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Ten Questions with Voice Actor David Dixon: Part 2 of 2

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Here is Part 2/2 of our interview with voice actor David Dixon (see Part 1 here)!

6. You recently started more voice acting work with series such as A Couple of Cuckoos and Dragon Goes House Hunting (both available on Crunchyroll). What are the differences for you in voice work for already completed animation versus recording lines for a game as it is being created?

Ah yeah *laugh.* Dubbing anime is a whole lot of fun, but it’s a whole new ball game. Dubbing is also called ADR, Automated Dialogue Replacement. In most of my career I’ve done prelay recording. That’s where you’re basically doing the recording and then the character is animated or even at times created from the ground up after the recording session.

Image from A Couple of Cuckoos anime

With ADR it’s flipped and different. You’re having to match lip flaps of the character from an existing performer in another language. What complicates things further is that you can go in with a read of line and it can be great, it can be awesome, the director is laughing, everyone’s having a good time, but it doesn’t match the lip flaps because it’s too long or it’s too short. When you run into that, you have to change it. Either your changing up your performance, the timing, where you’re choosing to breathe, or you’re having to take out some words, putting in some alts.

I would say you’re kind of in a box. It’s not necessarily bad, it’s different. It can really train your live performance skills and make your acting choices a lot more solid. Am I going with voicing this line this way? Am I sure? Yeah I’m sure! Great, all right, let’s go, let’s hit the ground running! It’s an interesting challenge. I think everyone who does voice acting should at least try ADR once. It’s pretty cool. It just really makes you appreciate things a lot more because it’s a completely different experience and it’s a good challenge. I think it just strengthens you up.

7. Is there a character you’ve voiced that you feel is most like yourself?

Yeah, there’s a few of that take bits of me. I try and put a bit of myself into every performance, but even then on the flip side there’s just some characters that I’m like, “Oh hey this is a bit of me, cool!” In particular there’s a game called Jenny LeClue. I play a boisterous friendly character named Dean Strausberry. He’s a jolly man. He’s got a few focused interests. He’s thoughtful about what comes next in life. I’ve had some sobering moments where I’m wondering what’s coming next in my life, my career. In the Dean’s case, he was wondering about post-retirement life. In my case, ages ago, I was wondering what’s coming after school. I’m done with this forevermore, what’s next?

Screenshot from Jenny LeClue

Recently, I have been wanting to push further in acting. I’ve been thinking about wanting to eventually try mocap, do on camera acting, things like that. His whole reflective arc of his character I relate to that because I’ve gone through that a couple times. As you get older you think about things of a lot more weights. Not necessarily in a bad way, but sometimes you’re just like, “Look, I’ve done something something for over a decade, I’ve been in school for all this time, I want to try something different. I’ve been in this job for X many years; I want to change careers.” It’s nice to have a character that kind of echoes that.

There’s another character in a game called The Journey Down. It’s a three-part series by Skygoblin Games in that I’m playing a character named Kito and he really closely matches my real personality. He’s very upbeat, laughing a lot and just trying to be positive and friendly, and sometimes he can crackwise a bit when things are kind of weird like, “What are you doing, come on man.” *Laugh* That’s another character that I feel is really close to who I really am.

8. What game are you currently enjoying?

Oh, ah… In terms of games I have been so busy these days unfortunately I haven’t played as much as I’d like to. So as a result I have a huge backlog of Steam games, but I have been able to carve out some time for Street Fighter 6. It’s a load of fun.

9. What recent roles are you excited about?

I definitely can’t wait for people to hear my newest take on Arken (Serafina’s Saga: Awakened) and see where the story goes. It’s really solid.

I recently joined up on a web original show called Murder Drones and that has been incredibly fun. It’s been a lot of rewarding experiences in the recording booth. It’s funny, it’s surprisingly emotional, there is some real fun surprises in store. My character, Khan, has a very interesting arc. I really can’t wait for the people at home to see that.

I have a few things that I can’t talk about right now. They are coming down the pipeline, but I also did get on a show called Bakugan, so take a look for that. You can find this show currently on Netflix and Disney XD. I play a character named Bruiser. He’s a big lug and he’s a lot of fun. Really happy with that role and I really hope you guys have fun with it.

