Thanks - that’s really good feedback. I’ll try to equalize the volume better for the next release.
Ember’s hard. I’m typically pretty submissive… So it was a challenge to be assertive and I think that came out there. I’ll revoice it for the next release.
She felt very low energy if that makes sense I think she can be tough and assertive but low energy and flat is how she came across in my opinion.
After reading all the talk about the minigame being both way too easy and way too hard, I wasn’t sure what sort of game I was going into. Turns out it’s somehow both of them. The first two levels are a breeze, but the moment we get thrown into the third level it’s outright impossible with the base hacking level. I never upgraded it since I wasn’t struggling at all with the previous levels, but the third level just ignores half my inputs and makes me lose.
Even after I realised the bits weren’t randomised and I could memorise the order, and realising I could just hold the arrow keys instead of tapping them like a maniac (which I still feel stupid for not trying sooner, that’s game breaking 101 haha), I still couldn’t get past it because the game wouldn’t register pressing right then left immediately after, so the 1s would just go straight down the centre.
The rest of the game (or however much of it I experienced) is really good though. The models are great, the story is intriguing, the side characters have personalities. I’ll restart some other time and see if I can get further, I want to see how this ends.
As for the voice acting, it’s a pretty good job for your first time. Each character is distinctly different in their way of speaking, which is enough to differentiate them without checking the name each time. The volume is pretty low though. Another thing I noticed is some sentences seemed to lose the context they were written in, most of the time being quiet and low energy when their models and expressions suggested otherwise.
As a certified NotAVoiceActor, some stuff I’d suggest is recording the lines as you’re watching the scenes play out so you get a sense for what each character is doing. Also try putting a load more emotion into the recordings. It may (and probably will) sound stupid when you listen to it back, but at the same time most people don’t sound like an asthmatic smoker when they’re eating yet that’s been deemed the sound of anime eating. Voice acting, at least for me, always seems to be over the top when compared to regular speaking, so hearing normal speech paired with digital models is a little jarring. I could just be weird though. Probably weird.
People were replying as I was typing this so I’ve got a timestamp of when I started. It took me half an hour to type this? Fuck.
IMO the voices aren’t flat. They’re however similar to themselves. In other words, all the voiced characters sound sort of like the same female. Why? Because they are!
IMO for your next game you should choose your favorite femaleNPC and voice them, and leave the rest unvoiced, and spend extra time you have for voice work, voicing a larger percentage of one female’s script?
TLDR: I think you did a great job on the voices, but I think you’re comparing your own work, against the work of multiple people, and that’s not fair to you.
The feedback is still great - so thanks so much for taking that time to type it!
The game should be randomized - with every order different - so I’m not sure how you memorized the order. I wonder if - before the minigame you saved - if it saves the state. That’s an interesting side effect that I should address; my intent wasn’t for people to ever have to memorize to win! 
Either way, the game should be, in my opinion, focused around Iris and Lynx with the minigame as a secondary factor. I think if a lot goes into the effort on the minigame, it detracts from the story, so your feedback does make it seem like I should still err on the side of “easier is better” when I’m trying to balance things.
The context suggestion is really good - I wrote the script then came back, tired from work and development days later, to do the voice acting. It’s a great idea to do it in the actual game… That would be an improvement to the workflow that already seemed to work pretty well for this quick test.
Thanks again for taking the time to write all that! 
This is totally true, but wouldn’t it be jarring to go from voice acted to none?
I can’t exactly hire voice actresses for other voices… So I voiced Iris when I felt like the game was in a good state, got good and wined up and voiced Celeste since I sound… Cuter? When I’m tired and a bit drunk, then voiced Ember in the morning when I felt rough.
I think I need to voice Ember after I’m pissed about something from work to bring out that inner bitch, so I think I’ll try that for the next update!
You can roll back during the mini game and it’s the same order each time. I had assumed when saving it would be the same case, though I had not tested it.
I should disable rollback for the minigame in the next update. That’s an unintended feature!
I can understand that but rollback will just be a save before the game starts (if it’s removed). I never felt the need to use it but I also didn’t upgrade the hacking at all or think the mini game was too fast or hard. So maybe it’s a larger issue then I would think for what my personal needs were.
