Before we get into today's episode, a quick announcement.

And don't worry, it's not one of those dramatic messages that starts with, we need to talk.

If you enjoy the way I break down English, talk about life and guide you through tricky language points, imagine doing that one -to -one in a relaxed atmosphere where improving your English actually feels natural.

Yes, I'm talking about private lessons with me, Zdenek.

Think of it as chatting with a friend who listens, who asks questions, and who genuinely cares about your interests, but also is an English teacher who gives you proper structured guidance and won't let you get away with grammar mistakes and pronunciation errors and vocabulary slips and all those things.

Each lesson includes feedback.

I always keep track of what's happening in the lesson.

I make notes about your English, whether it's pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar.

I write down the mistakes you make.

And then all of this you can revisit as homework.

And you can correct yourself and then we can discuss it again.

And this is the idea.

You know, everybody needs that feedback in order to push their English to level up.

Right.

So after each session, you will get a document, a Google document, I should say.

And we will be working together like that.

This is all because I believe this is a really good way to improve.

My lessons are conversation -based, so it's always a chat, really, about life, your life, if you want my life, life in general, the world, the news in the world.

I don't know, for example, if you're into football like me, we can discuss the games of your favorite team, whatever you want, really.

I don't really mind.

For some of my students, I'm a psychologist, so if you want, we can discuss.

your or my private life too.

That's all part of the lessons, really.

So if you want to boost your fluency, build your confidence and...

actually enjoyed the learning process none of the stuff you got at school when you were younger and you were happy to be out of the class right we were happy that the class was over no i want this to be enjoyable i want this to be fun i want you to be satisfied with the service that i'm providing you know the only thing i really care about is a satisfied client yeah so you know Hopefully, this is something that could interest you.

If that's the case, send me an email at teachersdenek at gmail .com.

Say hi, Zdenek.

Okay, let's try.

Let's have weekly lessons.

And please help me.

Push my English, please.

Let's level up my English.

Right, I know a lot of people have been putting this off.

No need for that.

I'm here for you.

I'm here to push you guys.

Okay, I think that's enough.

The announcement is done.

You made it.

On with the episode.

Shut up.

I'm listening to Zdenek's English podcast.

You're listening to Zdenek's English Podcast, by far the greatest English podcast on earth for English learners since sliced bread.

My name is Zdenek and I'm your host.

Hello everyone, welcome back to Zdenek's English Podcast.

My name is Zdenek Lukas and this is my podcast and I also have a guest and it's none other than Jack T.

Hardy.

Hello Jack.

Hi, Zemeck.

How are you doing?

I'm all right, thanks.

It's been a while since I recorded a podcast and it's been a while since I talked to you.

It has.

It has.

And you're back in Czech Republic.

I am for the summer, although I do live in Vietnam over the year, so it's nice to be back.

But I have one issue with recording this episode and you know what it is.

I seem to be too dark.

I've been trying to find the right angle here, but it's just the camera is showing me in dark mode for some reason.

But it's good.

It's fine because we have Jack here to brighten everything up.

Is my voice okay?

Is the sound not distorting or anything?

Is it okay?

No, I think it's perfect.

Awesome.

Also, we can let our audience be the judge of that.

our listeners well we should probably remind our listeners who you are jack because you are a returning guest you've been here two years ago you were on the podcast two years ago you've been here before yeah and you are my ex -colleague and a fellow english teacher we used to work together um in speak or we used to work for speak up london which is located in On Oxford Street in London, right?

Yeah.

Otherwise known as Living Hell.

Is that what you used to be called?

Oh, man.

I remember walking.

Because I love Speak Up.

Oh, you mean Oxford Street, not the school.

Yeah, okay.

The school was great.

The street is just hell.

I remember walking to work.

And for some reason, people just walk in slow motion.

yeah when you when you've lived in London for like let's say I don't know because you you arrive in London you're like oh everything's amazing and after sort of six weeks or whatever that your your eye of the tiger kicks in and you just think just everybody get out of my way or I'm gonna you know kneecap you and um so yeah I just remember that on a daily basis it was it was one of the reasons I left I was like I just cannot deal with walking through crowds anymore you know I see, I see.

Maybe if they invented a teleportation device, you might have stayed.

I think, yeah, possibly.

Or just commute from Winchester.

I mean, I live in Winchester now.

I love it here.

Yeah, I remember you telling us that two years ago that you live in Winchester.

Yeah, I still do, so it must be working.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Absolutely.

And so, apart from...

you being an english teacher just like myself you are a musician and the episode we recorded two years ago was about something really interesting because you had actually made a soundtrack for a board game right hi my name is mila i'm from spain i like achievers chamber because i can practice my english daily have fun and real conversations with interesting people, and all of that without leaving the house.

You had actually made a soundtrack for a board game, right?

Yeah, it was for Damnation the Gothic Game, which was a Kickstarter project by Black Letter Games.

And I did the whole sort of soundtrack to it with music, like orchestrated music.

voices, ambience, all that sort of thing.

It was huge.

Two years of work, actually.

It was an unbelievably big project.

I'm really pleased with how it turned out, actually.

I have to say, the episode itself was very popular as well.

I got a few people talking to me about it because some of my students actually listened to my podcast.

They said that you were a really cool guest.

the overall atmosphere was was good because uh we also played some of the clips from that you know and we did we did yeah it was it was it was a peak peak point of peak creativity at the time i was uh probably locked in it was it was quite amazing probably the peak probably the peak for us the next english podcast as well if i'm honest it had only gone downhill but um Well, we can bring it.

I don't know.

Probably not.

