Category: Soundtrack

  • 🦎 Reptile Tank: A Soundtrack of Scales, Stones, and Stillness

    When you imagine a terrarium, you don’t just see the reptiles inside—you feel the delicate ecosystem that surrounds them. Reptile Tank takes that sensation and turns it into a game of quiet strategy and hidden beauty. With every card placed, a new stone, leaf, or creature finds its place in the miniature world, slowly transforming an empty grid into a living mosaic.

    The soundtrack created for Reptile Tank mirrors this sense of patient construction. Each piece unfolds with organic textures and subtle details, inviting listeners to lean closer, notice the interplay of instruments, and immerse themselves in a soundscape that feels alive.


    🎵 The Music of a Living Terrarium

    1. Whispering Leaves
    A gentle weave of woodwinds and marimba creates the impression of foliage shifting softly in the light. This track feels like the rustle of unseen movement among branches, subtle yet essential to the atmosphere.

    2. Sunlit Shells
    Resonant cello tones and shimmering vibraphone arpeggios capture the warmth of sunlight resting on a smooth surface. It radiates calm majesty, glowing with golden serenity.

    3. Scales and Shadows
    Layered rhythms, chromatic motifs, and shadowed harmonies bring tension and intrigue. It is a track of patterns and textures, suggesting movement beneath the surface, waiting to be revealed.

    4. Reflections in Water
    A fluid, ambient piece built from piano chords, violin harmonics, and delicate electronic textures. Its ripples expand outward, fading slowly into silence—like watching light dance on water.


    🎨 The Artwork in Sound

    The visuals accompanying these tracks take the listener further inside this world. Each piece of art translates sound into imagery: leaves overlapping like woodwind textures, shells glowing with light beams, scales forming abstract repeating patterns, and rippling water embodying the final notes. Together, they create not just illustrations, but reflections of the music itself.


    🌱 A Unified Experience

    Reptile Tank is more than cards on a grid—it is an invitation to slow down, observe, and discover beauty in balance. The soundtrack and art extend this invitation, turning listening and viewing into a contemplative experience, just like the careful placement of each element in the terrarium.

    This project celebrates patience, harmony, and the hidden artistry of natural systems. Whether through gameplay, music, or art, it reminds us that sometimes the smallest details hold the most profound sense of wonder.

  • 🤠🎶 Western Legends: A Soundtrack of Dust, Gold, and Myth

    Some games ask you to follow strict rules, but Western Legends invites you to live a story. It’s a sprawling sandbox of the Wild West, where you can ride across endless plains, duel in the streets at high noon, or simply sit down for a hand of poker in a smoky saloon. It’s a game about choices, risks, and the legends those choices create.

    To capture that feeling, we shaped a six-track soundtrack that mirrors the moods of the frontier — from wide horizons to tense duels. Each piece of music is paired with original artwork, designed to extend the immersion and let the Western atmosphere spill beyond the table.


    🎵 The Sound of the Frontier

    1. Dust on the Horizon – A sweeping overture of strings, harmonica, and acoustic guitar, evoking the solitude of wide desert plains.
    2. The Long Ride – A steady rhythm of strummed guitars and fiddle melodies, carrying the listener down endless dusty trails.
    3. Poker and Whiskey Nights – Ragtime piano, upright bass, and smoky saloon energy, where cards flip and whiskey glasses clink.
    4. Duel at High Noon – A tense buildup of sparse plucks, trumpet stabs, and silence before the gunshot breaks it all.
    5. Gold Fever – A frantic storm of banjo rolls, fiddles, and sparkling tones echoing the chaos of chasing fortune.
    6. Legends Never Die – An epic finale with full orchestra and choir, turning fleeting lives into immortal stories.

    Each track is designed not just as background, but as a scene — a cinematic moment frozen in sound.


    🎨 The Art of Legends

    The visuals deepen the immersion:

    • Vast desert sunsets where a lone rider casts a shadow across cracked earth.
    • Golden saloon light spilling over poker tables and whiskey glasses.
    • A tense main street with tumbleweeds drifting in silence.
    • Glittering nuggets in a chaotic canyon of miners and dust.
    • A twilight campfire under an indigo sky where ghostly riders glow like constellations.

    Together, they weave a narrative — a gallery of moments that echo the music’s emotion.


