Play visual novel
Dead Air's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Category: Voice Acting | #5 | 4.831 | 4.831 |
| Category: Music | #16 | 4.662 | 4.662 |
| Visuals | #17 | 4.877 | 4.877 |
| Story | #24 | 4.723 | 4.723 |
| Category: Cinematography | #25 | 4.569 | 4.569 |
| Overall Experience | #32 | 4.738 | 4.738 |
Ranked from 65 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Content Warnings
This game deals with grief and depression, and features the mild swearing one might expect from a grungy grad student in the early '90s (which is to say, a nice smattering of f-bombs).
Log Line
And they say radio is dying . . .
Team Credits & Cast
Dead Air was developed by the FeatherBoy team & friends! Specifically, Benjamin Feinstein & Eli Hersh directed and wrote the story together, with Hersh as the Head Writer (and notebook doodler) and Feinstein serving as Project Head (along with programming, SFX, backgrounds, and assistance on music, sprites, and voice editing). Caleb Feinstein was Head Sprite Artist, Kiera Rhodes served as head of Voice Direction, and additional voice editing was provided by FeatherPops. The game's cast features: Zoe D. Lee as Kadie Kaolo, Jackson Zappa as Signal 103.1 AM KRPT-IC / John AM Drive, Kiera Rhodes as Signal 832.0 AM KPBLC-RD / Diana Quartz, Allain Armean as Kuo Kaolo, and, in the AM Drive Studio, Marcus Roman as Uncle Vampire, Eli Hersh as Jon, and Benjamin Feinstein as Phone Tap Victim. Music was composed and performed by Marcus Roman, Ellis Piper, and Benjamin Feinstein. The title theme, Supermassive Burnout, was composed by Marcus Roman, with lyrics by Benjamin Feinstein and performance by Marcus Roman. Renditions of the Amis folk song Fangcalay A Dadaya within the game were sung by Zoe D. Lee and Allain Armean.
Work Start Date
Oct 1
Which engines and/or plugins did you use? (NaniNovel, Light.VN, etc.)
TyranoBuilder
University League Participant
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
Ahhh it made me cry! What a lovely story, which isn't surprising coming from this team. Such endearing characters, wonderful art, and music and voice acting that sit so comfortably alongside neighbouring elements. A visual novel with so much heart. Awesome entry, team!
The style, voice acting, and overall immersive atmosphere of this game make it a real standout of the season! Beautiful work!
What a delightfully unique entry. The handcrafted character and set were amazing and so cool to see. The writing was top tier, the characters felt real and were really brought to life by the incredible voice actors. It was a really beautiful and sad story and I really enjoyed it. Just brilliant, great job team!
What an absolute vibe. Actually crazy that you guys have created something of this quality in just a month. I'm really interested in this alternative timeline where technology is slightly more advanced than it was in 93, but still maintains an authentic take on that era aesthetically.
Wicked soundtrack - I could just chill out with this in the background to anything. Voice acting was brilliant. Great story and writing. Really cool and unique premise. Stop motion model + physical set is incredible. Genuinely enjoyed every aspect of this game tbh. The only thing that slightly bothered me was no fullscreen, then again it was maybe there and I'm just dumb lol.
All in all, absolutely top quality game, and whilst it works fantastically as a standalone story, I'd be intrigued to see more stories in this universe and style. I guess visual novel's belong in a fairly niche market and therefore difficult to monetize, but if this was adapted and expanded in to more of narrative adventure game I could see this doing quite well in the indie sphere. Something akin to Harold Halibut for example - I can definitely see potential in something like that. Just my 2 cents! Anyway, incredible work. Big congratulations to everyone involved, and thanks for a great experience! All the best :)
Thank you so much!!! We tried to hit a bit of a floating time period energy, balancing early 90s computing with readouts and displays that would be a be dated even for the time - so we get NSFNET and MCI Mail -like messaging tools and and an Atari ST -like computer, but hooked up to a mess of old oscilloscopes and radio tower terminals, calling out to an LES series satellite. Glad to hear that the vibes worked!!
It's definitely a project we'd love to revisit and expand some of the graphics on, the whole team ended up making a really satisfying world. We're planning to release a mastered version of the soundtrack at some point too!
I really enjoyed the game! The voice acting is amazing, and the visuals are super memorable and fitting to the overall atmosphere!The writing was a real highlight for me too! Kadie’s voice is so specific and funny, and I loved how much of her character comes through the half-typed messages she never sends. These subtle storytelling points make it feel much more real and interesting. This goes for her dad as well. Despiting being never in the scene, we get to know all about him entirely through what he left behind, and it was beautifully done. Overall, though, it’s a really lovely story!
