Refractive Entertainment, the two-person studio behind the early-access action RPG Luminary, has pushed back on a Steam review that accused the game of using an AI-generated voice, saying the performance was recorded by creative director Keith Kolod's wife, according to reports from GameSpot and Dexerto.
The review, posted on September 10 by a player with 0.4 hours logged, marked Luminary as not recommended and said the voice made the game feel like an AI production. The character in question, the Temple Guardian, is the only voiced role in the game, GameSpot reported.
Kolod replied on the store page that his wife was a real person rather than AI and that the recording was her first time voice acting. He also said the studio does not use AI anywhere in the game.
We don't use AI at all in our game, we're just some indie game devs doing our thing with the resources we have.
On September 11, Kolod shared the review on X and questioned why players assume that indie voice work falling short of big-budget polish must be synthetic. Speaking to GameSpot over Discord, he said he has no objection to other developers using AI, but records voices himself because it lets him put parts of his family and friends into his games.
He told GameSpot that his wife, Mikell, was reluctant to take the part and nervous during the session, and that the lines were recorded a sentence or two at a time over several takes at his computer. Kolod said the character was written as a calm, ethereal figure that did not call for heavy acting.
Kolod said he built Luminary so that he, his wife and their son could play together, and designed it as an approachable introduction to action RPGs for players put off by the difficulty of Souls-style games. According to GameSpot, the studio has no funding, no publisher and no other source of income.
Luminary entered Steam Early Access on August 11. Kolod posted on August 25 that it had passed $100,000 in sales in its first week, or roughly $70,000 after Steam's cut, and GameSpot reported a Mostly Positive rating from nearly 350 user reviews. Kolod told the outlet that attention around the voice story had brought additional views and wishlists, but not yet a comparable increase in sales.
