Data is a thing of beauty.
Number of releases tagged Dungeon Synth since the 70s, data from Rate Your Music.
Usually, when this graph is thrown around, it fuels discussions on the peak of Dungeon Synth releases during the early 2020s, and it is used to enable too many complaints on the genre becoming oversaturated. Today, I want to look at this graph from a different perspective. In 2025, there were 626 releases tagged Dungeon Synth that made it to Rate Your Music. I hate Fermi questions with all my heart, and yet I can't help but wonder how many releases remain hidden for every one that gets tracked on RYM.
Even if we stick to the 626 reported releases, it's easy to see that the current production of Dungeon Synth exceeds an individual's capacity to keep up with everything. And, in this moment in time at least, I feel I'm nowhere near the average, but rather at the bottom of the "amount of time I can listen to music" chart. Cue my own warped motivational mechanisms.
In 2003 I first heard the line of one song that sums up perfectly what makes me get out of bed every day:
and I cry for more.
Timestamp for the quoted passage:3:23.
This sentiment has always accompained me since my teens, and it kept burning inside for all of my life. For instance, in 2018 the first quotation in my the thesis for a course in the communication of science was:
and both sentences might as well become my epitaph.
If there is something awesome going on that feels within my capabilities, I always feel the need to join the fun (spoiler alert: 99% of the times I can't). Fear of missing out for me is not leaving the phone offline for a couple of days, but knowing that there are so many beautiful quests to undertake, while I am just one small and awfully limited speck of dust, lucky to be able to embark on maybe two or three of these per year.
This brings me back to the 626 Dungeon Synth releases of 2025, and to the point of this journal. I know and accept that I can't keep up with the genre, and this is fine
I know of the joy of creating something where before there was nothing. I know of the care you put into crafting this music, and I know that still you feel it's flawed in so many ways. And yet it has enormous value, and it can speak to the hearts of many. It might get overlooked, but that doesn't take away one microhelen of its beauty. Keep on creating, keep on sharing. Shine bright (or mold hideously, if that's your thing).
With love,
ᚼᛁᛆᚱᛐᛆᚿᛋ, January 2026