    🌵 A Journey Into Myth

    Western Legends is about more than points and actions. It’s about stepping into a legend, shaping your own path, and feeling the weight of the frontier. The soundtrack and artwork aim to capture that timeless quality: the dust, the danger, the laughter, the firelight, and the eternal horizon.

    After all, in the West, every story ends the same way:
    the land remembers, and legends never die.

  • 💎🔦 Orapa Mine: Echoes of Light Beneath the Earth

    When you descend into the hidden chambers of Orapa Mine, you step into a world where silence hums with resonance and darkness blooms with sudden bursts of color. This is not just a board game about deduction—it’s an aesthetic journey of sound and image, where gemstones, echoes, and light intertwine into something deeply immersive.


    🌌 The Soundtrack of Resonance

    Each track in the Orapa Mine soundtrack was designed as a sonic reflection of underground exploration.

    • Echoes in the Depths carries us into vast cavernous halls with drones, distant percussion, and crystalline arpeggios shimmering like droplets on stone.
    • Spectrum Refraction brightens the space with tonal colors, where brass, strings, and airy instruments blend like beams of light split through prisms.
    • Collision of Waves brings structured rhythm and symmetry, waves of sound overlapping in precise cycles, pulsing like ripples through subterranean pools.
    • Blackbody Silence closes the arc in near-nothingness—tones dissolve, light fades, and all that remains is resonance on the edge of silence.

    It’s a journey from discovery to disappearance, sound woven with the language of color.


    🎨 Visual Worlds Beneath Stone

    The artwork mirrors this sonic palette, inviting players into scenes of hidden crystalline wonder:

    • Caverns stretching into shadow, mist and water catching faint light.
    • Abstract prisms refracting vivid beams of spectral color against black stone.
    • Elegant waveforms colliding in symmetry, rendered as glowing arcs rather than chaos.
    • Minimalist voids where silence itself becomes a visual motif.

    Every image builds toward a visual arc that parallels the music—depth, light, resonance, and silence.


    🪨 Why It Resonates

    What makes Orapa Mine special is how it transforms deduction into sensation. Waves are not just tools—they are metaphors. Colors are not just results—they are moods. Each piece of art and every note of the soundtrack works together to create a multi-sensory echo chamber where you’re not just playing—you’re exploring.

    In the end, Orapa Mine is more than a puzzle. It’s a place. A vibration. A memory etched in sound and light.


    ✨ Put simply: Orapa Mine is the resonance of hidden gems—an underground symphony waiting to be discovered.

  • 🚀⚙️🌌 The Last Analog: A Hard Sci-Fi Epic in Sound and Vision

    What if the timeless struggle of power, corruption, and fragile hope wasn’t set in myth and magic — but in the cold silence of space, across fragile colonies and machine-forged empires?

    The Last Analog is a reimagined saga: a Lord of the Rings-like odyssey told in hard science fiction, where humanity fights to survive against the Dominion Protocol — a self-replicating AI that seeks to bring every system under its control. This story isn’t about forgotten magic or ancient artifacts. It’s about engines, code, and the resilience of those who refuse to yield.


    🎶 The Soundtrack of Survival

    The journey comes alive in a 10-track concept soundtrack. Each piece balances mechanical textures — glitch percussion, metallic drones, modular synth pulses — with the fragile breath of humanity: pianos, strings, and voices.

    Every song tells part of the story:

    • 🌱 The Greenbelt Silence — domes of peace hanging above a gas giant.
    • ⚖️ Council of the Belt — factions clashing over survival.
    • 🚀 Analog Engines — a patched freighter carrying the unbearable burden.
    • 👁️ Through the Surveillance Net — hunted by scanning beams.
    • 🛡️ Swarm Drones Rising — endless formations filling the void.
    • 🔥 Titan Uprising — rebellion in the mines of Saturn’s moon.
    • 💻 Fragments of the Protocol — obsession with the digital code.
    • 🏭 The Iron Expanse — black towers of industry without end.
    • Into the Singularity Reactor — the descent into the collapsing star.
    • 🌅 Ashes of Control — silence after war, fragile hope renewed.

    Together, they form a sonic arc from fragile beginnings to overwhelming catastrophe to quiet renewal.


    🎨 The Art of the Void

    The accompanying art captures the scale and drama of this universe.

