Bringing words to life: Devlog #3

It's been a long time since my last confession, but we have been very busy.

The recording session was amazing.

We had the whole cast hanging out in B&B Studios for an afternoon in Leith, either squirreled away in glass booths so we could see our cast members (but not them hear through the mics), or hanging out in the recording booth watching the waves get captured into bits.

Our cast members really knocked the session out of the park: I found Tasha Mott and Asha Learmounth at stand up nights, and their confidence and comic timing makes their scenes a hoot.

Richard Werner, after frequently meeting him far too early in the morning while sleep-deprived and "pre-caffenated", I knew would be perfect for the over-working miner who's taken a bump-on-the-head. And Vincent Guy is the true thespian who elevates our performances while showing us up as a true consummate professional.

After the script was recorded, and we'd mucked about on the dizzying array of instruments secreted around the studio, it was a big job to go home and edit this 330 lines of dialogue, with at least 3 takes for every line.

But I think the theory so far has held so true - the dialogue just jumps into existence with this kind of dynamic performance. Asha had to really commit to his role as over-the-top, self-obsessed adventurer, and having the other characters in the room while they trade barbs and defenses, really helped to make the discourse fly! I think you can hear the live-ness of the performance in the recording.

But what's been even better this month is being finally able to put it all together as a playable game. For 3 months this whole project has been various parts of a plan, but now the script, puzzles, voice work and art work are all coming together into something you can actually play. And now getting the dialogue back together again with the call / response loop, the performances really draw you in. You WANT to hear each line, even if you've already read and chosen it, and you can't WAIT to hear the response, over and over again. Voice performance in games is another dimension, more important than any geometric 2D to 3D in my book.

Currently, I've only implemented 20% of the dialogue, but the rest will likely come together swift and fast now: we planned to have all the final artwork come in during the next few weeks, and I'm finally getting the hang of Visionnaire Studio (which we are using to turn this around quickly), and the pieces are falling together. We've even been able to release a playable demo today, going out to consideration for a bunch of game expos in the UK (and Germany) planned for this year.

There will finally be an announce post next, with the trailer (squeeeeeeeee!) and title, as our Steam and itch.io pages are now ready. Then we can get into finally showcasing the amazing art process that will make the visual side of the game shine.