It’s always cool to see a fun project come together among friends.

 

Ectolibrium, whose first installment is now available on Steam Early Access, is a collaboration between a couple of old online friends. Nate Spence is somebody I took around on a tour of Valve years ago; and Nicolas Huck helped me design my self-published Kindle editions. I knew they were game fans, but only recently discovered that they were working together on this indie game.

In the spirit of doing fun stuff with friends, and also because I’d just bought a Yeti microphone that was gathering dust, I asked if they needed any help with voices, and they ended up throwing me the role of the Eld…some kind of possibly fungoid elder alien being.

I’ve always enjoyed doing voices, though I am very far from a skilled professional, and could not have held up this kind of performance for more than ten minutes…whereas a pro can do odd vocals for four hours at a stretch. I tried to channel some Nihilanth reverberations, and (an accidental but probably more important influence) watched Christopher Plummer in All the Money in the World the night before I attempted to come up with a voice.

I believe the Eld speaks only at the end of the first installment of Ectolibrium, and will be a bit more talkative in future episodes.

Thanks to Nate and Nick for giving me my big break!