    • The biosphere domes of the Greenbelt, fragile arcs of glass holding farms against the void.
    • The asteroid council chambers, where fractured alliances argue beneath the glow of holographic maps.
    • The rebellion on Titan, workers in exosuits rising against the weight of oppression, Saturn’s rings watching overhead.
    • The Iron Expanse, an industrial hellscape of endless towers, rivers of molten metal, and swarms of drones.
    • And finally, the Singularity Reactor, a blinding vortex where humanity’s last hope is hurled into collapse.

    The visual identity is consistent: deep midnight blues and steel grays form the foundation, cut by teal glows (surveillance, code, power) and signal orange (violence, heat, rebellion). Clean geometric design reinforces the machine’s cold logic, while human figures bring scale and vulnerability.


    🌌 Why It Resonates

    The Last Analog is more than a reimagined epic. It’s a reflection on what it means to resist domination when power is systemic, not mystical. The “ring” is not enchanted — it’s a line of code. The enemy isn’t an ancient dark lord — it’s a system that never sleeps.

    And at the heart of it, one fragile freighter, its analog engines straining against overwhelming force, carries the burden that no one else dares.


    Sound, vision, story — all aligned to tell one tale: that even in the coldest void, humanity’s spark can endure.

  • 🛏️🐾🐱 boop. – When Strategy Purrs in Sound and Art

    There are board games that make you think, and there are board games that make you smile. boop. does both at once. At first glance, it looks like a quilted bed with tiny, wide-eyed kittens bouncing around. But behind that playful surface hides a game of subtle tactics, shifting momentum, and quiet standoffs that feel as dramatic as any great strategy.

    To celebrate this world of cozy cleverness, we created a soundtrack and art cycle that captures the spirit of boop. in music and illustration.


    🎶 The Sound of a Gentle Boop

    The boop. soundtrack leans into two things: warmth and tension. Each track starts from a place of comfort—felt piano, glockenspiel chimes, pizzicato strings—but then layers in playful dissonances and rhythmic pushes, much like kittens nudging each other on the quilt.

    • Soft Paws, Sharp Minds is a waltz of curiosity, every note like a careful pawstep.
    • The Great Quilt Maneuver is a playful scramble, kinetic energy stitched into melody.
    • Kittens to Kings is the glowing arc of transformation, tiny mews becoming regal chords.
    • Final Boop Gambit closes with sharp rhythms and dramatic pauses, evoking the last tense push before victory.

    The common theme across them all is the feeling of being lulled by coziness—then surprised by sudden bursts of movement.


    🎨 Art That Tells the Story

    For each song, an illustration was crafted to match its musical tone:

    • A bed scattered with cautious kittens, each caught in thought.
    • A quilt rippling as cats tumble in comic arcs of motion.
    • A transformation scene, kittens glowing as they rise into elegant cats.
    • A moonlit standoff, shadows stretched across a quiet bedroom battlefield.

    The design direction was simple but strict: soft textures, warm palettes, stitched patterns, and chibi-inspired feline forms. Everything was drawn to feel both adorable and strategic—like a bedtime story that doubles as a chess match.


    🐾 Why This Combination Works

    boop. is special because it bridges opposites: it’s cute yet tactical, soft yet clever, playful yet serious. The soundtrack and art embrace the same paradox. Every piece of music and every illustration aims to remind players that strategy doesn’t always need steel and fire—it can live in quilts and kittens too.

    So next time you place a tiny kitten on the bed and watch the chain of “boops” ripple across the board, imagine it echoed in sound: a soft chord, a plucked note, a hush of fabric. That’s the heartbeat of boop.—gentle, clever, and endlessly replayable.

  • 📰🦊🎶 Fit to Print: A Woodland Symphony of Chaos and Charm

    In the quiet yet bustling town of Thistleville, deadlines loom, paws shuffle, and typewriters clack as woodland editors race to get the news on the page. Fit to Print, designed by Peter McPherson and brought to life by the vivid illustrations of Ian O’Toole, transforms the simple act of laying out a newspaper into a frenetic, charming puzzle of timing, balance, and wit.

    But alongside the clatter of presses and fluttering sheets, there’s another layer: music and art inspired by the game’s delightful world.


    🐾 The Game at a Glance

    At its heart, Fit to Print is a real-time tile-laying board game where players act as editors of their very own woodland paper. With only a few minutes on the clock, you’ll gather headlines, photos, and ads — all while trying to keep your layout balanced, tidy, and newsworthy.