But it was at the time that I used to record more often, let's say, than I do these days.

But it was episode 443.

So it is available in the archive of the Next English podcast.

Which episode?

400 and what?

443.

Christ.

Yeah.

The thing is with that is you cannot.

maintain on your own that peak level of creativity it's incredibly difficult to maintain it unless it's your unless it becomes your job unless you monetize it you get paid for it then yes because if it's your job right then because it's not my job i may have found a few students let's say two three four students yeah because of my podcast and it helps my sort of let's say it gives me some sort of online presence and I guess it helps me in some way but it doesn't directly give me any money right so this is unfortunately I have been doing sort of you know music and artistic endeavours since I can remember and unfortunately the large majority you pay to play It's almost impossible to make money unless you hit oil with something so revolutionary, or you have a big company behind you.

We just do it for fun.

I think we are quite like -minded individuals in that sense.

We're both creative in some ways.

I don't know if it is just for fun, though.

There's often a question of what possesses people to create.

For example, I used to perform in...

in london and stuff singing on stage and stuff you know what what possesses someone to do that why would you ever want to stand up in the spotlight and everybody looking at you and it's really stressful and it's really nerve -wracking every time it's like a challenge for us right maybe we challenge ourselves maybe deep down we get we are like nervous wrecks anxious people possibly to be honest i didn't used to be very confident when i was like in my high school like whenever i stood in front of the whole class it wasn't my favorite thing to do to have a presentation but then I ended up being an English teacher and that's what I do all the time now right and I have to be confident and I am it's been a journey and I think maybe you just sort of like faced faced your fears right with that I really really believe in that yeah I have a sort of thing that I do I try to face a fear sort of once a year try and do something i'm really really sick so last last this year was was um canyoning like jumping off waterfalls and stuff because i i love doing really sort of heights but you just got to keep pushing so sorry so we did no thank you i would say no to that but yeah it's awesome though jumping off waterfalls is like the most that skydiving skydiving is the literally the craziest thing you can do But jumping off waterfalls is just slightly lower on the scale.

It's great.

Everyone should be jumping off waterfalls every day.

No, thank you.

I know of other things that might be more useful and less stressful to me and I can still overcome myself, such as I've learned to ride a motorbike now because of Vietnam.

It's something I had to do so I can ride a motorbike.

That was a fear I overcame.

I even spoke about this on Luke's English podcast.

I was invited by Luke and we made an episode about it.

Do you still get scared when you get on your...

Is it like a dirt bike?

Like a small motorbike, you know.

I'm not scared.

I wouldn't say I'm scared.

I sort of respect the vehicle, you know, and respect the traffic and the people.

So it's not like it's the most enjoyable thing for me to do, but it's just something I had to learn.

And I think I'm comfortable now.

I learned to drive late, very late.

I got my license when I was, what, 30?

39, something like that.

Yeah, we see.

Very similar story.

And even now, because I got it late, I didn't have that young boyish immunity to fear that you have when you're a kid.

And I view it as an adult.

And every time I get in the car, I'm like, yeah, this could be my last day.

Or this could be someone else's last day.

And I'm super, super, super careful.

I think it's a very good way to do it.

I think it's all right.

I think it's all right.

As long as you keep developing and you have this healthy attitude, I think you're fine.

I think you will be accepted by the drivers community.

We don't have to be the fastest, right?

No, no.

And you look like a bit of an idiot when you do, you know.

Speeding doesn't look cool, really.

Not for me.

It does look cool for some people, but not for me.

It won't impress me by that, yeah.

You could put your foot down a little harder than everybody else and that's supposed to make me impressed.

We actually have a politician now that has been involved in a scandal because a while back he posted something on his social media of him basically speeding, going over like what is it in miles?

Definitely 200 and something miles per hour.

That's forbidden in the Czech Republic.

So he was actually lying about it.

He was lying about it.

He said it had been done.

He had done it a long time ago and in Germany, where it was permitted.

But then somebody, you know, now we have Google Lens, yeah?

So somebody actually sort of noticed some features of the roads and they realized that it was in the Czech Republic.

So now this guy, it didn't help his political campaign.

Because the elections are coming.

But yeah, I don't know how somebody can think that this is something to be proud of, that some people do.

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

Exactly.

But yeah, so you are a musician, but that's ironically not what we are here to talk about today.

And I want to tell the whole story.

So this is a proud moment for Zdenek's English podcast.

It has happened here in the past.

But let's say 80, 80, 90 % of time, it's me who invites guests.

It's me who has to take the initiative.

But in this case, it was the guest himself.

And that's always a very, very proud moment for the podcast.

Can I read the WhatsApp message you sent me, Jack?

Yeah.

Is that okay?

Of course, yeah, go for it.

Okay, thanks.

So you said, hey dude, which is something I really like.

Is it something that British people say?

Isn't it more American?

I noticed you use it a lot.

Yeah, it's a California thing, but there was a sort of strong...

If you grew up in the 80s like me, the power of...

You cannot underestimate the power of the United States in the 80s.

It was like the golden chalice.

It was the standard by which all else was judged.

And if you grew up in England, which is pretty grim in the 80s, and then you got Baywatch.

I remember that as well.

Utopia.

We were just sponges for this.

So we sort of had a bit of a crush on America.

And you would find yourself just using Americanisms.

And it got a bit uncool in the 90s because there was a wave of British pride in the 90s with like Britpop and Spice Girls and all this kind of thing.

It sort of came back in vogue in sort of around 2000, for me anyway, about 2008 where it became slightly ironic, which I guess is my excuse.

But most British people, they just say, hey, mate, or hey.

