The Final Push - Voice Acting, Programming, and Playtesting!

The last devlog before publishing! I hope haha!

1. Last week we finished up with sprites, which evidently took me much longer than I expected. Now we're moving on to sound, voice work and programming. 
2. Ambience tracks and sound effects were the easiest of course, thankfully there's a smattering of available resources for that.
3. Music took a few hours, and I ended up with about 6-7 songs!
4. Next was voice acting. There are technically 10 voice opportunities in the game. The 3 aberrant, the 3 children, a whisper voice, a news reporter voice, a voice for some end game content, and then the voice of the main characters dad. I was going to voice all the characters, before I realized that with my current access to modern technology that was either free or cheap, I did not have a viable way of actually sounding even remotely like a man. So! I voice 8 characters, haha. The voices of Kelly and Dad were outsourced thank to Casting Call Club. The deadline for getting lines was set for September 25. I needed time to edit and implement and ask for a redo if necessary before the jam deadline.
5. The only issue I had with the voice lines was with one of the characters... the voice I chose to do for them was particularly difficult. There were over 90 lines to complete, and I did each of them twice for variation. I was only able to do them in 20-30 line stretches because of how hard it was on my voice. I'm sure you'll know it when you hear it hahaha! It was 58 minutes of recording, and I definitely think I damaged my voice. At the very minimum, I've made it deeper, which... I'm not totally thrilled about. I'll definitely be taking it easy while I can.
6. After final asset and script implementation, it was time for programming. I try to leave as much time as possible for this so I can have ample time to debug. The last jam I entered I believe I was only 5 weeks into an 8 week time limit when I started programming, so I had lots of time to fix any problems haha.
7. I utilized a similar technique with the letter combo puzzle that I used for the rock puzzle from All of my Tomorrows. It's not pretty, but it works, that's all I care about.
8. The body chop shop was really just about pointing and clicking, and switching the assets if the correct part was clicked. Delightful!
9. Note collection was another point and click section, then just triggering them to be able to be looked at in your limited inventory.
10. Then... it was time to playtest. I'm coming down to the wire and it's crunch time. With only 1 full day left to jam (Thursday), and 4 ten hour day job days to work between now and the deadline, I wasn't where I wanted to be with development. But, time will tell. Might have to pull a late night for Wednesday or Thursday of Sept 28 and Sept 29 to get everything finished!