Got it - good point. Still - if I move the point back at least there will be randomization? I don’t know - at that point, I see the value of a story mode where you assume Lynx is a 1337 hacker and can just breeze through it all for the sake of narrative. Do I choose to do that or do a balance?
That’s a hypothetical question - I genuinely think games are rewarding when they’re balanced and reward effort with result. Due to the genre, I think I’m failing as a dev if people feel like they have to save before a minigame, but also think I’m failing if it’s so easy it’s boring, making balance difficult. The games are supposed to be fun and lighthearted, not some crazy intense must-memorize-pattern-to-succeed type thing.
All that said, I am glad you didn’t have to upgrade hacking to succeed. I’m feeling like I’m crazy sometimes because of all the difficulty issues. Honestly, I tuned it back for the release and thought it would be easy - I thought it was. But I’m trying to balance to an audience of varied reaction time and coordination level. If I were a genius, I could correlate skill during the games to dynamically adjust difficulty, but I’m just one anonymoose doing this for fun!
As someone who also didn’t have difficulty issues, would the game being too easy have been a detriment to your experience?
No, but I’m not really playing the genre to be challenged, although I don’t mind it as long as the challenge wouldn’t become cumbersome. It wouldn’t matter the difficulty to me if it was not overly restrictive.
If you want to offer the players a way to be challenged in this format on genre I think it’s better to have difficulties or challenge modes. A “hard mode” could be added to make the deadlines tighter and the games harder if that’s what you want to do but you won’t please everyone with one approach. I think a lot of players what to experience the narrative and are okay with moderate difficulty in the minigames.
If choose to go in a way to try to make sure the games have a certain challenge it would be best to offer an alternative to skip the mini game or “story mode” setting for people not wanting that in my opinion. With all that said it’s alot of work maybe more work than trying to find the right balance for the difficulty of the mini games to please the most people.
“Save scumming” or using a save to a players advantage happens in a lot of games and you can discourage abusing saves or other factors to try to deter players but I honestly don’t think it’s worth trying to make a player, play a certain way personally.
I mean, the main PC isn’t voiced (unless he’s really fucking quiet), so it’s not like there isn’t precedent there. If you just wanted voice Iris, I think it would work just fine as is. But I also think that most of these other voices could work in some capacity or another if you really wanted to put the work in.
To be honest, I didn’t even realize there was voice acting in this game during my first playthrough, since I usually play these with the sound low and read pretty quickly. Looking back, your Iris comes off as perfectly fine and your voice for Genesis is distinct enough for them to both work in the same scene together. Celeste is somewhat similar to Genesis, but since they don’t share any scenes together it also works as is.
Ember is just… off somehow. She’s obviously meant to come off as intimidating at the beginning of the story and your definitely trying to go darker with her voice, but there just isn’t any real… menace to her. I think she comes off as trying too hard to be actually threatening. I wonder if you might want to try a different accent with her, both to distinguish her from the other characters and give her a bit more to grab onto in terms of character. I don’t even think it needs to be a good accent, since I think it would fit Ember’s character to fake an accent to uphold her multiple identities as an upstanding businesswoman for the public, a motherly caretaker for the brothel and a unfeeling crimeboss for the Council.
And the less said about the Bouncer, the better, in my opinion. It sounds like you used a voice modulator to try to artificially deepen your voice, but it makes it sound like a little kid trying to act tough over a phone call. I’m wondering if you might want to try talking normally but with a bit of husk in your voice, like if you tried to go for a Butch Biker Chick rather than Pete Clemenza.
Now, a big problem with one person voicing everyone is that it is much more difficult to react to the other character’s performance (unless you’re some kind of Freak like Billy West who can switch between a bunch of distinct voices on a dime), which I think is a major factor in what makes acting “work”.
