Voice Acting Feedback

Hi friends! It's BowserPuma.

So, first and foremost, thank you everyone who's downloaded and played Build 1. Launch weekend was a big success 💖.

With that out of the way, I want to talk about the voice acting. Voice acting in this game was experimental. There aren't many furry VN's with voice acting, and the ones that do have it often have larger budgets than I could provide at this time. So, there weren't many templates or precedent for me to follow. I had to forge my own path with this.

Overall, the reaction to the voice acting is mixed. VERY mixed. From my data I've collected in my survey and from the anecdotal accounts I've listened to, I can't quite pin down if implementing voice acting the way I did was successful or not. In some strange way, I was almost hoping the reception would be overwhelmingly negative. That way, I could call it a failed experiment, scrap it, and move on. But that doesn't seem to be the case.

What this mixed reaction tells me, is that I'm on the right track and folks do want to hear voice acting, but I need to find ways to better implement this feature. So all in all, here are the directions I see this project going in:

• Voice acting is entirely scrapped
  • Doesn't seem like the route we want to go in.
• Voice acting continues the way it is
  • Again, doesn't seem like the route we want to go.
• Voice acting continues, but less full lines are spoken. However, generic one or two word lines are recorded and are used like sound effects.
  • For example, phrases like: "Yeah!" , "Wow!" , "Uhh..." , "Hi,  there!" are peppered throughout the novel.
  • Also, generic vocalizations like scoffing, grr-ing, or laughing can be used as well.
  • Video games will often use features like this. One example that comes to mind is Legend of Zelda, where characters just make vague vocalizations when you talk to them.
• Voice acting continues, but more of the script is voice acted.
  • I would probably double the amount I had for Build 1, which was 10-15 lines per character (main character has about 25).
  • Voice acting the whole script would be too ambitious, I think. This would take a TREMENDOUS amount of work consider how many words I want to add to this VN. Overall, I think it'd be quite impractical and would an insane amount of development hours.
    • The ~100 voice lines in Build 1 took me an incredibly long amount of time to master and mix. And even then, I don't think I did a stellar job since I'm still learning how to do audio editing. I would likely need to hire someone to do that work for me.

That being said, are there any other options I'm not considering? Do you have any thoughts about the voice acting? Do you think any of the suggestions above would work?

I'd love to hear some feedback and suggestions.

Thanks!