Archives for October 2018

I want to thank everyone who sent in an audition for Ashley, from last week’s open casting call. And judging from the number of entries, by “everyone” I mean “a double digit percentage of the total population of the world” because WOW did we get a lot of auditions! We’re combing through them now — it’s going to take some time before we can find the absolutely best Ashley we can in all this amazing talent. But hey, that’s the kind of problem you want to have, right? It’s a great problem. Thank you for giving us this problem. We love you.

In other news, Arcade Spirits is headed to Dreamhack Atlanta! We love Dreamhack — I remember its roots in the 90s as a demoscene gathering, and seeing it blossom into not only an esports venue but also a thriving indie game showcase is really spectacular. Oddly appropriate, considering we made a game that’s all about chasing your dreams…

In the weeks ahead we’re going to have announcements for you about our voice cast, so you can get to know the faces behind the voices you’ll be hearing. I’ll also have some development notes as we head into the final stretch of dev work to get the game fully assembled and — this is the big part — tested extensively. We don’t want some obscure combination of choices you make along the way to ram you headfirst into a showstopping bug, do we? It’s going to take hard work, but we’re ready.

For folks in the $25 club from our old Patreon (now defunct) we’ll have a November build for you in November. For everyone else… we’ll be working to get you the full game as soon as we can. Good things are ahead — keep an eye on this space. And thank you for your support!

EDIT: Casting call for Ashley’s voice is now closed! I’m leaving the rules up in case anybody needs to reference them, but we are no longer taking auditions.

Are you a voice talent who thinks they have what it takes to help Ashley express her love of cosplay, arcade games, and taco tuesdays? Let’s find out.

THE RULES ARE AS FOLLOWS! Any audition not following these rules exactly will be ignored and left behind, dwindling towards the horizon while sad piano music plays.

• THIS IS A NON-UNION GIG
• You must have a home studio, a quiet space to record, and the ability to capture and send your audio. Don’t worry about cleaning it up. We’ll take care of that.
• Files should be recorded in 48k / 16 bit and delivered as .mp3s. You can create one file for the whole audition, no need to split it up.
• If doing multiple takes (MAX 2), record the script fully then the script fully again after.
• SLATE YOUR NAME (Just say your name at the beginning of your audition in your normal tone of voice)
• Please label your file like this: Ashley_YourFirstnameLastname.mp3
• Some of the dialogue will be fully spoken, some will be quick emotional reactions (similar to games such as Octopath Traveler, Dream Daddy, and Fire Emblem) that go along with the text on the screen.
• The gig will pay $200 an hour with a 2 hour minimum. This means that if you land this and then rock the session and it only takes you an hour, we will still be paying for 2 hours of your time. We may cast you for a background role as well.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask. Break a leg! Looking forward to hearing it!

As for all the other characters of Arcade Spirits, the ones we’ve already cast… we’ll have news for you of who’s who and what’s what in the weeks ahead. Keep an eye on Twitter and get ready for some fun!

First up, I want to say Woohoo! and Thank you! to everybody who responded so positively to our announcement of voice acting. I also know a lot of you want to audition but we aren’t doing open casting calls at this time. We may open up one or more roles in the future, and if we do, you’ll hear it here first. We promise. Until then, thanks for your patience.

Now, then! I had a long blog post written up about emotional sincerity, about how our game was meant to wear its heart on its sleeve and reject “lol cringe” attitudes… but it seems I already wrote that post like a year ago, so I had to scrap it. You can read it here if you like, though.

So instead of a pathos appeal, let’s talk ethos. Let’s talk about my past experience in game development, and how it lead to Arcade Spirits. This is Stefan speaking; Aenne has her own tale to tell and I’ll see about getting her on the blog to chat about it later.

Most folks know me from two different paths I took — writing (cough) anime fanfic and then original novels, and writing Neverwinter Nights modules. But truthfully Arcade Spirits first started out as an absurd little project from 1999 called “Culture Shock,” which was my attempt to write a visual novel engine in JAVASCRIPT to be playable in a browser. …look, it was 1999, JavaScript was almost respectable at the time, okay?

It was a different time. A far weebier time.

Eventually I canned the project as I just didn’t have access to the art resources I needed to actually do it, and JavaScript was clunky at best. Although there was this new thing I’d learned about at Otakon, attending a panel about… what was it called… Ren-py or something? Which seemed viable…

…but before I could dip too deep in those waters, Neverwinter Nights was released. And that changed everything. With a strong toolkit-based approach and an excellent dialogue editor, I was able to create storytelling adventures using a popular platform. I was in on it from day one, releasing Penultima, followed by Penultima ReRolled and the more horror-based elegia eternum series. Finally, I very nearly created an official Bioware campaign named the HeX coda, but corporate miscommunication resulted in the project being dropped from their roster and instead released for free.