Hey, buddy, I would expect it more.

But, dude, it's yours.

I know you do that.

But anyway, let me continue the message.

So, hey, dude, how's it going?

Saw Kieran on the podcast.

Kieran is another friend of ours, another English teacher that used to work for Speak Up London at the same time we did.

And he had written that book, right?

The Buttery Life, and that's another podcast I did with Kieran and his friend, Nick, I think his name is.

And now I've recorded something else with Kieran, and you noticed that.

I think you saw it on my YouTube channel or something, right?

Because this episode, ladies and gentlemen, is also available on the YouTube channel, even though you're going to see me very dark there, but it's still me, I promise.

But it's Jack who brightens it all up there with his lovely plant and bookcase with some books, making him look very smart.

Yeah, this is not my office.

It's my wife's.

My office is and it's a complete mess.

I'm just decorating at the moment.

It's a very calm room.

OK, so Kieran.

So you saw Kieran on the podcast.

Very nice.

If you need an interviewee.

I've just done some voice acting and script editing slash writing for a video game called Soulstone Survivors.

Thought it might be an interesting chat.

Hope you're well, mate.

You said mate at the end.

You balanced it.

So this is lovely.

Obviously, I jumped at the opportunity to have you back on the podcast.

And I think it's a great topic.

and so um now now it's a video game so before it was music and board game now it's a video game and voice acting and script scripting right script writing so that's a bit different wow so um how did you get into this um yeah i mean i think i've pretty much made peace with the idea that i won't i am I will never be a careerist.

I think I just am far too fickle in my focus to devote to any, yeah.

Welcome to the club.

Yeah, I just, I have certain sort of bucket list things that I always wanted to do.

And one of them was write a soundtrack.

any sound it didn't matter what it was but it had to be a soundtrack it had to be classic classical music because I can't I can't read music and I can't arrange music but I can now because I had to teach myself that I it was one of the ladders that I wanted to prove to myself I could climb and the other thing was to be a script writer for something and to do voice acting I've always always wanted to do to do that because I just I just on a daily basis just talk in different voices, just on my own.

It's a very sweet thing to do.

In your head?

You have voices in your head?

Out loud.

In your lessons?

Well, in the lessons as well, but I have a fascination with accents.

I'm addicted to them.

I think they're so interesting.

That's another British thing.

The Brits are really proud of their accents, right?

Yeah, we are.

We have so many different accents per hundred.

square meters like a bizarre concept of the England and all its accents or the UK and I find it fascinating that if you change your accent you change everything changes like your entire physiology changes your thought patterns change just every just that one little tiny flick can have huge impacts I mean you know if you look at let's say for example I mean you know I'm getting a bit abstract here, but if you listen to Icelandic people when they talk, they kind of sound like ice on mountains.

Rough people in this cold.

The humor as well, right?

For example, any Nordic languages, they sort of...

reflect the environment that they're in.

That's true, that's true.

You know, if you're talking French, you're just going to be naturally a little bit more flamboyant.

Your voice is going to be a little bit lower, you become a little more indistinct.

You know, you just become a little bit more sort of languid about things and, you know, English becomes a bit more clipped.

So I've always been absolutely fascinated by that and inflection and the voice is generally an instrument as a singer as well.

so it was always something i wanted to do um so yeah so so should i tell you like how this all sort of yeah i know how did you get an offer from someone or did you actively search for a job like this or no no so i uh i have a friend of mine um owns a computer game company video of a small video game company he's from brazil It's called Alan Smith, which is the least Brazilian name you could imagine.

So he lives here with his wife.

In Winchester?

Yeah.

We have a very strong circle of friends here.

Wow.

Okay.

There's quite a few Brazilians in Winchester, but weirdly.

You wouldn't equate.

Well, that's nice for your wife as well, because she's Brazilian, as we know.

It's great, yeah.

But they're not typical Brazilians.

This is the thing.

They've moved here, right?

So if they were typical Brazilians, they'd probably stay in Brazil, but they're not.

They're all slightly less exuberant, a bit more reserved, a bit more sort of thinky about things and contemplative.

So anyway, they live here, long story short, and I've known Alan for a few years, and he...

He sent me a message saying, oh, you know, I've got this game.

And, you know, I knew he'd created this game years ago, actually.

I remember I was one of the guys that was like, do this, do this, you know.

You were pushing him.

You know, he started his own company.

I was like, do it now.

This is the time, you know, strike your own path.

So anyway, he texted me like a few months ago.

It was a very short time ago.

And he just said.

all right so with my game we have this entire world and and um we we want someone to we we have this law l -o -r -e not l -a -w so law like it's it's like the sort of like the the culture and like the world customs in that world it's like like law right it's like yeah yeah so they had all this law um and they said, we want to give the characters lines.

There's always different characters you can play.

Hang on, hang on.

So what kind of game is this?

It is a semi top -down.

It's sort of a top -down, but it's a slight angle.

I don't know what the technical term is for that, but it's kind of, you're not quite looking bird's eye, but it's kind of like on an angle.

You are essentially, it's very simple to explain, but it's obviously difficult to master, but you are a character.

You have waves of enemies that come at you.

So is it like a tower defense or something?

You're not defending a tower, but basically what you're doing is you're smashing these enemies and then...

And they're coming from one direction only?

All directions.

Ah, okay.

So is it similar to Path of Exile or Diablo or something?

No, I don't know.

Diablo is a third -person one, isn't it?

Or is it...

No, it's also top -down.

Okay, fine.

So maybe something like that.

But you have three enemies coming at you.

And you have to kind of move around.

