Darren Korb: songs, guitars and a small team at Supergiant Games

Selected works

• Bastion2011
• Transistor2014
• Pyre2017
• Hades2020
• Hades II2025

The sound in a sentence

Genre blends built on guitar, percussion and electronic production, with songs integrated into the game's story.

Musical theatre, NYU and a call from a childhood friend

Korb was born in San Jose, California, in 1983 and performed in musical theatre from the age of five through his school years. He studied music production and business at New York University.

He was asked to score Supergiant's first game by Amir Rao, a childhood friend and one of the studio's co-founders. Another school friend, Logan Cunningham, became the narrator of that game. Supergiant was a very small team at the time, and Korb took on both the music and the wider audio direction, a combined role he has kept.

Bastion's narrator, Transistor's singer and Pyre's choir of rivals

Bastion was released in 2011. Its narrator comments on the player's actions as they happen, and the music sits alongside that voice. Korb has described the sound he aimed for as a blend of acoustic frontier music and trip-hop. The score won Best Original Score at the 2011 Spike Video Game Awards, and the game's songs were also recognised at that ceremony.

Transistor (2014) leaned towards electronic post-rock, with several songs performed by vocalist Ashley Barrett, who has sung on Supergiant soundtracks since. Pyre (2017), a fantasy sports game told through a branching story, followed.

Writing full songs for a game, rather than only background loops, means deciding where in the story a song can play without competing with dialogue or sound effects. Our explainer on sound design versus music covers how teams make those decisions.

Bastion's soundtrack album was released alongside the game, and its songs became a large part of how players discussed the game afterwards.

Hades: rock on a Greek myth and a long early-access build

Hades was released in full in 2020 after a period in early access. It is a roguelike action game set in the Greek underworld, in which the player repeatedly tries to escape. Korb has described its music as a mix of Mediterranean influences, progressive rock and a Halloween mood. Austin Wintory contributed orchestral arrangements to parts of the soundtrack.

Because players repeat runs many times, the music has to survive a great deal of repetition, and certain songs and themes are tied to specific characters and encounters. Hades won Game of the Year at the D.I.C.E. Awards in 2021, and received BAFTA and Game Audio Network Guild nominations for its audio.

Hades II entered early access in 2024 and was fully released in 2025. In 2026 it won the D.I.C.E. Award for Action Game of the Year. For the wider context of small studios making ambitious soundtracks, see our indie and digital era page.

Writing music that stays enjoyable after dozens of hours of repeated runs is one of the particular challenges of the roguelike genre.

One person on music, sound and voice direction

At larger studios, music, sound effects and voice recording are usually handled by different people or even different departments. Korb's role at Supergiant covers all of them, which allows the music, the sound design and the voices to be planned together from the start.

Songs on his soundtracks are often written so that they also make sense in the story: a character might perform a song, or a piece might return at a key moment with new meaning. Several of the studio's soundtracks have been released as albums, and vocal pieces featuring Ashley Barrett and Korb himself have become well-known parts of those releases.

Supergiant's games have all been made by a relatively small team, which is part of why the studio is often discussed in relation to the indie and digital era. If you are interested in how one person can cover several audio roles, our explainer on sound design versus music sets out what each job involves.