Setting Up Your Own Character and Voice in Epstein Island Game

Six character models, each with its own build

The selection comes straight from the game and covers six models. They differ in height and gear, and both are locked to the model: you cannot toggle off the hairstyle, cap, or vest individually, they are listed as notes under each character.

If you want a slim silhouette, take Sonja at 1.68 meters; if you want to stand out, take Tomasz at 1.92. The role labels are part of the character and say nothing about your abilities in the game, they only describe the model.

• Ravi, security guard, 1.83 m: cap, sunglasses, tactical vest
• Sonja, patrol, 1.68 m: bun, high-vis vest with reflective stripes
• Tomasz, night watch, 1.92 m: full beard, heavyset, tactical vest
• Amara, reception, 1.74 m: braids, baseball cap, no vest
• Bruno, gate and barrier, 1.79 m: baseball cap, sunglasses, high-vis vest
• Nils, dog handler, 1.71 m: beanie, stubble, no vest

Skin tone, hair, top, pants: four sliders, nothing more

Four color values can be changed. Next to each slider sit swatches you can tap, and they are not made up: they are the exact tones the six characters wear in the game itself, converted into screen colors, plus the default value. The default is a tan skin tone, dark brown hair, an olive green top, and dark blue pants.

Want something of your own, reach for the color picker next to it. Only a complete six-digit color value gets accepted, anything else the game silently discards so no broken color ends up in your profile. One button resets all four values back to default.

The editor on the website is a fitting room. Your character actually gets saved in the game itself, in the character menu, and in the browser prototype that profile stays in exactly the browser where you created it.

TipPick your color once the motion is running. An olive green top looks different standing still than it does dancing in backlight.

Wave, dance, cheer, sit: watching the character in motion

The preview is not a still image. You drag with the mouse or use the arrow keys to rotate the character, and you can trigger four animations. Waving takes two seconds, cheering 1.67, and both play once through before returning to idle. Dancing and sitting stay on until you tap them again.

The model carries more than the editor shows: in the game, the same six characters also have walking at one second, running at 0.75, and swimming at a 1.33 second clip length. Anyone with reduced motion set in their operating system gets the character held still once the transition finishes.

If the actual model fails to load, a plain placeholder character appears with a note explaining why. That is more honest than an empty box, but you will not see your color choice in that case.

Recording your own voice: 6 to 15 seconds

For the voice, you read out a fixed line the game provides. The recording runs between six and fifteen seconds, a bar shows your level, and the time remaining counts down next to it. After fifteen seconds it stops on its own.

Two things get filtered out before anything is even sent: a recording under six seconds and one that is too quiet. The game flags both as an error, and you record again. You can listen back at any point, playback runs in the browser from the cache.

After that you check the consent box, and only then does the clone button become active. Without the checkbox, nothing happens, not even by accident. If everything goes through, your character immediately speaks a line from the game so you can hear how you sound in conversation.

TipRead the sample line through calmly instead of watching the seconds tick by. A rushed recording turns into a rushed in-game voice.

What gets stored and how you get rid of it again

What gets stored: the recording as an uncompressed WAV file, its checksum, the ID of the line you read, the length, the time of your consent, and the generated audio files of your responses. That sits in the game server's database at OVH in France. The recording is never delivered to any browser, not even your own.

To generate spoken lines, the recording goes through a dedicated relay to the provider Replicate in the United States, without your name, email, or account number, only an identifier with no link to your account. The legal basis is your consent, which you can withdraw for the future at any time.

In your account there is a card showing the status of your voice: how long it has been on file, how long the recording was, how many lines have been generated from it, and whether it is currently in use. There are two switches there. Turning it off means your character speaks with the default voice again, but the recording stays on file. Deleting removes the recording, every generated file, and the copy at the provider, after a confirmation step so it never happens by accident.

What does not happen is stated just as clearly in the privacy policy: other players never hear your voice, the island's own characters never speak with it, and no model gets trained on it.

Try it without an account, keep it with one

You can try the recording itself without signing in. It then stays in your browser, nothing goes to a server, and the button says exactly that instead of pretending to make a clone. Only with an account does it turn into an actual in-game voice.

Sometimes the microphone is blocked on a page. In that case, instead of an error, a calm note appears saying the recording works inside the game itself. Check your browser's microphone permission for the page if that happens.

Your voice only applies to the responses you select yourself in conversation. How the island's residents get their voices instead, and who actually lives on the island, is covered in Characters and Residents.