Voice Mods Can Make Your Favorite Games Feel Brand New Again
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There are countless types of video game mods out there, but my favorite by far are those that add voice acting to games that had none (or very little) to begin with. Often referred to as voice mods or vocalized mods, these free, community-made add-ons transform their respective games, often making older titles that I've gone through a half-dozen times feel almost brand new.
And so, in the spirit of Cheap Week, I wanted to take this opportunity to convince you to try out vocalized mods if you haven't already. After all, if you're looking to save money, you can't get cheaper than free. And if you've already bought a game that you love on PC, downloading a free vocalized mod is a fantastic way to enjoy that game again. These downloads are usually created by talented modders driven by a passion to create and a love for their favorite games, and also feature stellar voice talents.
Now, if I'm going to talk about these mods, I have to start with my absolute favorite: Stardew Voices, created by voice actor, software engineer, and Twitch streamer Shannon Hobby. As the name suggests, this mod adds voice acting to Stardew Valley--as of August 19, the mod adds voices for the 12 love interests included in the farming sim prior to Update 1.7: Abigail, Alex, Elliot, Emily, Haley, Harvey, Leah, Maru, Penny, Sam, Sebastian, and Shane.
And, honestly, that's enough. The dubbing covers all 12 characters' regular dialogue, as well as the special dialogue they have during annual festivals and the heart events that play as you befriend/romance them. Does this change how the game plays? No, not at all. But there's just something special about hearing that Abigail's voice is a tad deeper than the other women in the valley, that Sam is literally the human equivalent of a golden retriever, and that best-girl Haley does, in fact, consider herself above me upon our first meeting and is not playfully poking fun.
Stardew Voices makes the experience of Stardew Valley more immersive, and the first time I used it, it reignited my interest in chasing after certain moments and heart events again, after having seen so many of them over and over. The voice dubbing made these scenes feel new, and subsequently helped make Stardew Valley feel new again.
"At the time I decided to make this mod, the story of Stardew itself felt more relatable than ever," Hobby told me via email. "I was knee-deep in a tech career that I, frankly, wasn’t entirely ready for at the time, and feeling starved of the creative work I used to seek out as a teen.
"I thought a Stardew Valley voice-over mod would be a great idea and figured it was only a matter of time before someone made it," Hobby continued. "Even though I had all of the skills to make the project, I ran into all of the usual excuses: I don’t have enough time, it would be a waste to spend the money on voice actors when I can’t make a profit off of the final product, it’s probably not possible or else someone else would have already done it, etc."
Of course, Stardew Voices isn't the only fantastic voice mod. I first discovered this type of mod through
, a voice dubbing mod for Team Cherry's metroidvania. Hollow Knight already has voice acting, of course, but every character speaks in a gibberish language akin to how adults talk in Peanuts or The Sims' language of Simlish. So Hallownest Vocalized doesn't so much add voice acting to the game as it remakes it--the mod changes all speaking characters so that they use English. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFXN2rKDuhoDirected by Hollow Knight lore YouTuber Ccmaci, Hollownest Vocalized was a project that took two years and incorporated more than 100 volunteer voice actors. I love this mod a ton. Hollow Knight is already one of my favorite games, and warrior-princess Hornet is a big reason why. Artist and voice actor Lyco does a phenomenal job voicing Hornet in the mod, and in my mind the accent that Hollow Knight Vocalized gives Hornet is simply canonical to her character. It's tricky for me to replay Hollow Knight now without the mod.
And if I could be selfish for a bit here, I want more people to play mods like this so they'll talk about them and, hopefully, make them more popular. And with that popularity, I hope there's a greater degree of awareness from fans of just how much effort is put into mods like this. Plans for new ones pop up all the time, but many never reach fruition. Hallownest Vocalized follows on the heels of a 2021 mod project to do something similar but that just fizzled out, for example.
As more of these mods reach some semblance of a finish line, however, the blueprints for how to make more just like them become clearer. Hallownest Vocalized was the main inspiration for New Kunlun Vocalized, for example, a mod that will add voice dubbing to Nine Sols. The project was announced in May 2026, and, as of August 2026, auditions for voice actors are still open. The mod's creator, YouTuber Lirkz, told me via email that he spoke to Ccmaci ahead of the project and used the lessons learned for Hallownest Vocalized to frame his project.
"I reached out to Ccmaci around the start of serious development for the project; he was very helpful for a lot of things, but specifically, in relation to planning for challenges, [he offered] the advice to have backup actors in case something goes wrong during development," Lirkz said. "I'd go as far as to say I basically used HNV as a foundation to build NKV from, and I'm very thankful to Ccmaci for that, among other things. That being said, in HNV, Ccmaci definitely put great effort into voicing every single part of Hollow Knight--we have a slightly different goal with Nine Sols. Hollow Knight has a very expansive world, which tells its story more through the environment and small details than direct dialogue, which means it's very beneficial to voice everything."
He continued: "On the other hand, while Nine Sols also has a very expansive world and much environmental storytelling, it has a much clearer storyline told through direct dialogue, so we want to focus more specifically on that story than absolutely everything. We still plan to voice the very large majority of the 70,352 words within the game, all the direct dialogue and character interactions, even some prompts, but stuff like database entries and other things that would likely not have a voice--[those] are places where we may skip it in favor of focusing more on the story."
Part of me wishes that more game development studios were willing to take on the task of adding voice acting to their respective games in post-launch updates--especially any that have enjoyed overwhelming financial success and might be better equipped to shoulder the burden of time and resources. It's not like post-launch dubbing has never happened before either. Developer Voracious Games added voice acting to Potionomics two whole years after the game came out via a free update. That's a really cool update to do for your game that long after its release.
But that's the exception, not the norm. For whatever reason, balancing boss encounters, fixing user-interface issues, adding brand-new levels or areas or weapons, or any of the other types of content updates the games get, are all quite normal. But retroactively adding voice acting is just not something our industry does, leaving it to fan-made mods that don't garner the creators any money for their time and efforts.
But I am at least happy with the few voice mods we've got. You'd be amazed at how different it feels to play through a game's story once primarily text-based conversations are brought to life with talented actors, and the hard work that goes into bringing these mods to life should be celebrated.
"This mod is my dream," Hobby said. "I would love to add voiceover to every game ever made and have that be what I do every day until I die. I’m grateful I got to do it at least once though."