2023’s Alan Wake II is an impressive horror game that melds mediums and tells a metatextual story about creating art. It’s a wondrous accomplishment of game design. It also has one of the catchiest songs ever put into a video game, memorably accompanied by a spectacular interactive performance.
So I shouldn’t have been surprised to find out that Night Springs , the game’s DLC, also has a song I can’t stop listening to. But the DLC has a twist: this is a proper theme song, and now I think every video game needs one too. Night Springs is a cheeky bit of DLC for an already meta-heavy game.
It plays out as episodes of an in-game Twilight Zone spoof written by Alan Wake himself and hosted by the mysterious Mr. Door. This gives each of the three episodes a canon explanation while not requiring them to actually make sense.
With no responsibilities to stay consistent with existing lore, Remedy really lets loose in ways you wouldn’t expect even after playing Alan Wake 2 . And as the entire DLC is a TV show, it just makes sense for it to have a theme song. Simply titled “Night Springs,” the theme is a synth-pop tune that will quickly worm its way into your head.
The lyrics talk about many of the weird happenings that can occur in the show’s titular town, with examples including getting caught in a time loop and finding a solar system in a bowl of soup, among others. Each one sounds like it could be its own bite-sized episode, and they all fit right alongside the stori.
