Metalheads Score Soundtrack for New Board Game, The Night Cage

Metal and gaming have always gone together like riffs and headbanging. Now, thanks to some enterprising metalheads and gamers working together, those two worlds will collide directly in an upcoming game release titled The Night Cage that features a dark and brooding metal-inspired companion soundtrack.

Here’s a description of The Night Cage from its creators:

“‘The Night Cage’ is a co-operative, tile placement game that pits players against a maze-like prison where the only bars are eternal darkness. Due to the limited light of their candles, players can only see the tiles immediately adjacent to them. As players move, the tiles they leave behind disappear into the darkness. In this way, the maze is continually made and unmade by the players. To win, players must rely on teamwork and collective strategy to collect 4 keys, find an exit gate, and escape the labyrinth together.”

Sounds neat, right? Collaborative games seem to be growing in popularity, and I’m way into it.

Musician Elijah Torn, who worked on the soundtrack, explains:

“Players are supposed to be disoriented, lost, and panicked, and that’s what we wanted to evoke with the music. The instrumentation is intentionally obfuscated and distorted. The timing of the soundtrack also matches the game’s arc, increasing in tension as the game winds towards its climax.

“Chris and I did a lot of research together to dial in the sound and were fortunate enough to enlist textural guitarist David Torn, aka my dad. There was a lot of discussion on how we could score gameplay but also on what the reverb and space would sound like.

“We were very tempted to bring in more doom and drone influences, but we figured that most people who play ‘The Night Cage’ might not want to sit through a Sunn O))) concert. The final result does not sound especially like the metal that we love, but the influence is clear to people who know.”

Chris McMahon, one of the creators of The Night Cage, adds:

“My partners and I showed this game to Elijah years ago when it was a much rougher prototype. Even back then his reaction was, ‘Dude, we have to make a soundtrack for this.’ Elijah and I had been going to metal shows together in Brooklyn for years before ‘The Night Cage’ was even conceived. Dark, heavy music is just part of who we are. So it was very lucky that our taste already fit ‘The Night Cage.’”

The Night Cage will become available in May 2022, but you can pre-order your copy now right here.

The soundtrack, however, is available in full for your listening pleasure! Give it a spin below while you peruse some photos of the game.