Bruiser from Bakugan cartoon

10. What do you love about Street Fighter?

What do I love about Street Fighter? I’m glad you asked. Way back in the 90s me and my sister picked up the game in Blockbuster and we were amazed. The subtitle for the the original version of Street Fighter 2 is The World Warrior and that international aspect is what wowed us. At the time we didn’t know a lot about the rest of the world so when we first got to Dhalsim it was pretty cool. It was eye-opening. We got to see a brown man as a playable character in a location we had never experienced. From then on the different stages, character designs, music and aesthetic, all of those things tied to various cultures that kept us invested. It was just really cool to see. I knew nothing about India at the time so it was cool to see. Dhalsim’s stage, the music, getting to know that and fast forward decades later and my friends have frequently gotten together and we’ve watched Bollywood movies. There’s some amazing stuff there. It’s really cool to see things outside of the Hollywood perspective, highly recommend it.

It was just so refreshing to just see one game have all these different locations. As a kid I never knew anything about Thailand. I never knew that was a place and so it’s really cool to see. I know this is a video game, I know it’s not the most realistic depiction of certain things, but opening up the door to me to say, hey this is Thailand, this is one of their proud martial arts, Muay Thai. I’m like, oh that’s really cool.

It’s been decades and I just keep coming back to the Street Fighter world and it just keeps giving me different things to just eat up. It’s really awesome to just see how they just interpret characters and ideas from across the globe. They haven’t lost their step. They still are doing an amazing job. Early I mentioned Street Fighter 6. It’s really cool to see what they’ve been doing with some of the characters there.

I also got to go on about this, I am a lore nerd. I love lore in books, comic books, TV shows, and it’s in Street Fighter as well. In the early days of the internet, like 97, 98 for me, I found various people who found the supplementary material that was exclusive to Japan and people translated it. It opened up a whole bunch of doors on character motivations, relationships, etc. Since then more stuff has been made available to a global audience but it is really cool just how jumping in you learn more about what makes up this world.

Fighting games sometimes get the rep that they have no story, compared to in this case visual novels, RPGs. There’s so much story that you can get from just playing, but fighting games that’s not always an option. The issue is that a lot of people say there’s no story because in-game there’s a limited amount of time to be focused on the amount of characters. In Street Fighter’s case a lot of the lore was outside of the books. It was packaged in books, with interviews with the devs and the artists, and other materials outside of the game. Sometimes even due to budgetary constraints extra dialogue and interactions were left out of the games entirely. English-speaking regions would only be getting a small percentage of what was in the game originally in Japan.

So yeah it’s cool to find out stuff. It’s like, okay, they’re fighting, but why? Once you find out why, what if they do outside oh hey who’s friends with who, who’s related to so and so? It’s like, oh hey, Guile and Ken, two characters that in the old days didn’t really interact much, they are brother-in-laws because Ken’s wife and Guile’s wife they are sisters. So little interesting things you can find out when you look around with Street Fighter, but I’ll shut up about it now.

Bonus Question. What should the world know about alpacas?

Ooh, alpacas! Okay: alpacas are brilliant animals that are smaller than llamas, but several times more magnificent.

Thanks for your time and thanks for listening to me blab on about stuff. *Laugh* I hope you all enjoyed. Take care!

Ten Questions with Voice Actor David Dixon: Part 1 of 2

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David Dixon has voiced Woodsy Studio characters for 10 years, going all the way back to the first voice acted Woodsy Studio’s project, the Serafina’s Saga animation (Arken Jeridar). Now we take a moment to talk to David about his overall experiences in voice acting and his own personal passions. This is part 1 of 2 in the interview with David (see Part 2 here). You can listen to the vocal recording of his response to each question, and/or read the transcribed text. Enjoy!

1. Your history of voicing Arken goes back all the way to the original Serafina’s Saga animation and you are reprising the role in the upcoming Woodsy Studios game, Serafina’s Saga: Awakened. Has your approach to the role changed over time?

Hello there, I am David Dixon and I voice Arken (Serafina’s Saga: Awakened, Serafina’s Crown).

Yeah, for sure! After seeing more of his development from the end of the original games to the new installment I see new angles of his past so I’m definitely trying to push the sorrow and bitterness more, but also have a bit more fun with the sarcasm. I see he uses that as a deflection or even a wall when he’s uncomfortable. I also think the passage of time and changes in my life are helping me wade deeper in the truly emotional moments with Serafina.

