On February 17, 2022, Square Enix released “Voice of Cards: The Forsaken Maiden” (PS4/Switch), and the PC version is also available on Steam today (February 18).
This is the second installment in the “Voice of Cards” series, following “Voice of Cards: Dragon’s Island”, which focuses on the tabletop feeling of the narrated scenario and the use of dice and cards.
4gamer has released a new email interview with the main development team that gives high hopes about the direction and the future of the series. This is a translation of the most important tidbits of the interview.
Creative Director: Mr. Taro Yoko
Executive Producer: Yosuke Saito
Music Director: Mr. Keiichi Okabe
Character Designer: Kimihiko Fujisaka
Scenario Writer: Yuki Wada
Director: Maasa Mimura
Creative Director: Mr. Taro Yoko
Mr. Taro Yoko, in his twisted manner again, says he had Mr. Fujisaka the illustrator draw a lot of art, and Mr. Wada, a young writer, write the scenario by working for low wages. In other words, this means the highlights are capitalism and seniority-based violence. Jokes aside, he said that his games often get responses about being difficult or too hard to understand, while in voice of cards none of that happened. The team tried to make it as simple and easy to understand as possible, and it was a success.
Taro Yoko chose Mr. Shou Hayami as the new game master because he listened to his voice and found that he fit the story the best, purely based on his voice quality and not his experience in voice actors. His favorite character is also the first doll/plushie that appears in the game.
Executive Producer: Mr. Yosuke Saito
Mr. Saito has said that they always planned for the “Voice of Cards” IP to be extended as a series, and that they plan to continue developing the series in the future depending on the sales of the two games. The game’s response has been very favorable from people who enjoy Tabletop games, which was the aim from the start.
His favorite character is the cute Rait.
Music Director: Keiichi Okabe
According to Mr. Okabe, the previous game had a Celtic feel to it, but for this game, he was asked to add a Latin flavor based on the atmosphere of the previous game. The music is not a cheerful Latin style like samba, but a melancholy Latin style like tango, mixed with the fantasy-like elements from the previous game.
The music was created to go hand in hand with the calm voices of the game masters: Hiroki Yasumoto and Shou Hayami, and with the help of various talented people, they were able to achieve their vision without problems.
Character Designer: Kimihiko Fujisaka
For the character design, In the previous game, they were aiming for the orthodox “The medieval fantasy RPG”, “The early days of games!” and “The first Dracula game!”. This time, they are aiming for something a little more catchy and vivid, like a game or anime from the 2000s.
They designed the maiden and her attendant as a pair from the start, and took careful care to differentiate their silhouettes from the other story pairs. His favorite character is the final boss.
Scenario writer: Yuki Wada
According to the writer, the previous game had a strong comical aspect, but the characters in this game are more mature in age, and the overall atmosphere is more relaxed, with some bitterness after the ending of each episode, that always makes you think: “Was this the right thing to do?”.
He tried to explain everything in this game in text, unlike Nier Re[In]Carnation, in which he didn’t say much, and also added some pauses in the dialogue to express the atmosphere. The world is inside the mind of Rati, the heroine a dream world where everything is possible. The rest of this answer is omitted for spoilers.
The writer loves all his characters, but his favorite is definitely Rati, the heroine who turned out to be a mysterious character with rich expressions, even though she doesn’t speak any words.
Director: Maasa Mimura
The director mostly talks about how they wanted to make this game a fresh experience through spinning different stories and enhancing the expression of the unique aspects of these stories. They added coordination skills and redesigned the dungeon gimmicks to take advantage of the unique aspects of this title.
The characters were created with rich and unique details like the ornaments and the texture of the clothes. He likes the main character most of all.