And as you kill them, they drop these little soul stones.

And you collect them and then you level up.

Isn't this called slash and move or something?

I don't know.

Something like that, right?

Basically, it's slashing your enemies one after another.

And they're dropping items.

You're collecting items.

Sometimes you're crafting things.

And then he's buying, selling and stuff like that.

And you're healing yourself and you can have different, you choose a character.

So maybe you can be a wizard and then you finish the game and you want to play again for the playability.

You are a rogue.

Yeah.

So you can build your skill tree and it's all very similar to Diablo actually.

Yeah.

Yeah.

so not my kind of game at all right i like i like these games for me i'm much more just of slow you know emotionally okay i'm so i have a soft spot for this i haven't played well the last one was baldur's gate but that one is more similar to that kind of thing but all those gates you have more characters there and it's it's a very story driven as well So Soulstone, as you can play, I think it's like something like 18 characters.

It's nuts.

But they all have a different archetype.

So I think it's about 18.

That's a lot.

That's a lot.

Almost like 20.

Anyway, that was a lot.

I had to do a help with the lines.

So basically, you have these characters.

And in the game, you choose whichever character.

And you are a member of a group called the Void Hunters.

And you...

go to different levels and you just beat the hell out of these bad guys.

You level up as you go and by the end, hopefully you've got enough to beat the bad guy, to beat the final boss.

And is there any story to it?

Because some of these games are just about hitting enemies.

But is there a story to it as well?

Do you make choices and stuff?

So with the lore, I spoke to the guy who designed the lore.

he he's called Mauricio he's just such a I mean the whole team's really nice but he's just sort of extra nice and um he sort of we sat down for a couple meetings and he was explaining the law and I I was like this is quite frankly terrifying amounts of detail like it was he had he had he showed me a sort of timeline that I mean this guy must live and breathe this I know I understand because I was the same with my soundtrack I knew every single note across the two hours that he um He had just designed this from creation to now, right?

And it's like, you know, he told me, he said, right, so in the beginning, there was nothing.

And then the three elements, something like, I think it's like fire, water and earth or something, join together.

They are joined by the almighty creator, but then they split apart.

And if you get a hundred and divide it by three.

It's 3 .333 recurring, and there is a tiny fragment left that you can't add up if you split 100 into three.

He said, and that fragment becomes the evil void.

And I was like, this is amazing.

That sounds good.

That's a good idea.

Then he talks about that there's a war.

None of this is...

He talks about there's this war and then there's other factions and then there's another one.

So are you on the good side then, like fighting the evil?

All of the characters you can pick are on the good side.

Yeah, some of them are more sort of anti -hero -y.

Okay.

But still trying to beat the shit out of that evil.

So basically he had created this entire universe.

It's amazing.

So my job was to come in and he had written lines for each character, which are triggered throughout the game as you're fighting and certain cut scenes and things like that.

So it's like cut scenes, right?

Okay.

It's one, there's two or three cut scenes, but they're very much integrated into the game.

So it's not a huge change in perspective.

You're still looking down.

So did you write these lines or did he have something in mind and you just perfected it?

He had written loads of stuff, right?

Something like, we ended up with over 3 ,000.

Or was it 3 ,000 lines or something?

It was just an insane amount.

No, maybe that's right.

Okay, so it's 20 characters, and they have 160 lines each, and then there's some cut scenes as well.

It's just whatever that is.

It was a massive amount of work.

So he had had, the idea was that they wanted to create an opening.

where they could explain kind of what was going on.

And then it would be a tutorial that would kind of give you a little bit of lore, and then they would kind of let you out.

Teach you how to play the game a little bit.

Yeah, and then suddenly that sort of ends, and then you're like, oh, okay, that's how that works, and this is what my job is, and then they sort of let you run for the rest of the game, and then it kind of closes at the end.

That's pretty much what we were given license to do.

You know, he said, you know, they were quite clear.

They said, look, this is this is not a law game.

This is a game.

This is a fun game.

But we want to give it enough law to make it feel grounded and that it has some sort of story to it.

So we had to write an opening.

I know all the characters had to write the tutorial where he'd had he'd written a load of lines, but he's English is not his first language.

And he'd done a fantastic job, but he wasn't quite.

it wasn't tweaked perfectly yet and so my job was to come in and say right that doesn't totally work or that's like you were you were an english teacher again yeah but also you capitalized on your english teaching experience so it was english teaching it was also just i read a lot i just finished reading proofreading a little bit of proofreading basically proofreading and script editing i had to rewrite quite a few of the lines because they just didn't sort of fit Poor guy, he'd been working at these, like, eventually your brain just kind of dries up.

But how about AI?

Could he have also asked AI to help him with that?

Possibly, but I don't really agree.

But at least for the proofreading, right?

Like, to make it sound more natural, maybe in English?

Yeah, maybe, but I think they just wanted to steer away from that, and I fully support that.

I think AI is...

A killer of creativity.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I'm sure it will be a good tool in the future.

And they said the same about DJs.

You know, they don't do anything.

They just play records.

And, well, we saw how that turned out.

So, you know, maybe it will in the future.

But as it stands now, I find it quite a worrying development.

You know, it's like anything.

You know, AI is sort of, you know, it's the journal.

authenticity and it's just yeah it's well it's not creating that's the problem it's copying and pasting yeah yeah and yet and yet it feels like it's creating something that's the problem because it gives you that that that feel anyway like i feel like that for example i use it to create music sometimes because i can't i can't i can't you use ai to create music yeah yeah there's there's a service called suno which is pretty cool.

For you, you must hate it.

Oh, I hate it already.

But how do you do it?

