You know those awkward silences while your friends take their turns during game nights? They can be just agonizing to sit through. Sure, you could play music, but then you have to worry about everyone vetoing the songs you play, and then the conversation degrades into an argument about the best Phil Collins album (correct answer: No Jacket Required). Suddenly, game night is totally derailed and you’ve sent everyone home early.
Wouldn’t it be nice if your favorite board game came with a soundtrack? It would certainly quell those uncomfortable moments of silence, but it can do more than that too. A good soundtrack can make a game more immersive and fun to play.
Official Soundtracks
Image Credit: Flying Frog Productions
Some game publishers have actually tried this out, with really positive results. If you play Mysterium, go to the game’s download page and get the MP3 of ambient sounds that they provide. It’s spooky and takes the artistic quality of the game up a notch (as if the game needed it).
Last Night on Earth, by Flying Frog Productions, is another game that comes with a soundtrack. No downloads are required for this one, though. The game includes an audio CD with several tracks worth of original musical scores to accompany your fight against the undead hordes. If you haven’t played Last Night on Earth, you can watch it played in Season 1 of Tabletop.
Fan-Made Soundtracks
Unfortunately, lots of board games don’t come with an original soundtrack. That’s no reason to give up hope, though. The Internet is vast and there are several places you can go to find fan-made soundtracks for your games.
If you like to play Dead of Winter (also featured on TableTop) or Dead Men Tell No Tales, check out their high-quality soundtracks on Nixworld. They’re timed for an average game so they shouldn’t become too repetitive, and there are some surprise soundbites mixed in that might make you jump!
YouTube is also a great place to go for unofficial board game soundtracks. A simple search for “board game soundtrack” produces thousands of results covering a wide variety of games.
Mix Your Own
Image Credit: Ambient-Mixer
Are you playing a really obscure game and still not able to find an appropriate soundtrack? Head over to Ambient-Mixer and try making your own! Ambient-Mixer lets you add a handful of sound bites together and then customize the volume, frequency, crossfade, and balance of each sound. All of this is available for free from the comfort of your web browser.
After you create or customize a soundtrack (Ambient-Mixer refers to soundtracks as “atmospheres”), you can save it, categorize it, and share it with others. In fact, Ambient-Mixer already has dedicated boardgame and RPG selections on their site with over 20 pre-made soundtracks each. There is also a phone app for Ambient-Mixer that works on both iOS and Android, so you will have your soundtracks with you no matter where you decide to get your game on!
What games do you play that come with a soundtrack? Are there any unofficial soundtracks that you particularly enjoy? Share them in the comments below, we’d love to hear about them!
Feature Image Credit: Erik Gillespie