Major addendum!
Morph (the developer) left a comment, that you can read below this review, clarifying that the voice performances were all done by them and then converted into other voices using AI, which would explain why some characters sounded more natural than others and why it took me so long to clock some sort of AI use. For more context you can read the comment below where Morph explains the process and decision making. As for the lack of disclosure, it seems to have been unintentional, I was leaning more to that conclusion before (idk if it came off that way in the original review or not), so it is nice to see that they have updated the store page.
Out of respect for the decision to disclose the use of AI, I am going to give this a positive review. If I am being honest, had that disclosure been there from the start, I would likely never have played this game. Which, in some ways would be a shame, but I am also a firm believer in pushing AI away from any creative fields, even if creators seems to be using it small ways. As such, I would like to say to you Morph, that you are very clearly talented and can write and direct visuals in a compelling way and, outside of the AI voices, the audio is designed well. I would like to encourage that talent as much as possible and see you grow as an artist, however, I feel as though using AI is a disservice to you and the people who would never see your work because of it, and I know it's such a small bit of usage, but there are people, like myself, who would see the disclaimer and immediately say no and move on. I know you can't really tell by my steam profile, but I am also an artist, and when you have a vision for something it can be downright infuriating when you just can't get it right on your own, but using AI is just a convenient shortcut. It kills the part of you that experiments and grows with your craft, that helps you understand how to express what you mean in your art. Going forward I highly, HIGHLY, recommend that you abandon any AI and just struggle for a while with your voice acting. I know that might sound harsh, but it's the struggle that makes you better, whether that means taking different approaches like text boxes or hiring voice actors or continuing voicing characters yourself. It can certainly seem daunting to change or to force yourself learn, but it'll be all the more worth it when you're done. If you can do that, I will sing your praises to the ends of the earth, but more importantly, you have to do it for you and for your art.
As for my original review, most of it doesn't really matter at this point, but I do still feel like it's important for some context, and as such I am going to leave it here, but with very large warnings that it longer reflects this game or my feelings towards it, and I will try to make these more obvious to skim readers.
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**SERIOUSLY SKIM READERS GO BACK UP**
Honestly, this game and it's writing is kind of okay for the most part, and under any other circumstances I probably would've given this a positive review.
HOWEVER, and this is a big however, the whole time playing I had a burning feeling in the back of my mind that something was wrong with the voice acting for the game, characters would say things in an odd structure that you wouldn't typically hear, or the fact that certain characters would still have a static effect even when they were speaking in the same room as you when it would make sense to remove this effect, which is something they do for other characters. All of this finally came to a head, when one character started singing Daisy Bell and they didn't understand how it went, or anything resembling how any song is structured, and I have to come to the conclusion that these were AI voices. None of this was helped by the fact that, as far as I could tell, the credits didn't list any voice actors for roles (or even mention the character names.) And of course, none of this is listed in the store page, and whether or not you care if AI was used in a game isn't for me to decide. I know where I stand and I'm sure you do too, but not letting people be informed about their purchases is never a good thing.
Now not certain if this was done deliberately to draw people in before they realized, and I'd like to think not given that, as far as I can tell, AI wasn't used in any other areas of the game (ok, there's a painting at the begging of the game that genuinely does look kind of AI. I'm giving the developer the benefit of the doubt here, but it still felt important to mention), and looking at the developers other game, they do seem to disclose AI usage. Either way done accidentally or done intentionally, it needs to be disclosed on the page.
I hate to give an indie game its first negative review, but frankly, AI is already a "no-buy" for a lot of people. Not disclosing it, intentionally or not, feels like they just didn't care.