I mean, I don't know anything about it.

Well, what I do is at least I write the lyrics.

You can even ask it to write lyrics, but I absolutely hate the lyrics.

So I use it for my other podcast, for the Czech podcast, to practice vocabulary that I'm teaching.

Because after each episode, I create an extra episode for the...

for the subscribers or for the patrons of the podcast.

And I teach like some selected vocabulary from that episode.

And then on top of that, I create a song.

So I write the lines of the song and the chorus and all, including all the vocabulary.

It's always some kind of a cheesy song, but at least it's my creation because I don't like what AI does.

But at least it's mine.

And it turns it into music.

You can even choose the genre.

And basically you let it create music and maybe you listen to 10 different ideas and you like only one of them, right?

So it's...

And it's not perfect, but it's pretty good, I would say.

I can show you more later.

I would love to hear it.

But I think it sounds to me like, I mean, it's different because you're using it as a tool to achieve a certain thing.

But you wouldn't have been able to without it, right?

Well, I think some people publish it as well.

I think there have been already some like...

a lot of issues with that you know i mean well yeah i mean the problem with that is that you've got to you know you've got to ask yourself why why am i doing this why am i why am i making music and and you know to me it sounds like people are looking down the telescope at the wrong end that you're why do you make music you you don't make music just to make money or to for people to listen to that's that's one part of it you make music to channel it's a sort of it's a sort of funnel for your soul emotion it's also kind of cool it's cool i i can't i can't help it's just cool like you make a song like this it's super quick just out of nowhere it's not perfect but it's I like the randomness of it as well.

Some of the songs are horrible and some of the songs sound amazing.

And you can choose any genre you can imagine.

It's fascinating, but I also understand that it could be a bit scary or cringy for some, especially for someone like you, coming from the music.

To be honest, there's plenty of pop music that I would feel the same way about.

it's product it's content it's not really what music is about music is about expression and this kind of thing but you know uh that is not for me to decide it's that you know everyone the listener is the judge and the performer is a judge so it You know, it's not maybe for me to say, but I do have quite strong opinions on it.

That's absolutely fair.

And the threat of AI in general, like it might wipe us out one day and all that.

I'm reading a book about it.

But anyway, I think we've got sidetracked, Jack.

What have you been talking about here?

So it's about you writing a script for a game.

Helping to write the script.

Hang on.

Is the game released or is it in beta testing?

it's it's released yeah so it got released about three weeks ago so it's it's actually soul stone survivors 1 .0 because the game had existed before is it in early access or is it is it com is it like completely on steam and stuff i can send you a link you can buy it on steam yeah yeah and it's um for all i can gather that people think it's great i mean it has it has an incredibly loyal following of players i'll put the link i'll put the link in the show notes yeah yeah it's great so so yeah so so anyway my my job was to to fund basically edit that opening scene that was a real tough one because we i had no idea what it would look like and we had to kind of weave enough law into the line so that the player feels that there is some depth without alienating them so you know it's a very fine line between you know, sort of welcoming someone into a world and actually just pushing them away because it's just too dense.

It's too much.

Yeah.

But it also has to weave in naturally into the dialogue.

And so you would say things like, you know, instead of saying, oh, we need to, you know, hurry, let's get to the portal.

There's a portal that opens into the dark world.

You would then say a line like, you know.

No need to hurry.

We've waited a millennia for this moment.

A few more seconds will not matter.

Just something just to kind of dip the toe in the idea that we have to communicate this has been going on for years and to give the sense of age to the story.

That's lovely.

Because you've got all these expressions in the English language that you can sort of play with it and twist it in a way that gives you this feel and this atmosphere and this vibe.

Yeah, and we had to suck the player in in the story.

Yeah, so they would just sort of immerse them to give them some level of states that were going on and some sort of geography of where they are and where they're going and who they are.

And then you can sort of pick which character you want to be and as you progress through the game you can unlock other characters.

So there are, I believe it's 20 actually, I'm fairly sure it's 20 characters.

And each of them have, you know, different lines and the lines reflect the character.

We didn't want one line to be repeated by 20 different people.

Of course, of course.

The only lines they repeat are the prayer that they do.

They have a kind of mantra that they all say, which is kind of, you know, it's like through the darkness we rise and through the great void we must...

Yeah, that's how you connect the story and the characters.

It makes sense to have a prayer, the same prayer.

So you have different characters and each character had a backstory with a certain faction that they fought, a kind of religion that had its own mythology.

I mean, seriously, Mauricio, my God, the amount of bloody work that guy put in.

I like how you said my God as well.

Seriously, well, you know, he's amazing and he had a backstory for everyone.

So, you know, for example, there was a character called the Pyromancer who's a sort of...

fire crazy sort of fire woman so fire wizard fire sorcerer so you know lower lines that were kind of you know very flamey and burn and and all these kind of things you know we had to make sure that lines reflected and there was a beast master who kind of has like a wolf kind of cowl on a nature nature guy so he talks much more in terms of nature and then there was a shaman and that's a um a knight and the sort of paladin and his lines were very like you know really sort of cheesy and like overly optimistic and all this kind of thing and and so they had to then get the voice actors um so they they sent their feelers out and said we're doing auditions so you had to you had to pass an audition yeah i said i said i said you know alan i've got a bit of experience you know with my soundtrack i did a few shouts and screams and stuff and i said you know if you if you want anyone to to do to do anything i can you know i might be able to help he said we're actually going to ask you anywhere i was like that's amazing you are good at this you always yeah i can do more of this myself hey i'm here everyone do you want to hire me do you want to you know do you want me on your podcast i was that's that's very very clever very clever i just don't agree with i i've waited too long you know things don't opportunities don't come to you unless you're very lucky yeah yeah you need to sometimes you need to push push you know yeah but but he did actually say we were going to ask you anyway which which was lovely so i i said okay fine he said yeah you still gotta you still gotta do the audition so i said all right fine so they gave me a few characters to do how many it was five they i had to do the paladin I had to do this.

