Review Fix Exclusive: Uni Dahl talks ‘The Silent Age’

Review Fix chats with Uni Dahl, creator of The Silent Age who breaks down the new version of the game, currently available on Steam, which features all-new character voice overs and Ultra HD graphics. Already a massive success on mobile platforms, “The Silent Age” appears ready to take the point and click genre to some cool place on Steam and eventually, consoles.

Review Fix: What are the main differences between the mobile and PC versions?

Uni Dahl: For the PC version of The Silent Age we added a couple of new features. My favorite and most noticeable is definitely the voice-over on the characters. Anders, our writer has done an incredible job organizing, casting and directing this and I’m extremely happy with the result. Owen Thomas also does a really good job as Joe, but my favorite must be the bartender, voiced by Adam Harrington.

But we’ve also done some more subtle changes to the game. All the graphics have been redone in UHD resolution, making everything so clear that you can now read things in the various scenes, which was previously lost on mobile due to the resolution limitation. Especially older phones or smaller screens. For example, I was surprised when I finally read Joe’s surname on his “Employee of the Month” award. So there is a lot of new information to explore in the visuals now.

We have also added new animations to the game, such as Joe using a chainsaw. We use a lot of the same animation for Joe’s interactions with the environment, but we felt that using a big chainsaw is quite epic, and so made a separate animation for that action alone. We did this in a couple of places, like using the katana, and Joe falling to the ground and standing back up after traveling to the far future where his time machine explodes.

Review Fix: What has the development process been like on the PC?

Dahl: All through development of the mobile version, we have had the game playable on PC. We are using Unity3D to make The Silent Age, and it was one of the best choices we made, because it allows us to switch target platform so easily. The work on PC could focus on improving a game that already worked. Our biggest challenge was actually the time difference between Los Angeles and Copenhagen. Our voice recording was done by Somatone Interactive, and Anders would sit in on recording sessions, scheduled often with moments notice. Morning in L.A. are well into the evenings for us, so communication was slow moving. But they did a fantastic job and I think the quality is amazing. Funny little anecdote (spoiler alert) is that we originally forgot to record Joe actually coughing. As you know it’s quite an important part of the plot, but because it was not part of an actual conversation, we never wrote down that line, so 5 days before launch we had to rush Owen back into the studio to cough into the mic.

Review Fix: Any particular hurdles?

Dahl: I think the biggest hurdle was recording voices with a studio so far away. That said, I’d probably want to use the same studio just for the quality of the acting.

Review Fix: What games inspired this one?

Dahl: I think Thomas, our designer, would be best suited to answer this one. But the inspiration has come from quite a few places. Thomas played The Secret of Monkey Island on an airplane once, and of course as all of us he got stuck a lot. Stuck on an airplane for several hours without access to a Youtube walk-through certainly has had an influence. This is reflected in the design of The Silent Age and its puzzles. The time-travel mechanic came from urban exploration, which Thomas loves to do. Exploring old abandoned buildings and imagining what they may have looked like in their heyday. And of course, a lot of 70’s Sci-Fi movies, which both Thomas and Anders are huge fans of.

Review Fix: What makes this game special?

Dahl: I think the players would be best answering that. What we hear is that they love the unique atmosphere. Visuals, music, story and puzzles all work very well together to create a memorable experience.

Review Fix: How did winning the 2013 Casual Connect Indie Prize help you guys?

Dahl: Any kind of exposure is a great help for a small studio like ours. Our biggest problem has been that many players don’t know that episode two on mobile has been out for months, and winning awards or being nominated helps get that message out. The press gets a lot of emails daily, so being picked up depends heavily on what other news there is the day of your launch. That’s also why the Steam version of The Silent Age is the full game, not in episodes.

We have been nominated at many award shows next to some incredible games such as Limbo, Hitman, and latest at Nordic Game we were in the same category as Wolfenstein, but the Casual Connect Indie Prize was the first price we actually won. Competing with multi-million dollar budgets can sometimes be a challenge, so the recognition is great for our moral.

Review Fix: How do the voice-overs help the game?

Dahl: The voice-overs bring the characters to life. They get a much deeper personality, because you can get more nuance into the words then when writing them.

Review Fix: What’s next?

Dahl: Our next goal is to get The Silent Age out on consoles. I would love to see it on the big screen.

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 14230 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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