Redwood Bureau - Podcast Rankings and reviews

Ever since I first started listening to this podcast I was hooked, every time a new episode comes out I make sure I am on time to listen, it’s quite the masterpiece you got going here, and I am fully invested. I love imagining what the monsters look like through the descriptions given. I also love how there is actually a story tying everything together. And how things are starting to get closer and closer to becoming out of anyone’s hands. Each episode has me on the edge of my seat and I even sometimes read the transcript to make sure I don’t miss anything. I truly love this Podcast, and I recommend it to friends a lot. I plan to keep on listening to this podcast and watch the story expand and watch the progress made to take down the bureau. Keep up the great work, and remember, this world is a strange one;)

Excellent and immersive podcast
A heady blend of horror, scifi with overtones of the X Files and the Twilight Zone

From listening from episode one all the way to the most recent one, its been great all around. some episodes are better than others depending on your preference, but you can get lost in & vision each episode definitely keeps you wanting more would highly recommend

Just kinda seems like the voice actors can’t do anything but read off a paper. It’s also pretty obvious when there’s a mistake made and they splice it out, making the next word of a sentence come off really weird. Not to mention that the beginning and end of every podcast, the narrator uses the same lingo saying things like “the most diabolical experiment”. Every experiment or event talked about is seemingly “the most” whatever. Also I know I’m not the writer here but maybe you guys can dial it back on the “it felt like someone was watching me”. It’s quite literally in every episode and it’s really played out. The stories are definitely interesting but at a point it’s basically the same set up and delivery everytime. There isn’t much room for mystery or anticipation.

I don’t think there’s a point to leaving a negative review if it doesn’t come with actionable critique, but if I’m going to rate this lowly I want to have an explanation. If you the creator read your reviews, my intention is not to be upsetting. None of what I’m saying is to insult you, just to offer suggestions at improvement

Put down the thesaurus. When you’re writing first person accounts, they need to sound the way real people speak. Nobody uses words like “palpitations” when describing their trauma

Vary your speaking tone. An acting tip I’ve heard is to double space your script and then write down how the character feels above each line. Right now, there’s no vocal variation, it’s all the same informative/scared. Slowly add tension to your voice, and the audience will feel it

Tone down background sound effects. Not every action needs a stock footage sound accompanying it. The random screams and scare chords feel like a good example of telling, instead of showing. Your audience shouldn’t need a scream to tell them that something you just said was scary, they should already be feeling it. Also, a lot of the background noise is a bit loud, consider reducing its volume

Show, don’t tell. There’s a lot of spelling things out, which doesn’t work in most writing but especially not in horror

Good horror is in the relatability. When you’re writing horror in the first person, make sure your protagonist has some aspect of themselves that ties them to the audience, some quality that’s more or less universal. Of the three episodes I’ve listened to (Hiders, Trickster, and Flesh Melding), all of them are from the POV of just some guy, with no real relatable traits, besides some stock tropes. It feels like a mannequin talking, and I’m not afraid of what happens to a mannequin

The horror in the three episodes I’ve listened to ultimately comes from a fear of pain. Each episode describes something unstoppable that wants to hurt people. And there’s so much more to horror outside of that. Monsters don’t need to be creepy gory things, or spindly slender men, or razor demons to be scary. Death by claw can sometimes be a blessing when survival means dealing with your trauma. Graphic descriptions only go so far, what’s really scary is writing that puts the listener in the character’s shoes, that makes them feel like they’re there, that this could happen to them, that they’ve experienced things like this before. Just some things to consider when writing, maybe these are concepts explored in any of the episodes from 3-59, but I don’t think I’ll be listening further.

Ultimately, the writing style feels a bit… desperate. A bit too much like a standup comic begging you to laugh. Trust in your writing, trust in your scenarios, and you won’t need to beg the audience to be scared along with you

(The show was a 5 star):
I love the concept of the redwood bureau they’re similar to the SCP foundation but far less humane. The thing that really sells this podcast to me has got to be the delivery of the stories the build up is fantastic and the tension is palpable. I highly recommend giving this podcast to listen if you’re a fan of the SCP foundation or if you just a really like a good horror story.

Edit: I feel like I needed to change my review because initially the stories were being told by an incredible voice actor, who put a lot of emotion into the characters and stories, but it seems that recently they’ve been using lower and lower quality voice actors and it really takes away from the stories. I’ve found the ladder episodes to be rather boring with their deadpan delivery of the stories.

Edit #2 The show feels AI generated at this point.