AI ushers in new gameplay experiences, with individualised stories, lore, worlds and narration
London, July 6, 2023:
Magicave, the UK-based game studio, today announced Beneath The Six, a single and multiplayer turn-based roguelike game.
Beneath The Six blends exploration and discovery with character progression, magic and combat. Players combine beautiful, collectible, digital dice to create unique characters whose appearance and skills are based on the dice’s traits – a character cast from wizard dice will have strong magic powers; adding in some warrior dice may add weapon skills and strength to the mix.
Magicave and generative voice pioneers ElevenLabs have partnered to develop an in-game AI narrator in collaboration with actor Tom Canton, known for his role as Filavandrel, King of the Elves in Netflix’s hit TV show The Witcher.
Coupling innovative procedural dungeon and character generation with Canton’s AI narration enables Beneath The Six to generate a new world every day and, ultimately, to create unique worlds for individual players to explore, curate and challenge their friends. ElevenLabs CEO Mati Staniszewski commented “Our collaboration with Magicave and Tom Canton on Beneath The Six demonstrates how AI technology can unlock new game experiences which players have never seen, or heard, before.”
“Generative AI opens up gameplay possibilities we’re excited to explore,” added Ste Curran, Magicave’s Creative Director, “But you can’t explore them without the support of the creatives that make the work possible in the first place. We’ve read stories of actors being forced to sign agreements assigning their AI voice IP to game and tech companies – robbing them of future opportunities and literally taking their voice away. We want to build the future, but we also want a company that aligns with our values, so we’ve come up with a new business model we feel works for everyone.”
Both Magicave and ElevenLabs have a commitment to ensuring the rights of voice actors are protected. Magicave has assigned ownership of the AI voice to Tom Canton, licensing it from him for use in the game, while allowing him the freedom to use his AI voice in other media – whether games, voiceovers, animations, audiobooks or movies.
Beneath the Six is the first product in Magicave’s dNo® digital hobby franchise. Reminiscent of beloved pastimes like Warhammer or Dungeons & Dragons, dNo is based around beautiful, collectible digital dice, characters and worlds. The company is building in public – with regular public previews and streamed internal playtests available via the dNo Discord Server at https://discord.com/invite/dNoDice
Those on the Discord will be given early access to test aspects of the game throughout the development process. The first public tests of aspects of Beneath The Six will launch later this year. More information on the game and the dNo universe can be found here https://magicave.io/what-are-we-building or by following us on Twitter @dNoDice.
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dNo® is a registered trademark of Magicave Holdings Limited. Beneath The SixTM is a trademark of Magicave Holdings Limited. All rights reserved.
About Magicave
We’re building the next generation of digital toys. Beautiful, tactile, playful objects around which we’re building games, hobbies and communities. Founded by games industry veterans Harry Holmwood, Ste Curran and Ed Thorley in 2021, and backed by leading game creators and investors including Bitkraft, Fabric, Concept Ventures and Games Workshop co-founder Sir Ian Livingstone, Magicave is a fully remote team of developers, designers and artists across the world. Join our community and follow our progress on our Discord Channel (discord.com/invite/dNoDice), on Twitter (twitter.com/dNoDice) or see our website at www.magicave.io.
About ElevenLabs
Established in 2022, ElevenLabs is a voice technology research company developing world-leading text-to-speech software for publishers and creators. Their mission is to make content universally accessible.
The company was founded by childhood friends Mati Staniszewski and Piotr Dabkowski. Inspired by the ‘terrible’ dubbing of American movies they watched growing up in their native Poland, the pair set about designing a platform which could eliminate the linguistic barriers of content.
ElevenLabs’ research teams have pioneered text-to-speech capabilities which focus on combining two novel approaches to synthesising speech ultra-realistically – context awareness and high compression.
The ElevenLabs model is able to understand the relations between words and to adjust delivery based on context (‘contextual’ text-to-speech). Because there are no hardcoded voice features in the model, it can robustly predict thousands of voice characteristics while creating AI voices.
About Tom Canton
Tom is a London Irish actor known for playing Filavandrel, King of the Elves, in Seasons 1-3 of THE WITCHER on Netflix (2019-Present). He also reprised the role voicing Filavandrel in the Netflix Original Anime Film, The Witcher, Nightmare of the Wolf.
Other credits include FARMING, the 80s Skinhead true-life biopic of its director Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, starring Kate Beckinsale, which won the prestigious Best British Film Award at the Edinburgh International Film Festival (2018), Endeavour (2018) and The Good Karma Hospital for ITV (2017) and Wasted for Channel 4.
Since graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in 2012, theatre roles include his professional debut in the title role of Dorian Gray in ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’ at Ireland’s National Theatre, The Abbey, Dublin (2012), Pip in ‘Great Expectations’ at The Bristol Old Vic (2013), Heathcliff in ‘Wuthering Heights’ at the Gate Theatre, Dublin (2014-15), and also starring alongside Ralph Fiennes and Vanessa Redgrave in the 2016 production of William Shakespeare’s Richard III at the Almeida Theatre, London, directed by Artistic Director Rupert Goold, among many others.
