Game Ideas 2 - Electric Boogaloo

Oh dear, here we go again.

First off, I’m sorry to disappoint that there’s no game demo or anything of the sort yet. I was planning to work on it, then my life kinda just… ack. I blame the infectious disease that shall not be named here.

Either way, I still did prepare something pretty special regarding my game.

This is an audio drama, based around one of the many ideas I was throwing around. I know I didn’t mention it in the last one, or if I did I forgot and I am way too lazy to read through my essay on the last one, so I thought I’d mention it here. The other idea I had was a sort of… strategy game? Or some sort of mix between the Dark Souls formula and a traditional JRPG (Japanese Roleplaying Game) like Final Fantasy, where you have a team instead of one person.

So, really, you can take it as a prototype for what the dialogue would look like. It’s kinda rough around the edges, but damn am I proud of it.

I enlisted the help of my friends to complete this, and surprisingly, we got everything done pretty quickly. Like, I’m talking two days from when the script was finished quickly. The only problem was on my end, where I had to wait for a microphone cord. Long story, I’m not gonna get into it. Just know that I got the cord (and the lines) finished in time for this.

And now, the long awaited reveal…

Vs. The Tsar - Audio Drama

I had so fun with all of this - credits are in the description, by the way. Go check out my friends!! They’re cool and I appreciate them for helping me with this!!! Back on topic however, I think the most challenging part for me was all the audio editing. God, that takes… so long. Like, hours upon hours of work long. I might've just cut corners by making the picture for the video something I grabbed off my computer in 5 seconds.

But I got it done, and that’s what matters.

How did I do it?

Now, onto the methods to my absolute madness of a project.

So, as I mentioned, I enlisted the help of multiple voice actors for this project. I allowed each to audition with a single line from the page, then I cast each one accordingly and did live directing with them. Now, if that doesn’t really clue you in, in the realm of fan projects, there’s a thing called “live directing”. It’s where the director of the project sits with you and goes over the lines, one by one, telling you how they should be said.

For professional voice over, this is a no-brainer. But in the world of fan projects, you would not believe the amount of times I have been given a project, only to be on my own in terms of script.

My next order of business?

I told them to modify the script however they please, so long as it fits the character. If they didn’t want to, that’s fine, but so long as they had fun, I was happy.

And oh boy howdy did they go the extra mile. Every single one of them had a moment where they laughed, or they just… had fun with it! That’s what made me have fun with this, really.

I gave them some basic context on the characters and the situation, and I told them to let their minds wander with it. The voice actors really came up with some unique touches, especially the actor for the main villain. He had so, so much fun playing The Tsar, and I don’t think I’ve heard him have that much fun with any other project.

However, I only gave them basic context for a reason. That, my dear reader, was to get their imaginations going. The characters were intentionally described in very simplified ways on the audition page, so as to give a general guideline for the character, but not so much that it would inhibit the creativeness of the VAs.

Was my experiment successful?

Yeah, I’d say so! I mean, I got everyone to have fun with it, and I gave them a test in their improv skills. It was also, honestly, a little bit of a bonding moment between us all. Admittedly, I was super nervous showing this to them, but they were all patient with me and we all did the best we could. Which is all I could ever ask for, really.

As I’ve been mentioning both, however, here are the links for the audition page and the original script.

Here's the audition page.

Here's the script.

If you listen to the audio drama in tandem with reading the script, you’ll notice… many, many changes that the VAs made, and for the better, in my honest opinion. Also, a lot of cut content too, mainly regarding the two characters The Archmage and The Swordsman.

To cut a long story short, I was going to voice The Archmage, with the voice of The Prince, Gale, as The Swordsman. Unfortunately, on my end, I had a few audio hiccups which didn't let me complete my role as The Archmage. The Swordsman, on the other hand, had one line that was glitched. So, I decided to scrap both of them, for the sake of getting this in on time too.

Which, that itself is an important thing to note. Many, many, many games have cut content. Some, more than others. But any game really has cut content, even if it's not available on the surface. So, really, you could call this the first instance of lost content in my game prototype.

So, hey, I suppose that means we're really on our way to getting this off the ground if there's already cut content!

... I do hope everyone picked up the sarcasm in that one.

Either way, I do suppose there's one very important question on everyone's mind.

What's the story here?

Oh boy, the story. 

Well, to quickly summarize it, the main story of the audio drama is a very typical one - two kingdoms are at war, and we are looking at it from a sort of "birds eye view".

I don't wanna go too much into it, because I think that keeping the story vague is... the point here. All that needs to be known is that this is a war, and more so a demo of a game feature. That being a conversation feature I had in mind, where the player units can converse with an enemy before combat occurs. After that, they'll begin battle.

Which is also why I included a little sound effect before each one, like pressing a button.

Honestly, that audio drama took up most of my time, so I don't have that much else to say on it. Other than I hope you enjoy it!

Misc. Stuff

So, I don't have much for this category, other than a single sketch I did recently. I still thought it was good though, so I'd like to show it off. 



To give a very brief background of this character, I imagined him being a boss in my game. He's the Nameless God, and I imagined him riding around on a giant wyvern.

Once upon a time, he had a name. It was stripped from him once he abandoned his godhood, leaving him to rule over a citadel of wyverns built into a mountain. You fight him on a broken bridge, right outside, just as a storm begins to roll in...