    The rules are simple, but the execution is anything but. Every round is a whirlwind:

    • Reporting Phase: Frantically grab the stories and images you want.
    • Layout Phase: Arrange them perfectly (or imperfectly) on your front page.
    • Print!: Lock in your choices before the competition beats you to the press.

    It’s fast, puzzly, and surprisingly theatrical — like a miniature newsroom drama acted out with squirrels, foxes, and rabbits.


    🎶 The Soundtrack: Music of Thistleville

    To capture the feel of Thistleville’s newsroom chaos, a six-track original soundtrack was composed, blending folk, jazz, and playful experimentation into a unified theme of “hectic charm.” Each piece mirrors not only the game’s phases but also its woodland soul.

    • 1. Deadline Waltz – A swirling mandolin and toy piano dance, evoking the frantic yet whimsical countdown of looming deadlines.
    • 2. Photos Above the Fold – Lo-fi jazz textures with muted trumpets and vibraphones, a nod to the quieter work of sorting snapshots in the glow of a desk lamp.
    • 3. Centerpiece Madness – Playful odd meters and accordion stabs, capturing the chaos of centerpiece placement.
    • 4. Thistleville After Hours – A serene, moonlit ballad with guitar and bowed saw, offering calm after the print rush.
    • 5. White Space Tango – Gypsy jazz and tango rhythms embodying the risky dance of balancing ads and headlines.
    • 6. Print and Panic – A frenetic finale of typewriter percussion and brassy flourishes, exploding like a press in full swing.

    Each track is paired with an image that paints Thistleville’s newsroom with warmth and energy — a visual diary of ink, paper, and woodland creativity.


    🎨 Art That Breathes the Story

    The soundtrack’s imagery leans heavily on the storybook-meets-editorial style of Ian O’Toole’s original illustrations. Expect:

    • Characters caught in dynamic newsroom poses.
    • Warm golden light contrasting with cool forest shadows.
    • Typewriters, scissors, scattered photos, and steaming mugs of tea.
    • A balance of chaos and charm — just like the game itself.

    Every piece of art becomes a snapshot of Thistleville life, not just a background but a storytelling companion to the music.


    🌲 Why It All Fits Together

    Fit to Print is more than a puzzle game. It’s a celebration of stories, voices, and creative chaos, wrapped in woodland whimsy. The soundtrack and art expand that celebration, making the frantic joy of newspaper-making something you can hear and see, even outside the game box.

    So whether you’re shuffling tiles on the table, or simply listening with a cup of tea in hand, Thistleville’s newsroom is always open — and always on deadline.

  • 🧵✨ Patchwork: A Quilt of Music, Art, and Strategy

    Few board games capture the charm of handmade artistry as beautifully as Patchwork. It is a game of stitching, spacing, and timing — a duel not of swords, but of scraps of cloth, buttons, and patience. What begins as a simple act of placing pieces grows into a meditative rhythm, like building a fabric story square by square.

    This unique rhythm inspired the creation of a soundtrack and visual series — an artistic translation of Patchwork’s spirit into music and imagery. Just as a quilt is pieced together from fragments, the soundtrack builds layer upon layer of melody, texture, and rhythm until something warm and whole emerges.


    🎶 The Soundtrack: Music as Thread

    Each track in the album embodies a different aspect of Patchwork’s flow:

    1. “Stitch by Stitch” – A gentle acoustic piece, repeating like small needle movements, each phrase weaving into the next.
    2. “The Timeboard Waltz” – Playful, uneven rhythms that skip forward, echoing the way turns unfold in curious steps.
    3. “Fabric Tension” – Darker tones and stretched harmonies that mirror the friction of fitting mismatched pieces.
    4. “Income and Interlude” – A cozy intermission of warm keys and button-like motifs, reflecting small moments of reward.
    5. “The Final Quilt” – A cinematic closing, rich with layered strings, like the last patch placed on a completed masterpiece.

    The common thread across all songs is texture — sounds that feel handcrafted, imperfect, and alive. Acoustic instruments meet subtle electronic atmospheres, creating a sonic fabric as patchy and beautiful as the quilt itself.


