Hello! We are Shadow Light, the developers of Kill the Shadow, currently surviving a breathlessly busy daily grind.
First of all - no, we haven’t run away, and we definitely didn’t take the money and disappear (haha, we never had any money to run away with in the first place!). We’re still here, working hard and doing our absolute best to bring the game to life.
Lately, aside from questions about the release date, many of you have been asking:
“What on earth are you doing every day?”
As those of you who’ve seen our previous roadmap already know, we’ve been working on a lot: new content, optimization improvements, and a variety of other updates.
The most important part among them is the dubbing. Today, we’d like to talk a bit about the dubbing process. The Chinese dubbing has now been fully completed. Additionally, to show you that we really are working hard, we’re also releasing some behind-the-scenes footage from the recording studio.
📌29 voice actors, 100 characters, 2,000 lines of dialogue
To speak in concrete numbers: we worked with a total of 29 voice actors to dub more than 100 characters, and we recorded over 2,000 lines of dialogue. Most of this work consists of side stories and the main story. At a glance, these numbers may look like they were just written down casually, but they are proof of the effort and hard work we put in every single day.
🎙️ Casting: A Large-Scale Operation
For example, the father-and-son characters “Griff Flint” and “Axel Flint” were designed to be impatient and to speak in a Sichuan dialect. So we carefully reviewed and selected several voice actors from Sichuan.
“Little Trouble” uses a rough and strong dialect, while “Young Thorn” speaks with a Sichuan-style intonation mixed slightly with standard Mandarin—what you might call “Sichuan-style standard speech (川普)”—so it sounds funny yet endearing.
At the recording studio, we also revised lines together with the voice actors to enhance the emotional immersion that the dialect brings. Would you like to take a look at this video? “Aigo, I’m not doing it, I’m not doing it~!”
Captain Theo is the most important figure in the factory, with a large amount of screen time and many lines. To avoid breaking the player's immersion, we chose not to give him any regional dialect. Instead we chose to give the character a "high-pitched, sharp voice. Think of the eunuch side characters you often see in movies or dramas.
Because his tone is high and his way of speaking is unusual, you instinctively feel a bit uncomfortable when you first hear him. That discomfort is exactly the emotion we wanted to convey to you.
And this demanding character was brought to life perfectly by our dubbing director, Zhaizhu, who personally took on the role and delivered an exceptional performance.It was truly mesmerizing acting, hahaha.
Now, let’s talk about Mrs. Reed. She’s the person behind the Pig Cage Walled City: a powerful woman, married, and a mother. When interacting with her subordinates or anyone else, she embodies the classic “big-sister” or “empress-like” archetype: commanding, confident, and impossible to ignore.
The voice actor who plays this character deliberately slowed down her speech, suppressed her emotions, and used a lower and richer tone than an average woman to express authority. It’s the kind of voice that naturally makes the listener want to lower their head and obey.
But if your affinity with Mrs. Reed is high, she might show you a softer and more affectionate side.
Alright, here’s the highlight news! The Chinese dubbing alredy updated to the Kill the Shadow demo on Steam . When it’s released, please make sure to try it out and send us your sharp feedback. (Just a joke… but please don’t stab us with anything actually sharp!)
PS: And if, late at night, you hear someone mumbling, “Why isn’t it finished yet…?” it might just be our voices reaching you in your dreams as we stay up all night fixing bugs.
(No, what?… the sun is rising???)