Arken from Serafina’s Saga: Awakened

I think that if I had to the narrow it down I’d say I’m kind of giving my performance HD Plus remaster, but yeah I’m definitely trying to use more of what I’ve learned as an actor since then to just really delve deep and really make Arken just come to life more. It’s one of these things as an actor you’re always looking back at your old performances and in the moment you could be like “Yeah oh that’s great I love this.” But then sometimes when you go back and you’ve learned so much since you look back and like “I would have done that differently, ah crap oh no I would have done that differently!” So kind of a bit of that, yeah. I just really want to push forward with what I’ve done in the past and just really flesh out Arken.

2. You have voiced villains in two Woodsy Studio games: Picard in Serafina’s Crown and Thomas “Tip” Wagner in Crimson Spires. What is your process for connecting with villains, and how much did it vary between these two?

I definitely like to think of what makes them tick in their everyday lives. With Tip I see him as a man driven by fear and paranoia. Now saying he’s driven by fear I don’t mean for him to be sympathetic at all, I’m more focusing on the ignorance that comes with fear, you know. He’s a bad dude in a very sadly relevant to today’s atmosphere villain. He’s a bully who wants to feel important, like he has the answers, so I latch on to that want. With all the goings on in that particular setting he goes from being a nothing and to now just looking for an opportunity to say, “Yeah yeah hey I feel seen I’m important.” But as I said earlier you look at the fact that he is a bully he is a jerk and so I’m layering that on to some of those natural wants of wanting to be heard, wanting to be seen. But also, I’m the bad guy, I’m a jerk, so I’m having that be corrupted into wanting to lord it over people be like, “Ah you don’t know anything, I know something, why should we trust you, you’re an outsider, I’ve been here all this time, and I know what’s what, so let’s put the microscope on you!” and I take it from there.

Picard in Serafina’s Crown

With Picard, I had fun with his hedonism and treated him like a bit of a brat, if I’m being honest. We’ve all had days when we feel we’re owed a bit of indulgence, a bit of extra pepperoni on our slice, a bit of Grace when we woke up before our alarm and it’s raining out and the forecast said it would be sunny. I took all of that and cranked it to 11, to the point where he’s basically saying “Let’s all indulge, let’s all get into a fun party!” And I have him get into a bit of a scary hissy fit where people just can’t drop what they’re doing and indulge. They can’t just say “Okay you know it’s time for a party I have work I have to deal with a sick relative.” It’s all of that where people have different motivations, different plans, different amounts of freedom in time, and he doesn’t see that, so he takes all the realistic feel of “Okay hey I want to have some fun,” “hey let’s all have a good time” and he turns that into just being angry, and just insulted. “Wait, you don’t have time to stop what you’re doing to have a good time with me?” And I crank it all the way up to a godly level so yeah I think it’s all about finding that little bit of an anchor.

In high school, my theater teacher–Mr Slate–talked about how the key to playing any type of character is finding some of those anchors so you know what drives all of us. So he would always mention, and it’s always stuck with me, you don’t have to be a murderer to be angry enough to murder somebody. If you’re playing a villain you don’t have to go out and do something horrible. You can just think of what made you that angry, and then add on layers and layers and then, you know, you’re cooking.

3. You voiced Heremon ir-Caldy in Woodsy Studio’s Echoes of the Fey series. Unlike most roles you’ve had in Woodsy Studios games Heremon becomes a romantic interest for the main character over the course of the series. Arken also became a romantic interest for Odell in Serafina’s Crown. Does this change your approach to voicing a character?

Heremon and Sofya in Echoes of the Fey: The Last Sacrament

Oh yeah, *laugh*, a bit. I’m not used to romantic relationships in real life so I really focus a lot more and I really put a lot into wanting to get it right. I’m a lot more in my head when I’m prepping versus when I’m just playing like a salesman or something like that. I’m thinking a lot more of am I connecting well enough to the love interest? Am I being convincing? Is the audience buying what I’m putting out? Do they like what I’m going to be doing this performance? I’m having a lot more scrutiny on myself to make sure that yeah this is entertaining and this is authentic and this is doing justice to what the author, in this case Jenny (Gibbons), would be writing. It’s a different type of challenge but it’s a good challenge.