(Interestingly, Fist of Discomfort — the game-within-a-game of Arcade Spirits — almost was a Neverwinter Nights module. I’d experimented with making a simplified brawler game out of the D&D based fightin’ engine, complete with those flashy GO! arrows you’d see in Final Fight.)

All my NWN games were very character-driven, as you can see here.

But D&D wasn’t really ideal for storytelling, because no matter how hard I tried I could never quite get the combat balance right. I could make stories featuring memorable characters, including some of the “dating” mechanics seen in Arcade Spirits, but it wasn’t quite enough to really explore narrative potential. Exploring relationships — both romance and friendship — through game systems has always fascinated me. To make that dream a reality, I needed a different tool.

For about ten years I opted to go back to writing novels. I didn’t need artists or musicians or coders to write a novel, just my own brain and a keyboard. It felt like a style I could actually work in without hitting the limitations I’d hit trying to be an entire game studio by myself. Meanwhile, the indie scene for games kept growing and growing, and visual novels started becoming more and more prominent…

Then in 2016, Aenne Schumann suggested working on a project together. She had friends who could help, resources we could tap. I had money to bankroll the venture and an idea that had been forming since 1999. Both of us combined had a diverse array of perspectives about arcades and arcade culture, which could be used to write a stronger story than either of us could have created alone. And we had the tool I’d learned about so long ago, RenPy. The time was finally right to make this work.

No more limitations. No more compromises. If I was only ever going to get one shot at making a professional video game I wanted to go all out — hire amazing artists, collaborate with them, work with a publisher, get this in front of as many people as possible. If it tanked, I’d soak the loss and at least say “I did it, I crossed that off my bucket list.”

But if it succeeds. If this grand fiasco actually succeeds…

Well. We’ll see, won’t we?

By now, you’ve probably seen PQube’s press release — we’re adding voice acting to Arcade Spirits! It’s our number one requested feature by far, something people kept coming up to us at conventions asking about. And now that we’ve got it in the works, I feel confident talking about this new feature with you all!

Since this is the developer blog, let’s pull up a chair and straddle it from behind while turning our ball cap to a jaunty angle so we can rap, kids.

How will acting in the game work, given all the customization options?

We’re using a couple stellar games as our model for this — Octopath Traveler, Danganronpa, Dream Daddy, Fire Emblem. Instead of voicing every single line (which let’s be honest, would cost us a fortune) we’re voicing key emotional moments in every “level” or chapter of the game. Outside those moments, you’ll hear brief emotional reactions (“Yes!” “Woohoo!” “Hrmmm…” “I don’t know.”) to ensure you’re still getting some of that juicy voice flavor in every bite.

How many characters will have voices?

Fifteen of ’em. The core cast, of course, as well as any secondary character that keeps coming back in the story. And a few fun surprises.

Who has been cast so far? Can I be in the game? Please?

Alas, can’t tell you. The casting process is ongoing. We may also have an open casting future in the weeks ahead, so keep an eye out for details — no need to contact us ahead of time, we’ll be sure to let you know when it starts. Gotta be vague here because this is a work in progress and I don’t want to promise anything just yet.

I don’t like voices in my visual novels!

That’s fine! If you’re a streamer who wants to do the voice-over on your own, there’ll be a volume slider for voices, just like everything else in the game. You can turn it down or turn it off at any time. And if you leave it on it should automatically “duck” the volume of our amazing music a bit, so you can clearly hear the voices. In addition, you can leave the emotional quips and reactions in, while turning off the fully-acted lines if that’s what you prefer.

Will the demo be updated with voices?

We might update it with the short emotional reaction lines, but the demo’s dialogue script doesn’t have any fully voiced scene content since it’s using a time compressed / specialized chunk of the main game.

When is Arcade Spirits releasing?!

We’ve got a target in mind, but again, we don’t like to promise anything until we’re totally sure. It’s not fair to you if we make mistakes. We’ll have an announcement for this in future, though, we promise! You won’t miss it.

Oh, hey, while I’m here, what’s going on with the Patreon?

October is the last month of our Patreon. Thanks to everyone who’s been supporting us along the way! Anyone who contributes $25 or more over the lifetime of the project (including October) will get a few final beta versions, and a final release copy of the game. If you want to get in on that as a new player, you can! Just join with a “monthly” donation of $25, then cancel it a day later. We charge up front, so it’ll count! Or you can wait for the full release, that’s cool too. It’s up to you.

Regardless… thanks for being a part of Arcade Spirits. All of you. If you’re reading these words, you’re down the rabbit hole with us, and we welcome you. Let your friends know about Arcade Spirits, get the word out. The more successful we are, the more likely we can keep this ball rolling well into the future!