by Evilized Games’ Ben Aprigliano
As a one-man studio with a perpetually limited budget I’m always looking for ways to enhance the overall depth and quality of my games; from visual FX around game events such as weapon strikes (which I will always spend time getting right) to additional music bits over, say, a studio ident at the start, or the right SFX for things like punches or horses’ hooves.
Of course with the intentionally comedic stick-man style that I opted for with Disposable Heroes, the rest of the world that the characters inhabit has to be suitably technicolour, bombastic… and bonkers! Whatever you add in has to have the same pantomime qualities, yet for that approach to work, like with any melodrama it can’t be slap-dash and thrown together – it’s got to be properly thought out and properly assembled. ‘Organised chaos’, if you will.
You’ve got to bear in mind the various ingredients in your cake and how they all go together, and not pour too much of one thing in just cos you like the idea of it.
Top banter
So I decided to add some voice parts, on top of the sounds provided by my soundtrack composer, and on top of the visual effects and narrated introduction.
I had already built in speech bubbles to give my characters additional depth, whether that’s the Red Leader in the trebuchet level taunting the attackers, or the bad guys in the mine cart chase exclaiming their frustration at being forced off the rails, but I wanted to go a step further than that and so opted to include actual voice recordings to feature in the game to help further personify my characters.
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It took me weeks to find the right voices. I wrote my provisional scripts and then went through Fiverr and other sites to look for suitable voiceover artists. I’m sorry to have to say that some people were a bit of a challenge to deal with at times, but everything on there is done at a good price which means that when you have kissed the frogs and found your prince, it’s probably worth it overall.
As far as the implementation of the voices in the game, it’s important to me to keep characters fairly consistent as far as possible – plus I don’t want them gibbering away saying stuff the whole time, that to me would come across as clumsy and overcrowded.
The brothers gonna work it out…
For obvious reasons, a lot of the dialogue would also only really ever make sense in two-player mode, as the Heroes interact with one another, so I built an engine that lets them say things in certain parts of the game, and certain lines in certain levels dependent upon the individual circumstances at that time; all of which are triggered by different things like randomizer counters. This means that at a point when you are standing in a corner for example, and two or more zombies come near you, the character will call out to player 2 for assistance. Or it could just be The Gladiator telling anyone who will listen just how great he thinks he is…
This means I can also include prompts in the game to help players with hints and tips, for example in some instances you will see a door and the Wizard will say “Hey guys, maybe we should go this way?” which instructs the players to move towards the exit. I’ve also attempted to use it to enhance each of the characters – good and bad – in the piece, an example of this is how macho the Gladiator wants to be perceived as, when it actually comes to it you see he’s really quite a coward, and when they encounter the terrifying Fat Baby, the Gladiator will motion to his colleague and say “Hey Orc, maybe you should go first..?!” To experience the full range of dialogue you stand still with your character for 12 seconds and listen to what they say.
All of the Heroes characters have between 20 and 30 lines each, and there are additional voice parts such as an intermittent commentary “ooh, a bag of gold!” and somewhat sarcastic narration from time to time poking fun at a player’s performance and progress or even at the game itself – it’s all part of the irreverent, self-deprecating humour that I have aimed to make a central feature of the game.
All in all, I’m very pleased with the way the voices have turned out, from the content and nature of what the characters say to when, where and how they say it. It’s the first time I have tried this on such a scale – I’ve made narrated introductions and interludes before, but never anything that implements specific voice parts in specific places dependent upon how the action unfolds. It’s been a challenge and great fun at the same time, but certainly I am pleased with the outcome.
Ben
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