Bryant Koziol
SYNC is an arena-battle FPS where the player must go room to room, defeat all enemy Synths using the "SYNC" ability to regain health and utilize new abilities, and confront the evil AI SynTell to put an end to his nefarious deeds!
SYNC is released for PC on Steam as of May 3rd, 2024: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2820790/SYNC/
My Role on SYNC
I worked as a Narrative Designer and Voice-Acting Director for SYNC. When I came to the game, it lacked significant context and narrative - all drive for why the player wants to do the things they do in the game. I helped design narrative systems, compiled the narrative "bible" used for game decisions and direction, and wrote the dialogue for the game. I also auditioned, recorded, and implemented voice acting to accompany said dialogue.
Narrative Bible &
Dialogue Script
The narrative team manifested this bible to fill in the context of the world and the characters needed to tell a story. At the beginning of the game, half the team thought the game was in space while the other thought it was underwater. Filling out this worldbuilding document and organizing for easy readability allowed our team to move forward in one consistent narrative direction, uniting our designers and artists for a cohesive flow of gameplay.
Once the Narrative Bible was adapted, we moved on to create the game's villain and supporting characters' voices. At first, we wanted over seven distinct characters, but as development continued, we shrunk it down to four to fit a reasonable scope. Making the necessary room, we implemented the story of the divergent AI into cutscenes and findable logs spread throughout as the game for the player to find, giving the narrative a background approach as to not interrupt the flow of gameplay.
Voice Acting
After we finished with the official script, the narrative team went about getting voice acting implemented into the game. We auditioned, scheduled, recorded, edited, and implemented all the dialogue.
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These are examples of audio clips from some of our characters!
Postmortem
Working on SYNC was a blast. I was able to work within my focus, improve upon my organizational and communication skills, and even spread farther outside my comfort zone to do things I've never done before. Working on a small narrative team versus working by myself was a major difference I didn't account for, yet the development process was not only smooth but very fun too. I wish I had more time to add more narrative to SYNC, and I wish that the game was larger to accompany all that, but despite the challenges, this game was marvelous and definitely my favorite project.