The voices of the cargo ship

There is only one human being aboard the Santa Maria: William, the inspector the player controls. But he is not alone — or rather, he is alone in a particular way. The other characters exist as voices over the comm: colleagues, superiors, presences arriving from a distance.

The dialogue engine

This phase built the system that lets them speak: a dialogue tree engine with nodes, choices and consequences. During a conversation, the verb interface gives way to dialogue options, and what you choose can change what you know — and what you can do next.

Three voices

The three supporting characters entered the game one at a time, each with their own register:

• Yusuf, the colleague, the familiar voice you turn to for help;
• Akkaya, an intercepted signal you were not supposed to hear;
• Berg, the commissioner, who does not converse: she communicates.

Some transmissions are not chosen by you: they arrive on their own, at the right moment of the story, and change the air of the ship.

And the review

With the phase complete, the whole game went through a systematic review — a full playtest with a list of issues and eight versions of fixes. It is a method that will return: build, then truly verify.