The main problem I can think of with the voices is the volume balance, not just in Mic Gain, but also in how the characters are actually speaking. Human beings will always subconsciously try to find an optimal level of how loud to talk depending on their environment and try to match the energy who they’re talking to. Ember always speaks like she’s whispering, so it would make sense for Iris to lower her voice slightly when talking to her. Celeste is bright and bubbly, so it would make sense for other characters to talk slightly more loudly and appear slightly happier when interacting with her. Again, hard to do with just one person.
Apart from that, all I can really recommend is keep practicing different voices. The best VA’s steal judiciously, so try impressions your favorite actors and cartoon characters and see what your voice is doing when you try to imitate them. Don’t be afraid to cross gender lines when you do them either. Remember that it doesn’t have to be a pitch perfect impression. In fact, it’s probably better if it’s not, because then it can just be a “completely original” voice you can use when you want to.
For the first time i think that the voice acting wasn’t so bad and that it was better compared to the silent version
try by adding more difficlties for the minigame?
easy(maybe half speed and bit requirement)
medium(mantain the game as it is right now)
Hard(if someone actually want’s to have to upgrade linx you add ~+30% on the bitrate, or even more if it’s neded)
This is going to be quite long (I think) so I apologize in advance if I don’t understand, I’m using the translator.
What I mean by different is that despite being a work done by one person, nuances are heard in the voice, which makes it really look like different characters made by the same person with little experience, but if you keep trying, you could manage to make a very good job.
Regarding when I mentioned that the voices were flat, you could tell that you were nervous as if you were reading a script but with a little practice you can overcome that. but other than that it’s a very good job
Iris is the main love interest, so in a future game I think just voicing her would be fine? If you only have finite time, I’d rather the main love interest get’s as many voice lines as possible. Personally.
I had another quick go, turns out I can get past the third stage without upgrades, although the margin for error is very small. I did make a few more discoveries and guesses on how the minigame works though. Holding a direction does nothing for directing the bits once they’ve passed the third bottom ring (or at least not once they’re moving at that speed), I’m guessing they have to be pressed a certain number of times to go in a certain direction? If so then holding might only count as a press every few ticks/frames/however its calculated, and holding a direction once the bits are that far down mustn’t give enough presses so the bits go straight down the centre. I’d try to look in the code to find out for sure but my Python knowledge is laughable at best.
Another thing is there seems to be a randomised gap between when each bit spawns. This is probably what screwed me the last time as I had a 0-1-0 combo falling in rapid succession, so the last two just went straight to the centre. This time around I didn’t have any 1s and 0s straight after each other so I was able to get through it just fine.
Conclusion: just upgrade Lynx and save myself the headache. But maybe there could be something in the game requiring Lynx to upgrade? Not a forced upgrade before each stage because that would effectively eliminate any increase in difficulty, but maybe some other task/minimum level every few stages? Or perhaps rework the minigame so it only matters which way the player is holding when the bits reach the junction, and Lynx’s upgrades can remain as they are. Or if I’m completely wrong in my assumptions on how the minigame works (as I’m often known to be)… idk just disregard that last point I guess.
Some minor typos I found:
I’ve gotta be honest the minigame just feels bad and unresponsive, I tried it on mobile and with keyboard and either way sometimes it feels like you just miss bits even if you are spamming. With how tight the money timeline feels it makes it feel like savescumming is necessary and the whole thing is just tedious. On paper it’s a fine minigame mechanically, maybe it’s just renpy things idk
Also, at the beginning it’s not clear that paying the debt before the end of the week actually locks you out of time you could have had.
I found that out the hard way too that if you pay the dept it just ends your week, I found you can kind of get 8 days in income if you wait until the very last chance to pay the dept which scores you enough to buy both upgrades for Lynx and Iris and some food for Iris each week
For the mini-game I found that spamming or clicking don’t work and are not worth it, its better to time one button press at the right time easier and more responsive then spamming. The trick is to wait for the number to enter the intersection and just before it leave it at the bottom, if you push too soon you’ll throw off your groove and miss that input
After know that there is no sizes after size 5 at this time of 0.5b, I was able to bank Lums to get hacking up to level 9 and it made the mini-games easier to grind, the problem is that the speed is now slow enough that the mini-game actually takes longer to clear then if I just re-rolled and save scummed it
