In theory, you might think that it should be easy to appreciate the merits of a game before any sound or music has been added to it, but in practice you might be surprised at how difficult this often is. A game which feels utterly fantastic with all its sound and music in place can easily feel very stale when you silence all of the audio.
The soundscape of a game often drastically impacts the emotions of the person playing it. It can make or break the game. It can even distort the ability of the game designer to accurately perceive what is working and what is not in the game. Don’t make the mistake of underappreciating the importance of having strong audio.
The sound and music that you put into a game needs to be tight. It needs to be thematically appropriate, responsive, well-timed, and carefully selected to be balanced and to fit well together. The soundscape needs to feel solid. Each of the sounds corresponding to each item in your scene needs to “read well” and be contextually coherent, cohesive, and consistent.
When objects interact with each other, having your game engine play a corresponding well-timed and well-chosen sound really does tend to make the interactions in the game feel a lot better. Even just having placeholder sounds in your game can really help it feel significantly more alive. It can make the game much more fun to play, even early on in development. It’ll help keep you sane.
Note though that strict realism is not always best. The most important thing is usually actually just making all of the sounds feel satisfying, energetic, and interactive. Your sound system should consistently provide good feedback signals to the player. Every hit or special effect sound should be like a reward in and of itself.
The music should be designed to not be annoying (e.g. to loop well, etc) and to fill the inevitable emotive gaps in the gameplay. The music should help keep the thematic energy of the game strong even in times of low activity. Good audio is essential. A game without sound and music is like food without spice. Yeah, you can still get value out of it, but it will probably feel like a bit of a chore.
This game dev tip is an excerpt taken from a small book I wrote. You can find more information about the book here on my website.