4. What are your favorite types of roles to play?

Villains are fun since I get to push the contrast between myself and–depending on the type of villain–I get to be hammy. It could be a lot of fun to just MWAH-HA-HA all throughout the production. I also really like playing mentor types and heroes. I really want to get a chance to play more idealistic heroes like a Superman type. I think those are incredibly fun, but challenging. You really have to sell the optimism and heroism without it feeling phony. We’ve all seen hero characters pop up in a cartoon show and not really like a superhero show but like something like a spoof, like a kind of like Angry Beavers or in Ren and Stimpy you had Powdered Toast Man. A lot of times you know it’s hokey, it’s fun, but it’s not sincere and I’ve got to go in a little bit of rant so you’ll have to excuse me.

I often times see people saying Superman is boring, but I don’t agree at all. I find the concept of one of the most powerful beings choosing not just to save the world, but taking a second to sit down next to you and ask if you’re okay and if you’ve had breakfast. I find that fascinating. The guy can lift mountains, but he stops to listen to people and he truly fully loves his neighbors. It’s not just PR. You know it’s all of that because his heart is just that big. Some of my favorite moments of Superman like in the media, and comics, animated movies… some of the most interesting moments are when he’s just not doing impossible odds but just sitting there and listening to somebody and like really really just caring about them and being like, “Okay I want to help, I want to make sure that you’re okay.”

I mean sometimes it’s like more emotional stuff and then sometimes it can even be lighter stuff. There’s times where he kind of gets into like a dad-like mode and he was just kind of floating there one time and a whole bunch of these guys were robbing a store and they just all just stood, looked at their guns, put them down, took off their masks and just turned themselves in.

On the more heartfelt but still just as impactful vein, there was an anniversary issue where all kinds of different people were saying how much they loved Superman. But the one that stuck out to me was there was a guy talking about how he was a career criminal in Metropolis and Gotham and other places, but he just kept running into Superman and Superman was like, “You can do better than this. I believe in you.” Eventually, it took him a while, but he got his life together, rehabilitated himself and just lived on the straight and narrow path, and I thought that’s a cool thing.

I mean you have all kinds of things like awesome super battles and superpowers but it’s something a bit special and different to see someone who’s like, “Yeah I get it, hey maybe you’re not in the best place there’s a reason why you did this, you signed up. Not everyone is as privileged as me. I’m a super-powered alien and I can do this but I believe you can be better and I want you to be better.” And that’s kind of the core of Superman for me, where he just absolutely loves everybody, he sees the best in everyone and he wants everyone to get that second chance.

Superman: Secret Origin #6
Penciler Gary Frank
 Inker Jon Sibal

To me that is an amazing character and I would absolutely love to get a chance to really juggle that where it’s like, okay the weight of the world’s on your shoulders but you’re still balancing being a guy who’s fighting for truth and justice: on the the lower levels as a journalist, on the higher levels as a guy who can move planets and mountains. All of those different things coming together to just make a really compelling narrative where it’s not about, okay can he punch this guy out? Can he stop this Armada of bad guys? It’s like yeah, okay, is he going to save the day on a personal level? Is he gonna be there, is he gonna help you through a terrible day? Is he gonna be a friend? I love that idea and yeah, more of that. I’d love to try more of that. It’s fun and compelling.

5. What aspects make a role extra challenging or difficult?

That depends. Sometimes it can be the subject matter. How dark is the villain going to get with their head space? What am I going to have to… What lines am I gonna have to cross? What is going to be informing my performance? What’s going to be driving the anger, the hate, the bitterness? Then there’s other things, where: is the performance itself gonna be challenging? Am I going to be slipping between English and a fictional language? Am I going to be doing a role where I’m playing dual roles?

There was a project where the game took place in the past and you saw me as a younger character, but there were chunks of the game that flashed decades forward and I was an old man. And so it was interesting to be balancing those two performances. But there are other times where some things can just be oh it’s kind of like it’s a marathon rather than just kind of like a jog. It’s like okay, there’s
gonna be a lot I’m having to do, or they’re just even things that are just surprisingly complex. Is this character going to sing? Is this character presented as upbeat and happy, but they’re hiding a secret, they’re hiding sorrow, they’re hiding guilt or shame, and you have to have the audience start to kind of clue in. So that could be another challenge where you’re having to let the audience know there’s something about this character, but you can’t make it too obvious or you can’t make it too subtle that no one picks it up.

