Category: Development Blog
We’re excited to announce that Tahira: Echoes of the Astral Empire has launched for PC, Mac and Linux, on Steam and GOG.com.
After a little bit over three years of development time, we’re very happy with the quality level of the game.
Have a look at the release date announcement trailer below:
Character Details:
Name: Baruti
Gender: Male
Ethnicity: North African
Age: 55
Baruti is an experienced warrior and General of Avestan’s (a small medieval kingdom) Army.
He is a strong character, used to leading and commanding men. He’s experienced the worst that humanity is capable of, but has not let it change his sense of right and wrong. He does have a softer more fatherly side and has taken on the role of uncle for his king’s daughter, princess Tahira.
Voice Direction:
We’re looking for a big, deep, interesting voice, with either a neutral accent or an accent that would be at home in Northern Africa. The voice should be charismatic and effortlessly commanding. Think James Earl Jones playing Mufasa in The Lion King.
Feel free to send through as many ideas as you want.
Audition Lines:
Princess Tahira, your solitude is a luxury your people can no longer bear. A vast army sweeps across the land, seeking to reach a place amongst the stars once more. You are the last of your lineage, the last Great Conduit.
Will you remain aloof and abandon your people, or will you stand with us and fight? Will you help your people despite their faults, and develop the power within yourself? Do not be afraid, the fight is not yours alone.
Recording Details:
Recording will take place in January; we are ready to go once we have the right voice. We have a recording studio in Canberra booked. We are looking to record 11 lines for Baruti. The recording session shouldn’t take longer than 1-2 hours.
Payment Details:
The successful Applicant will be paid $100 for the role (negotiable). There is the possibility of further work depending on the success of an upcoming Kickstarter campaign.
Application Requirements:
You must either be based in Canberra, be happy to travel to Canberra or have the capacity to professionally record your own voice work. We would consider covering the travel expenses of the right applicant. We can provide accommodation for anyone who does need to travel.
We need all applications in by January the 18th. The sooner the better though.
Please send audio of you performing the audition lines to peterc@whalehammergames.com
Use the subject line – Baruti Voice Actor Application – followed by your name.
State where you are based and any other pertinent information. Phone recordings are fine, but please try and make it a clear recording.
Character Details:
Name: Tahira
Gender: Female
Ethnicity: Persian
Age: 22
Tahira is the princess of a small kingdom on a sci-fi planet where technology levels have regressed to medieval levels.
She struggles with anxiety, but is headstrong and does not back down in an argument. She’s an experienced traveler, who spends much of her time camping in the less than hospitable lands that surround her kingdom.
Voice Direction:
We’re looking for an interesting female voice, which isn’t high pitched or particularly girly, with no particular accent (especially no Australian accents). The voice should have some texture; we’re not looking for something like Cate Blanchett’s Galadriel in Lord of the Rings.
Feel free to send through as many ideas as you want.
Audition Lines:
Once, it is said, we roamed the stars with impunity. I do not know if that is true. All I know, is a decaying world, where we squabble over scraps. Where the strong take what they want, and the weak suffer. It is a world I want no part of.
Recording Details:
Recording will take place in January; we are ready to go once we have the right voices. We have a recording studio in Canberra booked. We are looking to record eight lines for Tahira. The recording session shouldn’t take longer than 1-2 hours.
Payment Details:
The successful Applicant will be paid $100 for the role (negotiable). There is the possibility of further work depending on the success of an upcoming crowdfunding campaign.
Application Requirements:
You must either be based in Canberra, be happy to travel to Canberra or have the capacity to professionally record your own voice work. We would consider covering the travel expenses of the right applicant. We can provide accommodation for anyone who does need to travel.
We need all applications in by January the 18th. The sooner the better though.
Please send audio of you performing the audition lines to peterc@whalehammergames.com
Use the subject line – Tahira Voice Actress Application – followed by your name.
State where you are based and any other pertinent information. Phone recordings are fine, but please try and make it a clear recording.
Lead Writer Peter Castle and Lead Artist Peter Simpson sat down with the fine folks at Final Round Gaming to talk about Tahira: Echoes of the Astral Empire. You can read the full interview here.
Tell us the basics of your game world? Where are we?
Peter Castle (Writer): The game is set in a far-flung future, roughly a thousand years after the collapse of the Astral Empire. The Empire spanned a large part of the universe and represented the peak of humanity’s technological innovations.
On the planet that our story takes place, civilisation is still reeling from the Empire’s disintegration, and most of the population lives in isolated medieval kingdoms. A huge amount of knowledge has been lost, including the ability to use Empire technology. Its use required a particular genetic trait that was added artificially. Very few people still have this trait, rendering what remains of the Empire’s technology largely useless and the people who can use it valuable.
Who is Tahira? What is her influence on the story?
Peter Castle (Writer): Tahira is the very reluctant princess of a small and fairly unimportant kingdom called Avestan, which she runs away from before we pick up her story in the game. She returns home to find Avestan besieged by a mysterious army who are claiming to be descendants of the Astral Empire. Left without a choice the situation pushes her into a leadership role she doesn’t want, as she attempts to lead and protect what is left of her people.
Lead Writer on Tahira, Peter Castle, was interviewed by the Academy of Interactive Entertainment about the game. Read the full interview here.
Would you be able to let us know more about your upcoming game?
One of the graduates from my screen class, a friend who studied at the ANU and I started our own independent game studio called Whale Hammer Games. We’re currently working on our first game called Tahira: Echoes of the Astral Empire.
The elevator pitch would be – It’s a turn-based tactics game for the PC, in which you play as Princess Tahira leading her people across a dying planet.
As you traverse the world, you’re being chased by the enemy who destroyed your kingdom and who seem hell bent on reclaiming the lost technologies of the past.
The world you’re travelling across is set after the fall of an advanced human civilization, so your technology at the time of playing is more in line with medieval weaponry. As you play you’ll find relics of the advanced civilisation all over the place, crashed battleships in the sand, abandoned cities and other things, I want to keep under wraps for now. It’s been a really interesting challenge to bring that world to life in the art and the writing.
The game draws a lot of gameplay inspiration from games like Fire Emblem, Advance Wars, X-COM and other turn-based tactics games we played when we were kids. One of the things I always thought could be improved was the story and setting. We want people to be emotionally invested in the characters in Tahira and that will hopefully mean they care even more about winning the battles.
When will people be able to get their hands on Tahira?
Internally we’re playtesting at the moment. We are aiming to have the first playable demo available late this year or early 2015.
We have a very big story that draws a lot of inspiration from movies like Nausica of The Valley of the Wind and a lot of science fiction and fantasy novels I read when I was younger. To do justice to the world and the characters we decided to split the game into smaller parts. We’re hesitant to call it episodic at this point because until all the parts are in and fleshed out we’re not sure how long each game will be. At this stage we’re thinking around 10 hours for each game, with the emphasis being placed on the combat, setting and characters.
It’s been really great to scope the game into these smaller pieces. For example, I’m the one writing the game and it has allowed me to write a very distinct character arc for Tahira (our main character) for part one. When you finish part one you won’t have resolved the whole plot, but you will have experienced a complete narrative arc for Tahira and that’s really exciting to me. It would be much more challenging to have written the game that way if it was just me trying to write this epic 30 hour RPG.