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.