This article was originally published in BU Today on February 5, 2020. By Amy Laskowski.
Studies show millennials are feeling increasingly lonely and isolated, and there’s speculation that social media and technology are partially to blame. So Nicholas Chen decided to do something that would bring young people together.
This past December, Chen (CFA’17) opened board game café Tavern of Tales in Boston’s Mission Hill neighborhood. The café (which also serves food and drinks) has immersive, sound-enhanced narration tracks for the popular games Eight Minute Empire, Five Minute Dungeon, Forbidden Island, Mysterium, Robots on the Line, the Resistance, and Tokaido, which are played in a private room with a game master leading the group. The café also stocks games people can play more casually. In other words, you can grab Jenga off the shelf and play while enjoying appetizers like loaded tater tots and one of the cafe’s cocktails, all named after games.
Chen, a College of Fine Arts School of Theatre sound design major, says Tavern of Tales stands out from other Boston board game bars because it invites patrons to immerse themselves in a game. For Mysterium, about a murdered ghost who communicates through mediums, he composed a carefully designed soundscape featuring foreboding organ music, a ticking clock, and a creaking door.
“If I go buy a horror game at the store and play it at home, it’s not scary,” Chen says. “It’s just a board game. But when you come here, it is an experience that you can’t get at home. We can make it tense and suspenseful.”
As an undergrad, the 24-year-old was a sound designer for many CFA school productions and also worked as an assistant to Huntington Theatre Company sound designers. When it came time to choose a senior thesis, Chen, a big board game fan, decided to create an interactive board game experience. Over the next two and a half years, he further developed the idea and ultimately secured funding from banks to open his board game café.