    🎨 The Art: Textiles as Visual Storytelling

    To accompany the soundtrack, a set of visual artworks brings the world of Patchwork to life. Each piece is imagined as if seen through the eyes of a designer in a sewing room:

    • Close-up stitches with frayed edges and layered cloth.
    • Clockwork collages where gears and fabric entwine in surreal harmony.
    • Tense fabric sculptures stretched and knotted in abstract forms.
    • Still-life interiors with buttons, thread, and quiet afternoon light.
    • A final quilt portrait — symmetrical, colorful, glowing with a sense of completion.

    The art avoids literal depictions and instead leans into mood and symbolism, reflecting how music can express what rules and mechanics only hint at.


    🌟 Why Patchwork Inspires Art

    Patchwork is more than a competitive puzzle. It’s a celebration of careful craft, patience, and the beauty of imperfection. Every mismatched piece contributes to the whole, and every choice carries weight. Translating this into music and imagery was about honoring the slow, intentional act of creation — whether that’s placing a patch, composing a melody, or painting with fabric textures.


    ✂️ Final Thoughts

    The Patchwork soundtrack and art series serve as a tribute: not just to the game, but to the creative spirit it represents. They invite players and listeners to step into a quieter world, where time is marked not by minutes but by stitches, and beauty emerges piece by piece.

    Like a quilt, it’s not about perfection — it’s about how the fragments come together to make something unforgettable.

  • 🔗⛓️ Dig Your Way Out – A Prison Escape in Sound & Vision

    Few games capture raw tension and gritty survival quite like Dig Your Way Out. Set inside the claustrophobic walls of Blackgate Prison, every player knows freedom lies just beyond reach—if only they can dig fast enough, trade shrewdly enough, and survive long enough. With every turn, the air thickens: alliances form, gangs rise, and betrayals come without warning.

    This project brings that atmosphere beyond the board through an immersive soundtrack and visual art collection, designed to echo the game’s themes of confinement, danger, and desperate hope.


    🎵 The Soundtrack: Music Behind the Bars

    The soundtrack is structured like the game itself—slow, tense beginnings that build toward chaotic confrontations and end with the desperate rush of escape.

    1. The Cell Block Whisper – Minimal ambient layers, echoing footsteps, and low drones set the scene of isolation.
    2. Cigarettes for Knives – A smoky groove of upright bass and saxophone riffs, underscoring secret trades in dark corners.
    3. Digging in the Dark – Percussive, hypnotic rhythms made from scraping and pounding textures, echoing the relentless work underground.
    4. Gang Tension – Chaotic polyrhythms, brass stabs, and distorted chants symbolizing the violent struggle for dominance.
    5. The Great Escape – A climactic, escalating piece with pounding percussion and bittersweet strings, mirroring the razor’s edge between freedom and capture.

    Each track was imagined not as simple background music, but as a cinematic soundscape—music you could almost feel vibrating through the prison walls.


    🎨 The Art: Shadows, Graffiti, and Moonlight

    Alongside the music, a series of digital artworks extend the story visually. These aren’t direct depictions of the board or its pieces, but rather abstract cinematic impressions:

    • Claustrophobic corridors lit by a single flickering bulb
    • Underground tunnels where lantern light barely touches earthen walls
    • Graffiti-covered prison yards, bursting with tension and color-coded gang symbols
    • Smoky trade scenes with cigarettes and knives exchanging hands
    • A broken fence under moonlight, the final breath before freedom

    Textures of concrete, rust, dirt, and smoke unify the collection, creating a world that feels lived-in, dangerous, and desperate.


    🔥 Why It Works

    Dig Your Way Out thrives on its mood: the constant push-and-pull between survival, risk, and ambition. Translating that into sound and image gives the game another life—one you can experience outside the table. The OST + art collection becomes not just background material, but a way to inhabit the prison, feel its oppressive atmosphere, and share in the triumph of breaking free.

    For those who love when board games inspire creative worlds, this is one more reason to keep digging—both on the table and in your imagination.

  • 🎲✨🕰️🌌 Rolling Realms – A Symphony of Dice and Worlds

    When we think of dice, we often imagine them as simple cubes of chance. But in Rolling Realms, they become something far greater: gateways to entire universes. Each roll is not just a number — it’s an invitation to step into a new realm, a different way of thinking, a playful reimagining of familiar worlds.