So, yeah! *Laugh.* Every role is a challenge, even if it’s a something you consistently come back to like a series, you can have an episode of that just throws a curve ball. It’s a lot of fun. That’s one of the reasons I love acting. There’s just so many things you can get involved with from project to project, from episode to episode, from chapter to chapter.

________

Continue reading/listening in Part 2!

DEV UPDATE: Character Portraits and More!

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This week, as with many weeks, saw progress on many aspects of Serafina’s Saga: Awakened. There are a lot of moving pieces in bringing a game to you. All aspects influence each other and thus it is never simply a matter of, for instance, completing all the writing and then moving on to the music. Creative inspiration comes from all directions.

I am not actually behind any of these creative decisions myself. You may have seen my name pop up as the author of last week’s blog post. I’m lucky to be privy to some of the behind the scenes work at Woodsy Studio and I’m just excited to be here relaying the latest on Serafina’s Saga: Awakened’s development to you. Seeing all the thought and heart come together amazes me. It’s much more than simply putting a game out there. When I play Woodsy Studio’s games I feel enveloped in the stories. I feel the need for these stories to be out there for everyone and I hope you experience them too. While I await Serafina Saga: Awakened‘s release with you, I highly encourage you to check out (or revisit!) Woodsy Studio’s most recent release, Crimson Spires, on Steam and itch.io, not to mention PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.

Back to the topic at hand, I’d like to tell you more about what specifically has happened in the development of Serafina’s Saga: Awakened this week. Writing-wise, more pages have been scripted for Nikolaos Perin’s path. I have not read these yet, but knowing Nikolaos I’m guessing there is a flair for the dramatic. There is probably also some mischievous things in play considering he’s a follower of Lokke…

The “Perin” in Nikolaos Perin indicates he could be a significant member of House Perin, despite his current role as a Royal Scout in King Kallias’ army. The Duma House Leader of Perin will play a role in the story and I’m excited to bring you her portrait as the first of two new pieces of art this week:

Work also continues on Jezu Grandil’s path. As mentioned last week, scripting is complete. Turning the script into game scenes involves a process Jenny calls blocking, and some of Jezu’s scenes were blocked in this week. I’ll talk more about blocking in a future post, but suffice to say it probably isn’t what our favorite faithful general thinks of as “blocking.” It’s a combination of coding and decision-making that results in something akin to “blocking” for a stage performance.

Also as mentioned last week, scripts have gone out for additional scene dialogue. The voice talent is hard at work recording and returning their lines. Some of this additional dialogue is back already and new voice acting for Kallias has been edited into the game. I haven’t heard these lines myself, but knowing Kallias I can only imagine they are pure gold.

Music can be just as important as voice acting in generating the right feel for a story at any given point. Part of that can come from the key used with a significant difference to the feel of a piece of music just from adapting it from a major key to a minor key. This week saw the creation of a minor version of the Krondolee theme for dynamic music changes via FMOD.

Now I’m excited to share another new piece of art with you. This is the character art for the Duma House Leader of Pajari!

Finally, as we look to SLICE coming up on October 14th, progress has been made on the shiny art prints that we hope to have available that day. I’m very excited about these and hope to share more with you soon. Oh, and if you haven’t you can still check out the Serafina’s Saga: Awakened demo on Steam and itch.io!

Dev Update: Jezu Path and SLICE Announcement

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Greetings everyone! Development continues for Serafina’s Saga: Awakened. If you are interested in romancing the General of the Royal Guard you will be eager to know that scripting of Jezu Grandil’s path was recently completed. This means it is time for more voice acting. Scripts for additional scene dialogue have been sent to the voice talent for Jezu, Kallias Jeridar, Xavier Wolven, Belatrix Grandil, and Arken.  While awaiting the dialogue to come in, scripting has begun on the path of a character you’ve met in the demo, the playful–and perhaps deceiving–Nikolaos Perin.

In the Jezu romance path, you must help Jezu face the life choice he has made to serve King Kallias as a faithful General, never questioning orders. Should an oath be unconditional? What does it mean to be honorable? Help Jezu confront these difficult questions when you partner with him, and all while civil war erupts in Castle Krondolee.

Meanwhile, as mentioned in last week’s blog post, the Serafina’s Saga: Awakened Demo is available not only on Steam, but also itch.io. Itch focuses on independent digital creators and independent video games. In other words, developers such as Woodsy Studio! itch.io gives more control to game developers over how their content is sold, and more revenue from those sales generally goes back to the developers. Most Woodsy Studio games are available on itch.io.