The paladin was a kind of like you were given criteria you had to follow.

So the paladin was like super hopeful, you know, devout and sort of, you know, very optimistic.

And then I had to be an assassin.

It was Arabic.

It was all kind of whispers and a bit sneaky.

And then I had to do a shaman, which I have no idea why they asked me to do that, because it was sort of tribal.

I don't have a very deep voice.

I had to study how to deepen your voice.

There is a technique where you blow with a jaw and you breathe a certain way.

I had to do that.

It took ages to get that.

I had to do a pirate and another knight.

Some kind of very strict knight.

I had to send all these in.

They chose you for the deeper voices?

They chose me for um the pirates which is to be honest i i i've always had a bit of i was always been quite interested in pirates i was the hollywood pirates not real pirates because as i learned very late real pirates were awful human beings um that did unspeakable things like vikings maybe oh they're so cool but you know not really they sort of raped and murdered everyone really like like those great joys from the game of thrones you know yeah it's not it's not really it's not an aspirational thing but there's there's certain sort of beauty about it right or something i like i like to admire about it i i like the carefree swagger of it but you know when you're you know i i could i could definitely send you some some glorified it's a glorified character as pirate basically yeah yeah it's yeah but um so i got i got the the uh the pirate and then they asked me to do the machinist The Machinist.

So that's the one you sent me the MP3s for, right?

The MP3 of the Pirate and the Machinist.

So I can actually play it here on the podcast.

The Machinist is one of the characters then.

The Machinist is a bit quieter than the Pirate, I'll just warn you.

But the Machinist is a gnome that is an inventor.

So gnome is like a little dwarf, right?

A gnome.

It's kind of like a dwarf.

A gnome is like a kind of...

Garden dwarf.

Dwarves are more like mountains.

Gnomes do live in mountains, actually.

In this story, they do.

So they're kind of like mechanic mountain dwellers that build lots of stuff and whatever.

When you say mechanic, they're actually not human.

They don't have a human sort of DNA.

No, no, no.

They are a gnome and a robot.

Okay, okay.

The gnome kind of climbs up into the robot.

Ah, okay, I see.

Then they start riding it.

Okay, so here is the machinist, a .k .a.

Jack.

Please leave the area.

Would all creatures who are not snowmen please leave the area?

Would all creatures who are not snowmen please leave the area?

Oh, it's on loop.

It's actually on loop.

I was wondering what was happening there.

There's a couple of other lines.

There's another one here.

It's going to continue in the same way.

that's pretty pretty good actually let's shut the whole thing down you really enjoy that one so so when do we hear these so this is like during the game this is what the characters say yeah so as you're sort of whirling around this map um and and smashing waves of of enemies and picking up the thing the the certain i think When certain encounters happen, the voices are triggered to kind of push you along the narrative.

Like, oh, look at that.

And those characters only say it once or multiple times?

They can say it multiple times.

I mean, they have 160 lines each or 157 lines each.

And some of them must be unique, right?

Some of them must be unique.

What do you mean?

I can also imagine if I'm playing some sort of strategy game in which...

whenever you point the character to go in a certain direction, they will say something like, follow the lead, or I don't know, as you command, as you command, something like that.

So that will always repeat, but this is not that kind of voice.

When you get a power -up, you get a voice, but there's various options.

that you can have so there's you know you won't get the same five lines again a lot of work for you as well a lot of work it was an unbelievable amount of work it was something like 50 hours script how many takes so how many takes did it take you to to record one of these oh we had to we had to record um the first 50 lines and we had to send them for the sound guy uh guillermo he had to listen to them all i mean god no that guy's head must have just been pulp by the end of that but he had to listen to them all and then give feedback so he said he said he said to you for instance well i don't like this one so much can you re -record it did he say that can you redo it can you you know maybe lower whatever so with the with the machines yeah okay um so so yeah the pirate one was fairly okay Okay, let me play that.

Even a tree's got teeth out here.

Come and try me.

Even a tree's got teeth out here.

Your altar's crumbling, you lumbering git.

Show me your teeth so I can knock them out.

That's no statue.

That's a different one.

Yeah, okay.

And there's some more.

Legends aren't born.

They're carved in corpses, king.

Open sesame.

Hello?

Open sesame.

He's trying to open a door or something.

It's like the password you would give to open a door, right?

Or a gate or something.

So legendary like me.

That's when he gets a power up or something.

Yeah.

So we had to obviously we had to write the lines for the voice.

And when we got the voices, the voice actors back.

So a lot of them would bring their own spin on it, just like I did with the pirate.

I mean, I think what they wanted with the pirate was this sort of slightly drunk, you know.

what I wanted was, you have to sort of find the voice.

It's really bizarre.

You have to, sometimes it can be one little thing that just suddenly lights up the character for you.

But yeah, you might spend like an hour just jumping around or like you might hunch or like use your body and all this kind of thing until you've got this, you might say a line in one way and you're like, that's the character.

the pirate it was um he had to be because pirates are generally sort of from cornwall or from ireland and i so if you're going to go down the like cornish way you know you're going to be a lower voice there but but i thought a drunk irish the drunk irish sorts of um smuggly, squirrelly Irish guy that likes shiny things.

