better way than reimplementing them?), as well as a desire to return to the default menu and music. In creating the mod, I began to compile a list of song lengths. Out of curiosity, and letting people know what they're getting into, since I can't make a live preview system.

The game's main theme - one that is only occasionally heard thru the curio cabinet nowadays, is quite iconic and just well-composed for its purpose. A song that will be heard constantly. when loading the game up, when idling, when waiting for your friend to set up server hosting.

This song is 1m55s. This acts as our baseline.

Winter's feast also has very nice music, a song that players look forward to hearing every year! This song is 55s. A minute shorter than the main song, but still long enough. It is not intended to be heard all the time, anyway, and it's relatively slow-paced.

2025 had different music - to mixed reception - but it was 1min10s, a bit longer than the normal holiday theme. Its reception was mostly due to a divergence from tradition, whilst also being very blatantly... uh, christian, for lack of a better word. (Winter's Feast itself is very unambiguously christmas, but the carol does set it apart somewhat...) I didn't hear any complaints about its length, and i did think it was cute.

Hallowed nights' song is 1min36s. Pretty nice and slow paced and eerie.
Default chinese new year is 1min57s. It's just a remix of the default theme, so of course it's good.

Generally, you get the point here. The event themes are normally decently long. I would say this applied to the rework era as well, and would only become an issue once we got to regular updates.

...moon quay was 20 seconds.
For what reason? No idea. It uses the pirate theme, which is longer when it plays in the game. They shortened it for a menu where it is constantly audible and in your face. I know not a single person who was fond of that menu. Which sucks, because the art is one of my favorites, but the loop got grating in under a week.

This is a common issue. I refuse to do math, but id say most songs are around 30-40 seconds long on average, and that is really, really bad. Especially when it's music you will hear for months on end. Every time you open the game.

For this specific example, id like to highlight WX's original rework song. It's taken from their backstory short, and ran for 1min26s. Its slow paced as well. This is a good menu theme.

...As lym mentioned, the skill tree one is 19 seconds. For reference on how inane that is, it is the shortest menu theme in the history of the game, tied with Year of the Beefalo.

This sucks because it is very cool, but grows old super fast. This is one-off minigame tier of song length. This is a Sweet Cap'n Cakes mixtape remix.

Please make it longer somehow. Add another part or make it slower i dont know just anything.

Edited March 29 by crushcircuit

[Ugur01]

Maybe this is one of the reasons idk:

On 3/22/2026 at 8:08 PM, omar_klei said:

Very early on we considered something like this. But we decided not to as we would need to create a unique music box stylized version of each present record, and for each record we add in the future. Sound is one of our heaviest assets and we'd like to avoid bloating the game size if we can. We'd also need a stacking layer(when two Chorus Box Circuits are plugged in), and skill tree layer(the extra musical layer when the skill tree perk is invested) for each track. It comes out to be quite expensive on game size!

 

Spoiler

 

This quote is about the WX-78 Chorusbox circuit specifically

[crushcircuit]

15 minutes ago, Ugur01 said:

Maybe this is one of the reasons idk:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

This quote is about the WX-78 Chorusbox circuit specifically

in this case, i do feel like they could be using the default music more actively. its good and literally everybody likes it. i do think its nice to have unique tracks for character updates and major updates (like Eye of the Storm), but not every update needs a new 30 second loop for it imo

[DaZoul]

Would it be too much to ask for someone to upload this title theme here? I've become very interested now but am entirely unable to even launch the game for a week or so

[crushcircuit]

12 minutes ago, DaZoul said:

Would it be too much to ask for someone to upload this title theme here? I've become very interested now but am entirely unable to even launch the game for a week or so

TIL you can post audio files on here. i like it i just wish it wasnt so short!

Edited March 29 by crushcircuit

[Jakepeng99]

We should have some sort of menu jukebox or something. Seems an easy way to make a little more money, and make these musics not one time things. 

Would also mean they can put more resources into them since they would get more back.

[crushcircuit]

2 hours ago, crushcircuit said:

in this case, i do feel like they could be using the default music more actively. its good and literally everybody likes it. i do think its nice to have unique tracks for character updates and major updates (like Eye of the Storm), but not every update needs a new 30 second loop for it imo

I also want to add on this because im still thinking of the moon quay update. if its a file size thing then why did they make a separate file thats shorter instead of using the ingame version...? that would be bloating the file size more than just using the preexisting longer version i think? theres been multiple cases like it too.

i dont know. its all so curious to me

[fabin]

yeah, it does kinda get repetitive. this is kinda sad since y'know, my main got updated, and the music they got originally was super good

i'm not nearly as good as the game's composers, but i took a shot at trying to make the loop longer. it didn't take too long, and i'm sure if they take a crack at it they can make something really catchy

 

 

[crushcircuit]

9 hours ago, fabin said:

yeah, it does kinda get repetitive. this is kinda sad since y'know, my main got updated, and the music they got originally was super good

i'm not nearly as good as the game's composers, but i took a shot at trying to make the loop longer. it didn't take too long, and i'm sure if they take a crack at it they can make something really catchy

 

 

THIS RUUULES this is so close to what i had in mind in my head too, awesome work!

if they dont end up changing it, it would be cool to see this version implemented via mods or something

[Ridley]

Is it me or is the main menu music also drastically louder then the in-game music? I wouldn't mind but setting the music on the lowest volume makes it tolerable in the menu but faint in-game.