Woodsy Studio occasionally steps outside the digital realm and next month we will be exhibiting at SLICE! Formerly the St. Louis Small Press Expo, SLICE stimulates the independent literary, small press, and indie publishing communities. We are excited to be showcasing Woodsy Studio’s latest visual novel, Serafina’s Saga: Awakened. You will have the chance to meet the creator, see choice sections of the demo, and take home some shiny art for your walls. Please join us for SLICE 2023 on October 14 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at The Sheldon, 3648 Washington Ave, St. Louis, MO 63108. While you are there you can also check out some of the other best independent literary talents from St. Louis and around the country. We look forward to seeing you soon!

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Time to Start Over

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It’s probably cliche at this point to say: we live in difficult times. Even so, it is true. For the past seven months (all of this year so far), I have struggled with creative inspiration. There are so many possible explanations for why I feel blocked. It’s all too easy to make a list of the prime suspects:

  • Existential depression from global pandemic
  • Year-long isolation from normal social structures
  • Loss of ambition due to reaching certain career goals (actually a good thing… ?)
  • Large emotional upheaval from experiencing huge romantic relationship changes in the last year
  • Loss of creative partnership
  • Post-vaccination restlessness to get away from my computer and related work

… I could probably keep going. But you get the point.

As this seven-month-long creative stagnation has dragged on, I have often crafted a mental list like the one above and tried to pick a single culprit. Once I do, I try to forge a plan to overcome that specific struggle, whether within my ongoing work or outside of it. But none of those plans have worked. Some of them are beyond my control. Others have no simple solution. In any case, fixing one would not fix the others.

One of the most confusing aspects of my blockage was that I normally obtain therapeutic healing through my creative process. How could I evolve from these life trials without my art? Had I changed so much that I no longer needed that creative outlet?

It was only through a long period of time, extensive talks with my former creative partner (Malcolm), and discussion with colleagues that I started to hone in on a singular problem I could fix.

  • The story I was writing no longer resonated with me.

Amidst life and world upheaval, this last problem hid more secretly, tripping all my attempts to wrestle the other demons. It was easier to blame my stagnation on the bigger issues in my life rather than the relationship with my creation itself. I DO process my feelings through story and creative expression. But the story I was trying to tell no longer expressed my feelings, even though I conceived it less than a year ago.

To give you a little more background, the story was called Incognis. It was a sci-fi romantic drama about a woman who found rare love and happiness within a polyamorous quad, only to throw it away for the sake of selfish ambition. The inspiration for this idea came from tumultuous emotions at a very specific time in my life.

Incognis Screenshot
  • I was nesting romantically with a quad during the pandemic
  • I wrestled with polar extremes of happiness and misery
  • I blamed myself for the misery–but would later realize it arose from toxic emotions from one of my partners
  • I was at the peak of self-focused ambition, having just lost my creative partner while trying to finish the studio’s biggest release yet

All of these intense emotions led to the conception of Incognis, and with good reason. During that specific period, the story of Incognis was a fitting expression of my emotional turmoil. But at the beginning of this year–around the same time I actually started working on Incognis–those personal emotions shifted. Life experiences and loved ones helped me overcome those struggles, rather than my art.

In retrospect, it becomes easy to see such patterns. But for seven months, I operated under the belief that I still needed to make Incognis. I blamed my creative blockage on that first list, rather than the nature of my creation itself. When you have been your own boss of your own studio for eight years, you learn to push yourself past periods of self-doubt and temporary blockage. But in this case, I pushed myself too far, and everything else suffered as a result.

At long last, I have decided to scrap my previous plans for Incognis. I will take some extra time to recharge and let some new ideas simmer. Most likely, I will still use a few scraps from Incognis in the form of assets and environment designs. But the story and characters will get a complete overhaul, leading to something new and truer to my current state of self.

As always, I hope you will enjoy the result, though it might take longer to create. What use is art if it doesn’t come from the truth within ourselves?

