Board Game OST: A Polite Discussion

Talking about movies and video games, you think often to their soundtracks. Now while board games don't come packaged with their very own CD to pop in and play, albums, playlists and background noises can enhance the experience, elevating the gaming session.

Much like you would pair a food and a wine, a cheese and a cracker or a shoe and a sock, I want to present to you some top combinations I have found in the home brewed mixed media of Board Game Soundtracks.

'Oceans' and 'Butterfly 3000'

It was surely happy coincidence that Australian Psych Rock band 'King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard' released their album 'Butterfly 3000' on the exact same day I purchased and first played 'Oceans', the successor to 'Evolution'.

While creating an ecosystem of thriving fishies, you can hear jaunty guitar filled tracks with floating vocals fading in and out of a wave crashing mix. Here it is the perfect background music, a dreamlike quality that aids the mystical nature of the creatures you're feeding with an inobtrusive but intricate layering of strange lyrics and synth lines.

When I listen to this album alone, I can only smile and think of the times I've played 'Oceans'. My play group must have felt similarly because we played the both of them in conjunction relentlessly.

'Betrayal at the House on the Hill' and the 'Saw' OST

You sit down to play a horror game and you want to immerse yourself. You could chuck on a spooky playlist on Spotify, but often times that will result in the Ghostbusters theme or Spooky Scary Skeletons taking you out of your grim mood.

Here, the 'Saw' soundtrack lends its severed hand to help. While you crawl about this haunted mansion, unveiling horrible surprises and secret passages, creeping ambient noise plays, with orchestral stabs seeming to magically allign with tension builds in game. And then the perfection of the Saw theme coming in just at the midpoint of the game when the bad guy is revealed - oh chef's kiss, delicious, you shouldn't have!

Warhammer and Psytrance

When you really wanna get into the zone of something, get flow stating, see all the lines in the matrix and crack through that box of unpainted minis, you wanna be listening 

to psytrance. This is a subgenre of trance, which in turn is a sub genre of electronic dance music, which itself is a genre of music. Great stuff.

Constant pulsing beats and hypnotic rhythms will keep you painting and definitely helps me get into the zen of it. It helps that psytrance is a bit murkier than your standard trance beat, giving you a grimdark soundtrack to your grimdark future.

The band 'Infected Mushroom' is a great place to start, but honestly, in this genre, any old Spotify curated psytrance playlist will do you nicely. They're all basically the same song.

Dave Brubeck and Card Games

It has gotten to the point of playing 'Time Out', the Dave Brubeck Quartet classic, that even I have to consider putting on a different album of his. Every song on this album is the ultimate thinking song, making you feel like a jaunty genius, a meditative muse - a rambling gambling card playing fool.

It is a love meant to be. It's written in the stars. Go chuck on some good piano jazz and play your favourite trick taking game. It's good for you.

Try out weird pairings. I hope this list makes you think more actively on how you mix your media and enlightens you to some really sweet sensory kicks. Go crazy - listen to SlipKnoT and play Sleeping Queens, or chuck some Carly Rae Jepsen into your game of Risk. You never know, you might find a favourite album, a favourite game or just a bit of both.