Did you actually go to an Irish pub for some inspiration?

I know, I have Irish friends.

To drink Guinness in order to get it right.

It was the idea of, you know, looking around the room like this all the time.

looking for things to take, shiny things everywhere.

And he got more like that, like a kind of, almost like an old man, rag and bone man.

Thought that would be far more fun to do.

So I ended up doing that.

But he's also crazy.

So there was that, and a drunk sort of, you know, you have an, instead of sail, you say, because it's like.

You know, he's a bit drunk, isn't he?

And he was a hell of a lot of fun today.

It's fairly easy.

There were a couple of directions that they wanted different.

Am I right in saying that this was by far the most enjoyable part of working on this game?

The pirate was.

Because I wrote, I had sort of free reign with his character for writing.

But I said, try doing this and try doing that.

Nice, nice.

So that was lovely.

So now after this, your voice will be in the game?

Yeah, no, it is.

Have you played the game yourself?

I've been so busy with stuff.

You haven't played it?

No, I've looked at it.

You have to play it at some point to hear yourself, right?

I've been watching videos.

You've been watching videos from the game, okay.

Yeah, so I've seen one of the machinists.

There's none of the pirates yet, because I think you have to...

He's called the cursed captain in the game.

But yeah, so you have to unlock him to get there.

But yeah, he was by far the most fun because I just kind of got into it.

But I had to do the parrot as well.

He has this like talking parrot.

Now it's really hard to do because it's like high up.

The machinist was really hard.

It was just unbelievably difficult because they had to lower the voice to make it sound like it's coming through a robot.

Yeah, I can see it's also edited in some sound editing.

If I was to talk like that all the time, I'd rip my vocal cords.

Yeah, don't do that.

So what they did was they said, keep your voice at a normal pitch, but...

um we're gonna we're gonna slow it down right yeah so i was like okay well that's fine so i i and i was like what accent you're american or or whatever and they're like just do whatever and i i was like because i tried american and that that sounds really menacing with a low drop yeah like i mean what have we got here it's it's really really quite like worrying so i had to do an english accent but the thing is if you slow it down all the rounded vowels are accentuated in a lower frequency.

So, for example, if I said out, it would sound like out, out, and it sounds really cockney.

And you have to drop the T as well, I think.

Yeah, yeah.

And I had to say them slower because they had to drop the frequency so much.

It has something to do with the rendering.

They had to speed it up a bit, so I had to say it slower.

They had to drop the...

the the frequency to a low frequency and then speed it up wow i had to it really technical so i had to so eventually what i did was i i thought if i sound like a world war ii fighter pilot um because if you if you listen to people from the 40s okay they they speak in in a different register so the tongue is higher in the mouth and all the vowel sounds are higher and more posh as well yeah all the consonants are much more clipped like high class high class yes so you know it was only sort of around the 70s that that lower um the jaw starts dropping and the americanization comes in and there's all this sort of thing and like it was the 60s this is cool jack so wait a minute so is this your first like first job like this that you've ever done because you said it was on your bucket list but the way You've done this and how you're talking about it and what you had to go through.

It sounds like you've mastered it, right?

No, I'm learning.

I'm learning.

It was a real learning curve, but no, it's the first one.

It's the first one.

So that's just the first step.

You just opened the door of a brand new world, possibly, right?

It's on your CV now.

Who knows, maybe next time we will hear you in GTA or something like that.

It would be great to do a cartoon.

or something that was more like a dialogue rather than monologue.

It would be great to use a dialogue thing.

But it's a lot of fun.

And you realise just how hard voice acting is.

It's really hard because you have to inject the words.

This is how I approached it anyway.

The word you say has to be injected with the emotion that you feel for it.

So instead of saying, this is my cat, how do you feel about the cat?

Well, then you have to put the feeling into the word cat.

Yeah.

And that communicates to the audience who can't see what your emotions are, basically.

So it's really it's quite tiring.

It's very focused and it's a lot of fun.

So, yeah, I had a great time doing it.

Sounds like fun.

Yeah.

Nice one.

Nice one, Jack.

Wow.

OK, so once again, if people want to play this game and hear Jack in it via multiple different characters, the name of the game is.

Soul Stone Survivors.

Soul Stone Survivors.

So there's an alliteration as well.

Soul Stone Survivors.

I like it.

So is it a soul?

There's a genre even, right?

Like soul games, soul stone games?

What's the genre?

No idea what it's called.

There is a name for that.

It is, I can, do you know what?

Dark Souls?

You know, it was like a Dark Hunters.

Dark Souls.

And then soul -like, soul -like games.

It's like a genre, because when you're browsing through categories on Steam, the games have different categories, like strategy games.

One of the tags is soul -like.

This is roguelite.

Whenever you have the word soul in the name of the game, I assume it's going to be one of those games.

It's called a roguelite.

game roguelike oh wow roguelike as well roguelike as well wow okay that that's that's i like roguelike games by the way they are tougher tougher because you die when you die you have to start over you know from what i've heard this is uh it's a very challenging game i mean it's definitely not it's definitely not a badly designed game it's it's you wouldn't you wouldn't take part in any anything that is badly designed that's for sure they've definitely put there's a lot of love in in the game i mean from working with the team and speaking to them or whatever i mean you know they really do how many people are in the team then it's pretty small i think it's like 12 or something i mean my team wow so i know sort of four of them actually i've met quite a lot of them over the years but um i think it's probably about 12 a pretty small team but they have like extra people and stuff that they bring in um Like me, you know, freelancer.

Nice one.

Well, Jack, now I'm curious.