Quarantine and Crimson Spires

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As we all know, 2020 has been rife with crises and challenges, not the least of which is COVID-19. You probably don’t need me to go into much more detail. A horrible illness has swept across the world spreading anxiety, death, and isolation. Circa March, most of us stopped going out or seeing anyone who didn’t live under our roof. The lucky among us are still healthy, but probably spending most of their time at home while socially distancing from most of their friends and family. But in the midst of all this, I must point out one personal boon that has come from my experience:

This is an amazing time to be working on Crimson Spires.

Crimson Spires is about the isolation of a small town, the collapse of human reason, and the vampiric nature of capitalism upon the lower rungs of the working class. While all of these problems are being highlighted in the real world, Malcolm and I have been exploring these themes within the narrative of Crimson Spires.

Game screenshot Erika resigns

For these reasons and more, we can’t wait to share this story with the rest of the world. We hope it will be a source of catharsis, reflection, and entertainment in the midst of these dark times.

We are currently aiming for a release date of October 27, 2020, the week of Halloween! Thank you for bearing with us as we continue to work on the game; we know we have pushed the release date so many times! We will push it again if we must in order to ensure that this game is the best it can be. But we can’t wait to share this game with you all, and we will do our best to make that happen soon!

Let’s Talk About Bandersnatch

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Hey folks! This is Malcolm, and I felt practically obligated to write up a review/analysis of Bandersnatch for obvious reasons. This is cross-posted from my blog over at redbirdmenace.com, but we thought our fans might be interested as well!

Netflix has released their first (relatively) adult-oriented interactive film, Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. As someone who writes narrative-focused games with branching narratives, I’d be remiss to completely ignore Bandersnatch and as someone who wants to promote himself (however reluctantly) I’d be stupid not to weigh in on a moment of cultural zeitgeist.

If you don’t know what Bandersnatch is and care about spoilers, I’d recommend that you stop reading this post. I’m gonna spoil the shit out of Bandersnatch. If you care, go watch/play it before you read any further.

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Announcing Our Next Game — Crimson Spires

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The small town of Bataille, Missouri has been through a lot. First the lead mine closed. The owners of the mine moved their money elsewhere. Everything fell into sharp decline.

And then the towers rose.

Bataille had always been a bit isolated, but now… Now they are truly trapped. No way in. No way out. No idea what is happening on the other side. Planes don’t fly over Bataille any more. The radio is nothing but fuzz; the television is nothing but static. The Bataille family–the former owners of the mine and the namesakes of the town-say the towers are there to protect the people. They don’t say from what. And what on the other side could possibly be worse than the Bataille family themselves? 

Very little. Because the Bataille family are vampires.

We at Woodsy Studio are very excited to announce our next project, Crimson Spires, which we hope to release for PC in 2019. Crimson Spires is a mix between an otome-style visual novel and an adventure horror game, developed in a style intended to evoke the eerie simplicity of early 3D games. That’s a lot to try and reconcile, so it’s probably better to introduce the game through its story.

Six months after the rise of the Contingency Towers, the town of Bataille is broken. Dozens have died trying to escape and it is clear there is no way out. The town’s sheriff, Erika Wright, may be the most broken of them all. A former FBI agent from the city, she was trapped in Bataille after chasing a serial killer across its border moments before the rise of the towers. Now she spends her days patrolling the border, looking for any new corpses of townspeople who tried to cross.

When two people go missing–legitimately missing–from a town with no escape, Erika Wright will have to team up with one of four potential love interests to investigate, find the truth, and confront (or join) the vampire family that controls the town.  As for what happens along the way, well, one of the themes we’re looking to explore is the inevitability of mystery. Things have changed in Bataille. Maybe things have changed even more outside of Bataille. You won’t be able to solve every mystery of the strange new world, but maybe you can find a place in it.

Crimson Spires will play differently from our earlier visual novels. First off, after our good experience with miraclr: Divine Dating Sim, we’re structuring our story in a style similar to many Otome games. Rather than a single storyline with small-to-medium branches based on several choices, Crimson Spires will feature a separate storyline for each potential romance/investigation partners. Each story branch will cover (approximately) the final third of the game and will be entirely distinct from all the others.

Exploration will be different, too. Instead of a side-scrolling approximation of the environment, Crimson Spires will feature a fully-explorable 3d world. Small side quests and details about the entrapped town will be sprinkled around Bataille. There will also be a handful of interiors to explore, as well.

