Review Fix Exclusive: Inside ‘Speaking Simulator’

Review Fix chats with “Speaking Simulator” developer Jed Dawson, who discusses the inspiration behind this wild and experimental adventure.

About the Game:

If social scenarios such as job interviews, doctor examinations, and romantic conversations fill you with dread, you haven’t seen anything yet. Manipulating the robot’s tongue and lips to simulate human speech is an ordeal of its own — intentionally challenging controls only exacerbate the difficulty, ratcheting up the laughs.

Review Fix: How was this game born?

Jed Dawson: I had the idea when I was teaching a lot of facial animation in university, and I saw how much fun students had playing around with a facial rig. At the same time, I was thinking about how the face and mouth has to look to make words seem believable.

Review Fix: What was development like?

Dawson: Development is really challenging for Speaking Simulator. We spent a lot of time prototyping and figuring out exactly what the most fun type of gameplay would be. We just knew that we had to make words happen with your characters mouth and that it would be a comedy. Otherwise it’s been a long learning curve with a lot of experimentation to figure out how this game would make sense and be fun.

Review Fix: What makes this game special?

Dawson: There’s nothing else really like Speaking Simulator. It’s the only game to let players control a mouth and tongue to make words happen. It throws a lot of interesting linguist and social elements at players and makes them reflect on how their own mouth works and how they act in society. You play a robot infiltrating human society, but things that the robot may think are illogical make perfect sense to humans, and it’s fun to consider these kind of traditions or practises that make us human, and get the robot to subvert them for laughs.

Review Fix: What games influenced this one the most?

Dawson: Comedy Physics games like Surgeon Simulator and Octodad really inspired us because they showed us that there’s an audience for games of structured wackiness.

Review Fix: Any fun stories or wild moments during development?

Dawson: A really common sight in our office is seeing one of us looking closely at our computer screen while our mouths are opening and closing, or poking our tongues in and out. It just kinda happens sometimes and we’ve embraced it now.

Review Fix: How was it different from your previous games?

Dawson: Extremely different in so many ways. All of our previous experience has been in mobile free to play games. Speaking Simulator is a premium PC game, which means that our audience is so different too. Where in the past we were trying to make games for everyone now we’re trying to make games for our close friends.

Review Fix: Do you think preserving older gameplay mechanics in new games is important?

Dawson: Speaking Simulator is very experimental in its theme and content. But we do borrow a lot of traditional mechanics from older games that we think anchor the player’s experience. For example, players have to move the tongue up/down/left/right. We could have gone with really wild, different controls for this but we chose WASD in order to keep some parts of the game familiar. We’re trying to be really experimental and innovative, but to make the experience enjoyable I think you need to keep some older, recognisable mechanics for players to latch onto as they explore the stranger parts.

Review Fix: What’s your favorite memory as a gamer?

Dawson: Playing Heroes of Might and Magic IV with my little brother on our old PC. We were so young and bad at video games that even though it was a single player game, we split up the gameplay. I controlled movement with the arrow keys and he controlled shooting arrows and spells with the S key.

Review Fix: Who will enjoy this game the most?

Dawson: The game is difficult to play, and is designed for hardcore gamers who want to challenge themselves, try something different, and have a laugh!

Review Fix: Bottom Line, why must someone play this game?

Dawson: It’s hilarious, challenging, and fun! It also has a thoughtful element to it that will make you reflect on how your entire mouth works and how we all behave in society. But mostly it’s just really funny.

Review Fix: How do you want this game to be remembered?

Dawson: As a good game that just happened to be hilarious!

Review Fix: What’s next?

Dawson: Get the game out on various consoles, and start looking into DLC for the future.

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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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