Project Sense - 不祥的预感: A Cyberpunk Ghost Story

#12 - Voice Acting, updates, and the 2nd half
over 6 years ago – Fri, Jun 01, 2018 at 02:42:45 PM

I am truly thankful for how far we are going, and how fast the campaign has moved. Over 500 backers, $30,000 in funding, and 800+ twitter followers! It has been an incredible 2 weeks, and to know that another 2 weeks is ahead of us is insane! I really wonder what we could achieve. Thank you, really, thank you all so very much! I still have much to share with you, and we've scheduled many posts that have been pre-empted by how amazed we are, and the need for stretch goal updates. So first of all;

Now that the switch digital release (working on physicals, though we cannot confirm or promise yet) we want to start talking about voice acting and our "Audio Boost" Stretch Goal. 

Obviously, the game's amount of pure dialogue will be huge, something that would take a HUGE amount of money to afford getting VO for. This is why we did it as a stretch goal. We wanted to be sure we had enough float to voice the most important parts. Key dialogue, vocal sound effects (groans, grunts, and growls), and cutscene dialogue will take a lot, and being that the game's script is currently far from complete (sitting at about 30% done right now), we knew that the only possible way of achieving this goal is to play smart. With all that in mind, I decided to start playing a ton of games that are similar to what we are trying to make, and figured out what works best. Throughout all of these I realized a few things;

1. Sometimes there can be way too much voice acting;
2. Everything in English isn't really the best option;
3. Writing good dialogue is really, really hard! 

With those 3 lessons, I made some decisions. First, only key points would be voiced. So instead of having every single piece of text for every single character read, we would instead have only certain NPCs, important narrative dialogue for Mei, and of course major narrative scenes fully voiced. We will also take notes from some other great titles, and have phrases or vocal noises (hmm, ah, OH!) for the flavor dialogue or "thinking" dialogue throughout the game. 

Second, the ghost story Mei is pulled into is based on a true story. In order to respect that influence and the realities of the setting, many characters within the game will not actually speak English. For a certain narrative reason all dialogue text will be presented in the language you choose in the options, but the voice acting and language will be true to what each character would be using in real life. Some will speak English, some Japanese, some Cantonese, some in broken English with a heavy accent. Authenticity to the setting and story is something extremely important to me; that said, I am very excited to announce who we've been planning to work with for a few of our core characters. 

Sayaka is a young Seiyuu from Japan who reached out to me months ago! The first time I heard her demo reel, I knew that she was perfect for Mei. Mei is in fact half Japanese, and for many reasons (like above), I want Mei to have a thick accent to her English. I cannot tell you those reasons yet, but as you discover more about her, this choice will make sense! I am so happy that we found Sayaka and I cannot imagine a better person to be that voice. 

Natalie Roers is a very experienced actress who has worked on dozens of games, most recently Fear Effect Sedna. She's also been in movies like Before I Wake! On top of that, she even writes some pretty great novels! Natalie is an amazing talent with so much to bring to the table, that we are really excited to have her as the voice of Maiko. You may be asking why Mei and Maiko, twin sisters will have two very different approaches to their voices. It comes down to a major story detail that will hopefully blow your minds! No one could help us bring Maiko to life better than Natalie.

This character is arguably the most important in the story. For now, we will call her "the bride", or Juen Sun Luang in cantonese. I am very excited to announce that Victoria Wong, voice of Silk in Avengers Academy, and Charlotte in the game Cyberthreat, will be giving The Bride life. It was very important to me that this character speak in cantonese, and that her few English words sound like a first generation immigrant who has only spoken English for a few years. Again, I don't want to reveal too much, but I could not be happier to have Victoria attached as the voice of The bride. 

All three of these women are incredibly talented, and I am so proud to be able to work with all of them to bring a new level of life to Sense! I'm certainly very excited about our chances of reaching that stretch goal! 

DEMO 3.0?

After taking as much feedback that we could for the 2.0 demo we released last month, we have decided that it doesn't make sense to update the demo at this time. That said, all of your feedback is going to help us improve the quality of the game greatly. There just wasn't enough in the way of major changes to be able to set aside the time for a short-term new demo during this campaign. Demo 3.0 will come, but it will definitely be after the kickstarter campaign ends and we have some new things to test out and try. It's imperative that we have the right amount of time to be able to design and iterate these changes. Backers with access to the forum (coming soon after the campaign) will be able to help that process along, so stay tuned! The more active our community is, the better Sense will be when it is complete!

2nd half of Campaign 

Going forward with the campaign, there's still much to show and talk about. Like I said above, several things were pushed back in favor of talking about how awesome our progress has been or stretch goals being met. Given that we have only 3 Stretch Goals left, and 14 days to achieve them, we will be focusing on telling you more about some aspects of the game we want to build towards. The first of these posts will be all about how Hong Kong's mythology and paranormal culture made Sense into what it is. So please look forward to a very enlightening "what is" type of blog post in a  few days! 

Again, thank you all so much for getting us this far! I am blown away to see that we have reached over 300% of goal. I cannot wait to see what we can do in the 2nd half. Together, we can make Sense into a ground breaking game! 

#9 - Vita/PS4 Stretch Goal Reached! + Demo Feedback
over 6 years ago – Fri, Jun 01, 2018 at 02:12:15 PM

Hey everyone! It's crazy how far we've come since the beginning of our campaign. The night before the relaunch I was definitely mixed with emotions; I was both confident and terrified, but now a bit more than 10 days in we've smashed past our second stretch goal. Things slowed down bit for a few days but we are still moving at an incredible pace, and we certainly couldn't be more thankful for all the support we've seen for the game. So much early and preliminary work for the rest of the game is being worked on behind the scenes, which means a ton of typing, studying, and researching! In order to celebrate our stretch goal, we whipped up a key visual for celebration we think everyone excited about Vita & Playstation will appreciate.

