My First Game Dev Journey: Week 13

This week I’ve been working closely with my good friend Grace Jukes, a talented voice actor who has kindly offered to record dialogue for my game, and who also happens to be a dear friend of mine. 

I had previously sent over the script, and we scheduled a session to do a full read-through together. It’s always a pleasure working with Grace, no one makes me laugh more, and she brings such a great energy to the process. I’ve included a short clip from our read-through session below. 

I’ve never directed or worked with talent before, so this was a completely new experience for me. 

Grace sent over an initial draft of the monologue, and we then arranged another session to refine the pacing and enhance certain sections. Overall, her performance was already really strong, which made the process really enjoyable. 

Over the past few days, she’s sent through additional takes, which I’ve been editing alongside creating some background music to support the narrative and build atmosphere within the scene. 

This has been my first time properly working with dialogue editing, and it’s definitely an underrated skill. I’ve been using online resources to guide me through cleaning up room noise and shaping the voice so it sits more clearly within the mix. 

Something else I started this week was creating the introduction monologue for my game. I began composing a piece of music to accompany it, alongside building a simple text-based video synced to Grace’s voice. I also sourced some free mist backdrops to sit behind the text, helping to bring the scene to life and give it a more atmospheric feel. 

In the meantime, I’ve also been building a dialogue system in Unreal Engine, following a number of tutorials to try and get my head around how everything connects. 

I’ve also started working on the interface and integrating music into the scene. During the dialogue sequence, the character moves between three different locations, so I’ve been experimenting with how the music and atmosphere can shift to reflect each space and support the narrative.