Keep Harvesting is on the home stretch before its first release. While I am still waiting for my Steamworks registration to go through, “just a little more polish” has turned into a somewhat bigger update: the game now has German and English voice-over.
The new version is already available to the playtesters as a beta. The German voice-over is fully in place. In English, the tutorial is still missing its voice lines. Those are next.
I wanted to use the waiting time to give Keep Harvesting even more personality. The mix of a farm that starts out cosy and the harvesting chaos that follows leaves a lot of room for that. To me, a warm, relaxed voice fits it perfectly. Someone who keeps their calm even when sickles, abilities and harvest effects have long been fighting for attention out on the field.
With voice-over, a surprising amount of the work is in the small things. A sentence can read completely naturally and suddenly sound clumsy once it is spoken. Then it comes down to pronunciation, emphasis, pauses and how long a line actually takes. And all of it has to work in both languages.
What matters most to me is that the voice accompanies the game and gives it character. The lead role should still belong to your farm, including the increasingly questionable amounts of harvesting tools sweeping across it.
My work session yesterday came to around 16 hours in one go. After that, the new beta was out, and for me it was pretty clearly time for bed.
While the game got an upgrade, my desk sadly had to give one up: a few days ago my second monitor simply switched off for no apparent reason. It has stayed black ever since and seems to be broken.
So right now I am working with a single monitor. Anyone who normally uses two or three can probably imagine how well that is going.
Open the editor. Test the game. Find the audio file. Switch windows. Wrong window. Switch again.
My Alt-Tab skills are currently growing faster than any farm in Keep Harvesting. :D
Still, I am happy with the update. On the home stretch, what matters to me is that the individual pieces fit together better and better: the gameplay, the interface, the sound and now the voices too.
If you want to try the new beta: come to our Discord.
If you are trying the new beta: let me know how the voice-over feels to you. Does it fit the mood? Does something sound odd, or does a line come at the wrong moment? That is exactly the kind of feedback that helps with the final polish.
And then, hopefully, it really is just this one small upgrade before the Steam page goes live.
Lukas