If you’re interested in checking out a (very early) demo of Crimson Spires, we plan on showing it off publicly for the first time at PixelPop here in St. Louis THIS WEEKEND. We’ll also have The Last Sacrament there as well, so if you’re in the area you should definitely check it out. If you’re not, make sure to follow us on twitter for updates about Crimson Spires.

PRESS KIT

 

 

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Making a Miracle with “miraclr”

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Jenny Gibbons here, gearing up to tell you an honest and not-so-glamorous tale about the world of indie game development.

Going full-time indie

About nine months ago, my full-time job told me that I had to choose between keeping my job or “ceasing activity” with Woodsy Studio, my own company. It was an impossible decision. I had already poured years of my heart and soul into my work at Woodsy Studio, and furthermore, my husband–Malcolm Pierce–had recently joined me as a creative partner. All our dreams lay with Woodsy Studio. I could not give that up. But the studio was not yet making enough money to sustain itself, either.

Malcolm and I were lucky in that we had a decent amount of savings stored up from previous years of caution and frugality. We tried to look at the misfortune of my lay-off as an opportunity to focus all our energy into Woodsy Studio and make it our bread and butter. Although Woodsy Studio was not yet self-sustainable, at least we had three commercially published games occasionally bringing in money.

Illustration from Serafina's Crown

Illustration from Serafina’s Crown

Floundering in a sea of games

Alas, as any other game developer knows, the gaming market is brutal. Try as we might, we were unable to make a big marketing splash with any of our titles, whether old releases or new ones. Even now, I struggle to figure out where we went wrong. By a large percentage, people who play our games enjoy them and offer high praise: both critics and customers. The challenge lies in getting anyone to play our games at all. And of course, I know I’m not alone in this. The sea of released games continues to grow and flood stores every day. Only so many can survive by floating on the surface. We were drowning, but we refused to give up.

By July, we had been pure indie game devs for seven months. We were living the dream–but we were also broke.

Our seven months of focusing on Woodsy Studio confirmed for us that this is what we both wanted to do. We wanted to keep making games together, and we knew we had the potential to succeed. We just needed to create something that could excite people more than anything we’d yet produced.

Drastic times = drastic measures

In a moment of desperation, we put our heads together and tried to think of something we could do to save our studio in the little time our dwindling savings still provided. It all happened in about ten minutes. Malcolm blurted something about romancing angels, I suggested making it unfold in real time on phones, and everything clicked. We knew we had a fun idea that we could produce relatively fast and use to branch out to a new audience: the mobile market.

The two months since that moment have been a non-stop storm of writing, programming, and drawing so that “miraclr” could become a reality. Malcolm and I are both extremely creative people and very prolific writers. But we pushed ourselves harder than we’ve ever pushed ourselves before to make this project happen. We reached the point we normally would have called “burn out”–and we kept going, knowing that it was dangerous, but also convinced it was crucial to our long-term survival.

I programmed a complex story system based on real-time to handle channels, direct messages, and plot branches. Together, Malcolm and I wrote over 76,000 words of story content (but Malcolm wrote most of it). I drew 19 CG illustrations, a dozen character icons, and five visual novel portraits with multiple expressions. Malcolm figured out how to incorporate ads and notifications into both Android and iOS ports. All in two months.

Gabriel from miraclr

Burnt out, but proud

We’re exhausted. We’re burnt out. But we also know that we did everything in our power to create a fun, unique game that might be the key to saving our studio. Whatever happens next, I can say with full confidence that we took our best shot.

We sincerely hope that you enjoy “miraclr,” and that it enables us to keep providing quality interactive stories in the future!

miraclr Main Page

Echoes of the Fey: The Fox’s Trail Out Now on PS4!

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We know a lot of you have been waiting to play Echoes of the Fey on PlayStation 4 so we’re happy to let you know that our first installment, The Fox’s Trail is out NOW for $7.99.

Did Folren ir-Adech die during the war between Humans and Leshin? Or is there a darker truth behind his disappearance? Investigate the mystery now on PS4. But don’t think we’ve forgotten about our PC users! We recently pushed a patch on Steam that improves controller support to match the PS4 version and fixed a couple minor issues regarding options menu functions and Steam Achievements.

Finally, we’re still hard at work on our next title, Echoes of the Fey: The Last Sacrament, with the majority of the script complete and a good portion already in game and playable. Keep an eye on us at @WoodsyStudio on Twitter for updates, screenshots, and other Echoes of the Fey news!