What to voice
- The briefing: the story, the rules and the safety notes, before the clock starts.
- Timed announcements: "Thirty minutes remain." "Ten minutes." "One minute."
- Hints: a library of pre-recorded nudges your game master can trigger, in character.
- Story moments: a recording found in a drawer, a radio message, the villain taunting the team.
- Prop responses: what the safe, the terminal or the mirror says when it's solved, or tried wrong.
- Win and lose endings.
How to set it up
- One project per room, with scripts for the briefing, hints, story and endings, so each group of files comes out in its own folder.
- Cast the story's characters from short samples: staff, actors who agree, or yourself in character. A "system voice" for announcements works well with the Calm style.
- Write one line per trigger, so every cue is one file. Keep hints short; players are busy.
- Generate, test in the room, and re-take anything that's hard to understand over the room's music and noise.
- Download and load the files into your show control or audio playback system.
Changing puzzles without re-recording
Rooms evolve: a puzzle is too hard, a prop breaks, a clue gets reworded. Edit the line's text, generate it again in the same voice, and replace one file. Lines you saved earlier keep their sound, even if you've since changed the character's sample, so nothing else in the room shifts.
Groups from abroad
Make the room's scripts in other languages too: translate them, add voices set to that language, and keep the same structure so every file has a counterpart. abcVoiceover speaks 23 languages, including Spanish, French, German, Chinese and Japanese. See translating a voiceover.
Practical tips
- Intelligibility first. Rooms are noisy and echoey. Use clear, slower deliveries and short sentences for anything players must understand.
- Check the format your playback system needs. Takes are 24 kHz mono WAV; some players want 44.1 or 48 kHz or MP3. Convert with Audacity or ffmpeg.
- Normalize the loudness of all files to the same level, so the countdown isn't louder than the story.
- Keep a cue sheet: file number, trigger, and what the game master should know.
- Scary is fine; panic isn't. Safety instructions should be calm and clear, not in character.