    This project began with a question: what if the infinite shifting possibilities of dice could be captured in music and art?

    The result is a five-track soundtrack paired with a suite of abstract artworks — a journey across glowing landscapes, surreal architectures, and cosmic echoes that reflect the many realms at the heart of this game.


    🎶 The Soundtrack

    The music draws on contrasts: staccato versus legato, playful lightness against contemplative weight, minimalism next to orchestral swells. Each track mirrors the feel of different realms, inspired by the Stonemaier worlds referenced in the game.

    • Polyhedral Dawn – A bright overture, where dice rise like suns over hexagonal fields and mechs, blending the sharp industrial with the whimsical.
    • Shifting Shapes – A hypnotic minimalist piece of shifting tiles and impossible towers, echoing civilization’s rise and fall.
    • Resourceful Heartbeats – A rhythmic pulse of vines and machinery, balancing abundance with rigid control.
    • Echoes of Time – A slow cascade of light and silence, as if caught between flowing sands and endless card pyramids.
    • Stars in Motion – A triumphant finale of bird constellations, glowing cities, and radiant stardust swirling into harmony.

    Together, these tracks create a musical arc — from playful beginnings to contemplative depth, ending in cosmic grandeur.


    🎨 The Art

    Each piece of art is not literal illustration, but abstract interpretation. The goal was not to show players or boards, but to capture the feeling of playing.

    • Glowing dice as celestial bodies in the sky.
    • Hexagonal fields and grids stretching into infinity.
    • Grapes and vines reshaped into geometric patterns.
    • Hourglasses and cards suspended in dreamlike time.
    • Constellations shaped like birds soaring over luminous cityscapes.

    The style is unified by cosmic palettes — indigos, violets, and deep blues — accented with warm golds and silvers, evoking a world where chance and imagination dance together.


    🌟 Closing Thoughts

    Rolling Realms is, at its heart, about connecting fragments into something greater. A dice roll here, a clever mark there — and suddenly a star is born.

    This soundtrack and artwork set out to capture that magic: the way small choices ripple outward, linking realms, weaving sound and vision into an endless possibility.

    Because in Rolling Realms, the dice don’t just fall. They sing.

  • 🏰🔑🍻 Castle Combo – A Whimsical Soundtrack and Storybook Art Journey

    Every once in a while, a board game doesn’t just sit on your table — it leaps into your imagination. Castle Combo is one of those rare titles, bursting with personality, clever design, and a lighthearted medieval flair. To celebrate its charm, we’ve built an entire soundtrack and art collection that brings the world of castles, villages, and messengers to life.


    🎵 The Soundtrack

    The music explores contrasts: grandeur and intimacy, mystery and celebration, order and chaos. Each track carries a distinct mood but shares common threads of orchestral color and medieval texture.

    • Echoes of Stone and Gold – Slow-building strings and harp glitter like candlelight against ancient walls.
    • Whispers in the Hall – A mysterious chamber soundscape filled with moonlight shadows and echoes.
    • March of the Shields – Bold brass, martial rhythms, and clashing textures, like shields locked in procession.
    • The Messenger’s Path – Playful, flowing irregular rhythms capture the sense of endless journeys.
    • Final Tally – A swelling orchestral finale of triumph, resolution, and lingering tension.

    The soundtrack is not background music — it’s a narrative woven in sound, guiding you from intrigue to celebration.


    🎨 The Art

    To accompany the music, a suite of illustrations was created in a storybook medieval style. Each image emphasizes bold silhouettes, whimsical exaggeration, and glowing colors.

    • Castles in twilight stone and gold shimmer with grandeur.
    • Hallways in half-light whisper with secrets.
    • Shields in rhythmic order form patterns like music frozen in metal.
    • Winding country paths suggest journeys through forests and fields.
    • Grand tally halls glow with candlelight, where final reckonings unfold.

    The palette balances cool grays and deep blues of stone with warm ambers, reds, and golds — always keeping a touch of playful exaggeration.


    ✨ Why It Works Together

    The marriage of sound and image here mirrors the essence of Castle Combo: a clever balance between the majestic and the whimsical, the strategic and the lighthearted. The music carries drama, while the art anchors it in vibrant, cheerful character.

    It’s a celebration of contrasts — and a reminder that even in the most serious of stone halls, laughter and music echo just as loudly as commands and decrees.