What am I going to talk to you, let's say, one year or two years down the line?

What will be next?

Because for some reason, I think it's going to be something completely different, but creative as well.

I hope so.

You might start your own podcast.

Who knows?

I don't have the patience.

I've been thinking, but I'd definitely like to write a book.

That's on my bucket list.

Yeah, like a fiction.

I don't know, is his book fiction?

I think it is fiction, but some of the characters, I think it's like, it's inspired by real life stories, but I think it's fiction, yeah.

Most fiction.

It's actually a series of short stories.

It's like a short story book.

Great.

It's short stories, but it's pretty cool.

You should read it.

I will.

Really good.

I recommend it.

Great.

Yeah, so I would like to do that.

I think I might be doing another soundtrack for a board game.

It's set in ancient Rome, but it's not confirmed yet.

I just spoke to the company and they said we'd really like you to do it.

I've been developing another board game, a different one.

It's a deck builder.

And I wonder how you could get involved in that.

Maybe I could.

I mean, if it's a deck builder, does it have a board or is it just cards?

It's mostly just cards.

Yeah, it doesn't have...

It's like a board, but you don't need the board.

It's more like...

Can I just say, you always need a board.

There's a board, but it's not as important as for other games.

I have a game that's absolutely...

It's so good.

It's called Vampire Empire.

It's a card game and it's basically this two -player game.

One of you is, there's a group of people and one of you is a vampire and one of you is a human and you don't know which people are vampires or humans and you just play cards to kind of challenge each other to test who is what.

It's a social deduction game.

Yeah, but it's between two people, which is an amazing concept.

okay i love it and i love the art i love the game design it's brilliant however i just wish they had a board just to place the cards just for some sense of geography i understand i understand i just for someone who's but to me but ball games are visual medium so yeah my game is a deck builder and you have like a first of all everybody has a mental health track and so that's like one mini board and then there is also a big board with like because this game is a deck builder where you are an english learner uh passing exam so in this it shows you like which exams you've passed and what bonus you've you've taken and that's that's it it's a deck builder so it's inspired by dominion actually Dominion.

You are an English student that is trying to pass.

Everybody is an English student.

I think I need to get you to play it, man.

Because I think you would like the vibe of it because you are an English teacher too.

Basically, it's not like...

Some people get the wrong impression when they hear me explain this.

They think it's an English learning game that they will learn English through the game.

No.

It's just a deck builder game with the theme of English...

Or any language learning, basically.

You're passing exams like A1, A2.

You want to get to C2.

Can you do, is there IELTS in it?

No, no.

Right, okay.

Because there's a chance for some good satire with IELTS.

No, no, it's not like that.

It's just, yeah.

That's such an interesting concept.

You need to see it.

I think it's not too bad.

I think it's all right.

The people that have played it, nobody gave me some bad feedback.

It's just my only question is, is it replayable enough?

So that's something I'm still trying to work on because to balance all the cards, there are a lot of cards in the game.

So to balance all the cards is the biggest challenge.

Some cards seem to be more popular than others, and then people want to get that.

I'd really like to see it.

I'll show you.

I don't know how you would soundtrack that.

There's always a way.

Probably not a soundtrack, but maybe you could get involved in some other way.

To be honest, like...

My problem is that I have a lot of these ideas and even I make it into a state where people even play it.

But then how can I get it?

How can I get it further?

When it starts to like monetizing it, I always give up because I don't know what to do.

Or maybe I'm not good at like surrounding myself with the right kind of people who would help me.

There's a theory that a lot of artistic types end up.

addicts taking drugs, drinking, whatever.

And the reason is because they're always so disappointed that they can't achieve a level of success that they sort of are worthy of because they just don't have that killer instinct, the marketing.

I don't, I don't.

And they sort of think that they end up just drinking themselves just to kind of just get out of it because it's so depressing.

What happens to me is that I keep sort of like, working on the game and sort of like fall in love with it and then I overdo it I make it way too complex add too many cards but I should be like cutthroat about it like if I don't need this card in the game what is it actually doing nothing out you know and I need someone like that that would team up with me and help me publish this game because I think the idea is pretty cool and the theme is good but I mean, you need to see it.

I would love to see it.

I think the rule is that if you're doing it more for yourself than the player, then you've lost your way.

Of course.

Whenever I make a game, the biggest criterion for me, if it's good or not, is do people actually enjoy playing it?

yeah do they want to play it again and i've had i've had people who wanted to play it again i've had people who didn't want to play it again but then again these people are often spoiled for choice because they they place they can play so many games and you are competing against like well well -known games right so like it's it's like Any new person that tries my game is really valuable for me to see.

I would love to.

I would love to see it.

I'd definitely give you some advice.

It's on Tabletop Simulator, so whenever.

Cool.

That's a bit of a private conversation for you, listeners of Zdenek's English podcast.

That happens on this podcast too sometimes.

I think it's actually interesting because it makes it a very authentic podcast.

Jack, I want to thank you for your appearance, for your comeback.

And wish you all the best with your future endeavors, whether it's with voice acting or script writing or soundtrack making, you name it.

And yeah, thank you very much.

Thank you, Zane.

It's great to see you, mate.

And I'll be playing your game soon.

Nice one.

Take care, everyone.

And don't forget, if you're watching this on YouTube, to smash the like button.

All right.

Take care.

Bye -bye.

Bye -bye.

Thanks a lot for listening.

For more information, visit my new website, teachersdenek .com, where you can find out about my speaking group for high -level English learners called the Achievers Chamber and download my free course, Unlocking Your English Potential, Eight Secrets to Fluency.

That's teachersdenek .com.