Thank you!! We put a lot of love into writing this one, and were definitely enjoying making Kadie (and her dad) feel realistically awkward and human. Those half-typed messaged were something we were actually going back and forth on a bit in the editing process, so it's gratifying to hear that they helped add to that!
Played this with our team and everyone really enjoyed it! The voice acting was amazing and we loved the overall aesthetic. The physical set with stop motion looked great! The music was also super fitting and added a lot to the whole atmosphere. I was pretty locked into the story the entire time and didn't really even notice how much time had passed. I could keep yapping, but to quickly summarize, we loved your game!
Also, I gotta ask... is that a drawing of Squidward Bold and Brash on the table? I wasn't going to ask but then there was mention of a sea sponge so... (You can also just call me insane if I'm wrong 😌)
We had some bugs that we noticed that we also wanted to let you know about, not sure if anyone else has already brought it up or not. (Windows downloaded version.)
1. We opened up the settings menu mid game and it seemed like it would cause the background to freeze until you opened and closed the settings again. (It was frozen for a good while.)
2. Upon finishing the game and restarting, we skipped back to the choice for which folder to search. The answer to proceed was missing and after going through the other two, we were locked out from continuing. (Could be a variable thing, or maybe I just broke something on our end?)
3. During some sections, it seemed like the text speed was slowed down a lot in places that seemed like it wasn't intentional? I don't really have an exact spot for this, but it did happen a few times. (Or again, maybe I accidentally messed with something?)
Anyways, again, amazing game! Thanks for making it!
Thank you so much - it means a ton!!!! Sadly not squidward, but I wish. Without getting too spoilery for others reading the comments, that's a more detailed sketch Kuo did of some of the same doodles he made in the end credits - based on some of the same information (and pictures) Kadie can receive if you choose to exchange biology notes in the research section!
We also just pushed a new build! In theoryyyyyy most of those bugs should now be fixed (especially for windows, and especially for the settings menu breaking the backgrounds).
Thank you so much for playing!!
This is absolutely lovely and heartfelt and it was a wonderful experience! The voice acting was fantastic and really brought life to the characters. I'll miss Signal too! It really reminded me of a tight little indie movie (but a VN!) which makes sense for a gamejam. The rustic feeling crafted backgroudns and character really fit the vibes well and were wonderful to look at. I also really dug the VHS effect (how'd you do that lol.) The Playing in the browser version in firefox on my mac some of the transitions were a little rough, and sometimes took away from those otherwise lovely visuals, but with a little smoothing out of those it'll be absolutely fantastic!
Ty!! Our voice actors really knocked it out of the park with this one. The VHS effect is a few different short movie files, overlaid on the gamescreen with a "lighten" blend mode - which led to the neat natural effect of things getting more staticy / noisey in dark scenes!
AM Drive my beloved...
This game was utterly astounding to see, even upon first impression of the page! It's so rare to see people tackle mixed media with such tight time constraints and I have to say you absolutely nailed it. AND WITH FULL VOICE ACTING.
I had to save scum just to see all the endings because it felt like I had been through a war with this cast and I refused to leave wondering what else was left on the table!
My really only note would be that, at times, I desperately craved a higher energy from the dialogue (but I also acknowledge the lower and more mundane energy of the game is the ENTIRE point of the narrative, so it's hard to really say that as any critique! ((I also think this was because of my denial that I was invested in this wonderfully melancholic story lol)) It reminds me vaguely of Night in the woods and that is extraordinary praise!
Thank you so much!!!! It truly means a ton to hear - especially hearing you explored some of the other endings, even through the melancholy!
One hell of a story. I couldn't get up from my seat until I finished it. What courage to create that universe in a real and palpable way! I don’t even need to imagine the titanic amount of work behind it, because I occasionally create some DIY projects myself and know how much effort goes into it.
No further praise is needed; you have done a wonderful job!
Thank you so much, our artists put a ton of care and attention into making the world look awesome :)
This game is amazing. I got glued to the characters, story, music and voice acting the entire way through and got emotional at the end. The characters are charming and the visuals are amazing. This is definitely one of the best games on this jam I've seen so far, great job to everybody! OuO
Thank you so much, so happy you enjoyed it!!!
Woah, this is amazing! Perfect voice acting, interesting visuals, a top-notch story. This is my favorite from the jam so far, and it'll be really hard to top ^_^
That means so much!! Thank you for playing :)
This was so, so good. I was glued to my screen the whole time. The visuals were so unique and fun to look at, and the voice acting was amazing! This made me emotional and got me to laugh out loud a couple times. What a great story and a wonderful piece of art!
Thank you so much!! We had so much fun making it, I'm really glad it gave you feelings and laughs :))
Wow.
