Five reasons to play narrative games with headphones

I replayed The Lantern Road twice, once on speaker and once with headphones, and they were almost different games. The quiet ambience and distant sounds only land when nothing else is competing for your ears.

Narrative adventures lean hard on atmosphere because they can't rely on flashy mechanics. Footsteps, wind, a lonely instrument in the background — these do the emotional work.

On a phone speaker all of that flattens into mush. Headphones restore the space the designers built into the mix.

So before you write off a slow story game as 'nothing happens', check how you're listening. It might just be the delivery.