How to find voice actors for your indie game
By Buford Taylor, who runs Casting Call Club. Updated October 2026.
Voices make a small game feel big, but they can also eat your budget and your schedule if you don't plan. Around 2,800 game projects and 500 mods a year cast their voices on Casting Call Club. Here's what the smooth ones do.
Decide what actually needs a voice
- Barks are short reactions: grunts, "Over here!", "Ow!". They're cheap, and they make a world feel alive.
- Key scenes like the intro, the big reveal and the ending carry the most emotion per line.
- Fully voiced dialogue multiplies your cost, your editing time and every rewrite. Many great indie games voice only the first line of each conversation and let text do the rest.
Count your lines before you post. "About 60 lines, mostly short" tells actors more than any description.
Set a budget
For non-union indie work, these are common starting points:
| How you pay | Typical indie rate |
|---|---|
| Per line, recorded at home | $2 to $5 a line, with a minimum of $25 to $200 |
| Per hour, live directed session | $125 to $250 an hour |
| Flat fee per role | Whatever the lines add up to, agreed up front |
There's more detail on the indie rates page. Free mods and game jam projects are often unpaid, which is fine as long as nobody is selling the game. Paid roles get a lot more auditions, so even a small budget widens your choice.
Put it in writing
If the game is sold, agree on these before anyone records, even in a short email:
- The pay and when it's paid.
- What the lines can be used for: the game, its updates, trailers.
- How they'll be credited.
- That their voice won't be used to train AI or make a synthetic copy of them.
- How many retakes are included.
Run auditions
- Post each character with art if you have it, a few words on personality, and two or three real lines: one normal, one emotional, one combat bark.
- Say what you need back. Ask for full-quality recordings with no effects, made in a quiet room.
- Shortlist, then ask for one more read with a note. How someone takes direction tells you more than their first take.
- Send a line sheet to the people you cast: one row per line, with the file name, the character, the line, and a note on the moment.
Game roles on Casting Call Club are popular, and the typical one gets more auditions than animation or fan dub roles. Write a clear call and you'll have plenty to choose from. Here's a template.
Mods
Voiced mods for games like Skyrim and Fallout are a whole scene of their own. Say which game it's for, whether you need a match for an existing character, and that it's a free mod. Modders who finish attract actors for the next one.