I’m not sure why you think you have no way of getting someone else’s voice on your game. There are plenty of people here on this forum and on other forums who would be willing to collaborate with you! It’s obviously best to pay actors for their time, but plenty of people just want to do things for fun - just like how you are making your game for fun.
Aside from being creatively bankrupt, using an AI voice will deprive you of this opportunity to reach out to your community, build connections and grow as an artist. I implore you to reach out to people to help build your game instead of isolating yourself with AI!
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In my opinion, bad. Theres so so many voice actors to hire on LinkedIn and you will get better results in my opinion, I think some of them edit the audio as well for you.
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Well, the game I’m working on has many mechanics and I can’t seem to find a way of explaining them to the player on the spot
Sorry for waiting so much to reply but I want to take a moment to thank anyone for your thoughtful and kind responses!
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Apart from the fact that I doubt that the AI bubble will pop anytime soon (companies spent too much on this to give it up in any way, and have you seen the internet? People though it would be some niche science thing no one used and look what I’m using to respond to you now) I agree with most of what you said.
Yeah, this is tough. Tutorials and intro levels are all things you need to consider in game design and with complex mechanics it can be hard to get the balance right. I mean no one wants to read ten pages of instructions before playing. But the player at the same time does not need to learn everything all at once either.
However, a talking narrator voice does not solve everything either. What if I have my sound turned off, or if I am deaf? What if I missed what was said and need to look it up again, or have the instructions replayed to me.
Complex mechanic games usually include something like a manual (captains log, diary, notebook whatever) or context sensitive help icons.
This aspect of games is normally overlooked until it is almost too late and a clunky mechanism is installed. This can ruin a game, either the player has no idea what to do or there are so many ‘hints’ and explanations the player is bored before the game even gets going.
Good luck with it, but teaching a player how to play can be a very difficult aspect of game design.
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Oh my god. You got it. you got what I need. The alternative to the voiced cutscene (which, just to say would have had subtitles) would have been having pages around the walls of the room (it’s a sit n survive type game) but I felt it would have been to complex and would have had a clunky feeling.
But you found the thing I had not thought about, A JOURNAL.
That’s perfect, and makes total sense on the game’s story too.
It’s fantastic.
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The best tutorial is teaching the player bit by bit through gameplay. My first exposure to it was Final Fantasy VII. I’d had never seen a game have an in-game tutorial like that before. I hold every game to that standard now when playing a new game.
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Another option is integrating the story/characters/world into the gameplay by designing them to represent it. Making understanding things semi-intuitive.
This really isn’t perfect, as you’ll need to have that design philosophy from the ground up. The best example I can remember is the original Plants vs Zombies.
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Here’s an example of a game with a good tutorial. I’d love to see it a little more integrated, but they do a really good job throughout in showing you everything. Alabaster Dawn Demo was mentioned in the most recent Godot Today. Their game was one of the top five rated for the Godot demo reels this year. So I decided to check it out today. I recommend checking out how they did their Demo. Definitely had a Final Fantasy feel to it.
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I played the demo for a bit, and yes that kind of integrated tutorial is great. Introduce one thing, let the player have a go. I do think it fell a bit into the trap of too much backstory to start with.
The game was pretty good too as a player, not really my cup of tea, but from a game dev standpoint was superbly done. Very impressive. I still think Bobs Crystals is spectacularly beautiful though, but it’s not fair to compare I suppose.
But yes, that was a good example of an in-play tutorial. Thanks for sharing that.
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Yeah but my game isn’t the type of game that really has a way to hold your hand through the start
I think I’ll go through with the journal idea.
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