It really kept me hooked. The visuals and voice acting were so well done. Those radio show sfx were also perfection.
But the writing was what made sure I stuck around.
I could gush about the little details and design of the character and set too. And the lighting. REALLY GOOD WORK.
Thanks for putting this out into the world
Thank you for playing!! It really means so much to us :)
I can't exactly describe why but this game gives me What Remains of Edith Finch vibes. Overall, a really beautiful piece of composition! Music, stop motion, voice acting, pacing, air horn sfx (lol)... everything blends together perfectly for impactful storytelling.
I'm the type of VN enjoyer that instantly clicks the auto button when voice acting is available, but I noticed that some of the longer voice lines cut off towards the end if I'm on auto mode. Not sure if this was due to text speed settings (maybe the default text speed is just a little too high for it to get through the longer voice lines?) or something else but just wanted to let you guys know!
That's high praise of a comparison - thank you so much!!! I'll investigate the auto setting - there' an autospeed adjustment under settings, and I can try to fiddle with what the default values are set to there a bit. We still have a few bugs to clean up, and we'll add that to the list for sure!
Wow, simply, wow. There was absolutely no aspect of this game that was anything less than awesome. You clearly thought everything through and did one heck of a job. If I had to say an aspect that hit the most, though, I'd say the writing, because, as a writer myself, I SAW WHAT YOU DID THERE.
Lastly, I think I encountered a bug. I was playing the web version and, a few minutes after the beginning, I lowered the music and sounds a bit. After that, the background did not change for a while, even though Kadie's image would change, creating some weird effects like her sitting on nothing.
Thank you so much!!!! It truly means a ton - the background issue is a known bug we're working on, but thankfully it resolves itself whenever the next background change is triggered.... we'll hopefully iron that out soon!!
Story was surprisingly heartfelt rather than scary but it looks great.
The room set in particular is so cute, did you have a lamp above it to represent the light and times of day? I also really liked the oversized jacket she wears.
Tysm!! Multiple lamps, actually - one for general lighting, one for directional sunlight, and then two colored ones outside of each window.
Kadie's jacket is one of my favorite parts of her character design :)
Wow very cool, I used to make stop motion films in my room and this brought back a ton of nostalgic memories, although I don't think my sets were ever as well made as this.
Yes. She's very relatable, especially to us scraggily dressed folk.
"Cast a bottle into the ocean and be sure to put something good in it."
I was already tearing up in the first few minutes because I knew where this was going. You really know how to hit those emotions.
Absolute amazing piece of work. Wonderful art, such fitting music, and hard-hitting prose. And then the voice acting, oh gosh, everyone was absolutely stellar.
Every Spooktober I look forward to playing your entry, and every year you present something new, different, and amazing.
Thank you for making this game. The whole team did an amazing job!
I'm so glad to hear it - it always means a lot to hear. The team really made something hard-hitting this year!
I played the web version! My only small complaint was that the text felt a little too small. (English isn't my first language, so it takes me a little longer to read.)
But this was such a wonderful story and a really great game! I especially loved the art style. It looked like you made the models yourself, which was really impressive. You can really tell how much love and care went into making this game.
Thank you for the kind words! We are definitely going to do another version coming soon and we'll keep your note about the text in mind and see what we can do!
It would be nice to have an option to adjust the text size, but I’m not sure if that’s something that can be easily implemented programmatically. Please take my advice with a grain of salt! And, once again, it was a really great game. I could really feel the love you put into it!
Painfully beautiful in every regard, and utterly unique...! Grief is one of those emotions that feels both universal and, at the same time, intensely intimate and private. Addressing it through a struggle to connect over (both literal and figurative!) distance feels particularly apt: reconciling the person you knew with the person known by others; the world in which they took active part, and the world in which they are absent, outside of memory; the experience of hearing a familiar voice, and then having it go silent, only remaining in recordings that can no longer reply or provide any answers.
The decision to go with physical, tactile artwork I think was a brilliant one, and drives home the sense that this story is personal, something that can be touched, almost. The voice acting was superb as well--and I always know I can trust a FeatherBoy game to be a favorite soundtrack.
This one will linger for a long time. Thank you, team--exceptional work!
Wow, completely and totally touched by your words :,) Really happy that this resonated!
Thank you so much!!! I'm so thrilled those themes were able to successfully come through. It means a whole bunch to hear, especially from you!
The visuals in this game were amazing! I would love to see an even bigger project with the style here.
The story has a very unique and interesting concept and wins bonus points from me for referencing Mt.Rainier and The Clash :3
Overall an enjoyable experience~
Thank you for playing! Glad you liked the referenced :) there was an Elvis Costello reference that didn't quite make the cut...