Episode 1 update: new voices, and the hero now speaks with my voice
By Encrypted Cat / 0xKOT · Originally published on itch.io
The biggest thing in this update is the voices. The first version used simple text-to-speech that sounded flat and robotic. It did the job, but it was never going to scare anyone. I’ve now re-voiced every line of dialogue in both English and Russian, and it’s a completely different game to play.
Vetrov is me
Vetrov is the man you play, sent into the sanatorium to find out why the station went silent. He’s now voiced by a clone of my own voice. I recorded samples, trained a voice on them, and listened to myself narrate a horror game I wrote. It’s a very strange experience, and I recommend it.
It also works in English. I’m a native Russian speaker, so English Vetrov has my accent, and I decided to keep it. He’s a Soviet signalman walking through an abandoned Soviet facility, so it fits better than any polished narrator voice could.
The rest of the cast
- Major Gromov speaks to you over the radio. He’s now older and firmer, and he knows more than he tells you.
- The woman you hear in the building has a soft, silky voice that is much creepier than a scream.
- The 1976 tapes have a new voice for the scientist who recorded them, still on the same worn-out reel.
- The children have new voices over the phone, in whispers, and on the air.
The other characters were generated with ElevenLabs. I kept all the audio treatment from the original version: the radio crackle, the tape hiss and the old telephone line. The new voices sit inside the world rather than on top of it.
Also in this update
- The whole game is darker. Lamps are dimmer, the shadows between them are deeper, and the torch actually matters now.
- The dead lamp at the end of the first corridor now stays dead.
- A certain someone no longer waits for you at the bottom of the stairs before she’s meant to. When you meet her now, it’s on purpose.
- A strange boarded window that had drifted onto the wall above the classroom door is gone.