As a separate note, Vita / PS4 Physicals are still in talks. To be clear, this stretch goal was for the digital game to be on Vita & PS4 (which it now will be!), not for physicals for these systems. We are interested in this however, as we've stated, and this is something we are trying to guarantee to our backers because of the overwhelming support for them. We will keep everyone updated with this, and let everyone know if we can figure something out.

On another note, if you've played the demo, please feel free to give us any and all feedback you have - no matter how harsh or trivial. We would like to take that feedback into account and possibly release a Demo 2.2 with any fixes we can before the final 10 days of the campaign. While we can't promise this, we'd love to do so if we get enough feedback. Feel free to send us tweets, comments, messages or anything else with your feedback, and we'll get back to you ASAP. Once again, thank you so much for the support everyone!

Update #11 - Count Dankula Cameo & Switch Goal Achieved
over 6 years ago – Fri, Jun 01, 2018 at 02:11:03 PM

Hi everybody! At the time of writing, we're currently looking at about $29k raised with a nice even 500 backers. It's been so phenomenal seeing this, and with every amount raised the game becomes closer to reality. A day or two ago we hit the Nintendo Switch goal, so now, at the very least, a digital release for Switch is on the horizon. Physicals are a much more complicated matter, and we'll keep you informed of progress on that front. We've been blown away by how quickly the campaign has been moving, and because of this our special celebration art for the Switch goal isn't quite ready yet. However, we'll share it with you the first opportunity we have to do so. We see we're also coming up on the $35k stretch goal for live musician and VA recordings, and are excited to see progress being made towards it at a good pace!

Also, a polite notice to backers: when making pledges and add-on orders involving physical items, such as game copies or posters, please remember to include the $5 US shipping or $8 international shipping within your pledge. Thank you!

Now, for the meat and bones of today's update post. Some of you may have noticed a not-so-secret easter egg within the demo, and we gained the attention of a certain cursed Scotsman, Count Dankula, a little while back. As Sense deals with technological dystopia themes, it made perfect sense for the cursed Scotsman to have a cameo within the game.

 You'll be able to find the Count and Buddha hanging around the streets of Neo Hong Kong. What does he make of this strange, neon-lit filled oriental dystopia he's found himself in? You'll have to find out.

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On another note, our publisher Top Hat Studios has a discord server setup for those who want to join and talk to the developers, or just relax and talk with other backers. This is not the same as the backers only forums, which will be rolled out after the end of the campaign. If you have discord, you can join here; https://discord.gg/yy7javF

Update #5 - Top Hat Studios Introduction
over 6 years ago – Fri, May 25, 2018 at 05:03:20 PM

Hi there everyone!

First off, before I get into anything, looks like we're just on the verge of eclipsing our first stretch goal today! We're very excited about our stretch goals being hit - especially the prospect of PS4, Vita, and Switch; at our current rate, we think we have a high chance of smashing through it!

We're the publisher for Sense, Top Hat Studios. We'll be handling today's update, and giving a little bit of background on ourselves.

 We're a relatively small publisher based in New York, founded around 2016. We have a penchant for niche genres of games - RPGs, Visual Novels, Adventure Games, etc; beyond that, we just very much appreciate experimentation in games, and going beyond the general norms of development. We may be smaller compared to lots of bigger publishers, but what we lack there, we make up for in passion and dedication. We're dedicated to our craft, and we work very hard to assure our games can be successes.

Our current catalog is fairly eclectic - mostly a mix of both Visual Novels and games with light RPG elements. While we do publish games that dip into the territory of mature and adult content, these are not the only games that we publish. We're very excited about Sense, and we're glad to be a part of the development process. We want to bring the game to its greatest potential no matter what; we see an amazing trajectory of the game, and we hope all of our backers agree.

You can check us out on twitter and facebook.

Onward to our stretch goals! Thank you to everyone who has supported the campaign so far; we promise we won't disappoint you!

Update #6 - The coder, Altan
over 6 years ago – Fri, May 25, 2018 at 05:03:14 PM

Hi everyone! First of all, we'd like to thank all the backers who've funded us past the 10K goal, as well as the 15K localization stretch goal. We'd also like to welcome all potential backers to fund us past the PS4/PSVita and Switch stretch goal, and even more if possible (within your capacity, course). In today's post, we'd like to introduce the programmer, Al Tan... we'll hand over to him now!

I'm Al Tan, the programmer for project Sense, and I've been involved in the development since early February 2018. Back when the first demo was released in 2017, I was saddened to see a potential game come to waste when the demo gameplay wasn't satisfactory, and as a consequence, the cancellation of the first Kickstarter (I was a backer at that time). With my full involvement, passion, and investment of my time in developing Sense, I can assure you the best gaming experience from the technical side of things. My role isn't limited to logic programming alone but includes developing visual FX (Shader), interaction/quests, audio playback engine, scripted animation, game optimization, and etc.

The entire adventure game engine/toolkit script is written from scratch and is built in mind to be reliable, customizable, and adaptable. The capability of customizing the engine will fulfill Ben's vision for the game as we develop and extend the game mechanics beyond what the demo has to offer. With your support, we can build quality games with solid gameplay experience as demonstrated by the second demo. Although I don't have much of an internet presence, I hope the games I develop could speak for themselves. Above is a gif of one of the experimental features that didn't make it into the demo. Lastly, I'd like to invite everyone to try out a non-canon/spin-off of project Sense called Sense: Behind the Scenes (30 Mb HTML5/WebGL, not mobile browser compatible).