games about learning languages
Вставка
- Опубліковано 8 чер 2024
- a video about a few games where there's a puzzle about trying to learn a constructed language, specifically Heaven's Vault, Sethian, and a game where if I say what game it is it's spoilers for that game.
outro music is First Contact from Rhythm Heaven Megamix
/ hbmmaster
conlangcritic.bandcamp.com
seximal.net
/ hbmmaster
/ janmisali - Ігри
So what I learned from this video is that Jan's ideal language game is sitting in a room with someone who speaks only a different language, and you have to learn said language. No other gameplay, rules, or concepts required
Sounds fun to me
I'd play it tbh
calling jan Misali “Jan” is like calling Indonesian (bahasa Indonesia) “Bahasa”. people’s names in Toki Pona are always preceded by the word “jan”, which means “person”.
jan is person in toki pona
^
english relex is just on the border between "cryptography" and "conlang"
But not pretty deep at any of the two.
@@JonaxII exactly, just a more involved substitution cipher
In fairness, from a game design perspective, getting pretty deep into either of those would be pretty hard on the player
And cryptolect.
English relex straddles the line between the feeling of being a ten year old with a rotating decoder ring from a cereal box and using wingdings as an adult
Heaven's Vault mod by Duolingo where the dead ancient language you're learning is French.
LMAO
I think they wouldn't do that for fear of violating the Geneva Convention...
@@MisterSketch4 That green bird has no respect for international law.
@@MisterSketch4 The Geneva Suggestions can never stop me.
This mysterious Ancient language ... "Interdit de fumer" ... what could that mean?
Someone should make a game where you actually learn a natural language, where maybe you wash ashore in Japan or get thrown back in time to Rome and you just have to learn the language in order to progress in the game
Awesome idea!
there’s a game called influent that teaches you a language
Working on it for a while now as a side project. Glad to know people think it’s a cool idea.
Cave Johnson yeah, learning german with a game like that would be awesome. i think it’d be cool if it was sorta like a first person life sim game and you were surrounded by the language & every time you encountered a new word, the meaning(s) would come up & it’d be written in a notebook or something. you’d also have to try & converse in that language as well.
just an idea though. i assume that’d be quite hard to program & would take ages to make.
@@TREMOpsulaR awesome, I’m glad to hear someone is working on a game like that. I would be glad to do it for a language I know if I knew how to program or make games
Honestly that bit about [spoiler game] has actually made me want to buy it. Like I'm not expecting the whole game to be like that, but if it maintains the same creativity then I'm sold.
It’s free on steam, I just discovered. Let’s do some learning about this game together, eh?
@@redtaileddolphin1875 but how do I find it? What *is* the name of the game?
Just watch the video (at 7:00)
The first one is free, the second was hidden in a ARG, if you want to know where to play it read below...
Frog Fractions 2 is hidden within a game called Glittermitten Grove.
@@cerocero2817 So getting the game is a puzzle itself? That's deep!
Imagine this: a game which begins begins in English (or another real world language) but in which the characters slowly begin speaking more and more in a constructed English-based creole (or a creole based in another real world language) as the player continues to explore their world. I can imagine that you could legitimately teach someone a conlang this way, at least in a limited capacity.
Or even a real language. I don't understand how it's not a thing already.
@@_blank-_ If you mean that it could teach an actual English language creole like Tok Pisin I think its a neat idea that would be hard to execute on as the real key to such a game would be having the player experience the transition from English into less and less English-like dialects. That's why it would make more sense with a constructed creole or alternatively a constructed English based dialect which diverges far from the most spoken variaties of English.
Have you heard of Studien und Plaudereien? It's a book for learning German written basically like this. It's on Gutenberg.
I haven't read it, but I think A Clockwork Orange also does the same kind of thing with Nadsat, but to a much lesser extent
caboose202ful Thank you for this, I will now be learning German.
@@gamerrfm9478 you'll probably have an easier time if you read it all aloud, if you can do that without being judged. Also, it's worth noting that the German in the book is a little old-fashioned, but it's still a great resource
Good luck!!
"Not a sponsered video"
'includes paid promotion'
Confusion
its so funny that even mentioning there's a spoiler for frog fractions 2 is a spoiler for frog fractions 2
Now I want to play *[DATA REDACTED]* !! :D
I prefer [EXPUNGED]
Sandy Ross I almost wrote *[DATA EXPUNGED]*
@@migsy1 it's a good word
*[DATA EXFOLIATED]*
[DATA RUBBED]
Jan Misali seems like the type to play No Man's Sky and get disappointed not for the same reasons most of us were, but because the alien languages were all basic English relexes (releces?)
"Ex" as in "expect" i think
”lex” as in lexicon.
"ex" as in i miss my ex
relices
I assume Inkle's decision to go with an English relex probably also has a lot to do with the user experience of the translation interface. Any significant difference would require a more complex interface, probably requiring an annoying amount of hand-holding to avoid negatively impacting the ease with which the player picks up the mechanic. Aliya is supposed to have a base proficiency in the language, so struggling with basic syntax or morphology at the start would introduce a dissonance between the narrative and the player experience, making the protagonist appear less competent than she is supposed to.
Spoilers for Heaven’s Vault:
I like how the ending is partially foreshadowed by the construction of the word “Vault.” The first symbol indicates that Vault is being used as a verb.
I missed that foreshadowing because I'm not native English speaker, a didn't know that meaning of the word :(
I think the really clever thing about Heaven's Vault is the role that cultural bias plays in translating a dead language. There are some early game texts that I went back and changed hours later, even though they seemed to make sense at the time. Like the difference between "Emperor" and "Empress", or "serve" and "love". And this has impact on the gameplay - what decisions you make depend on your understanding of your world's history, which might be false.
Instead of a relex, you could pick a language that has a relatively similar syntax to English as a base. For instance, make a Swedish relex, or just something based on another Germanic language, and the translation wouldn't be much harder, but would be a bit more interesting
I think Ico has a Japanese (but in reverse) relex, but I don't think translation is at its core
That's very anglocentric
englocentric? germanocentric, and that's the point.
@@zero_gravity5861 I don't think you get it. By having it be another relex than English, you're basically doing it so it's more fun for English people to figure out: I speak German, a germanocentric relex wouldn't be fun for me
It’s spelled Anglocentric, because it’s based off of the root word from the Angles. Similarly, a French based version would be called Frankocentric, because of the Franks
[Redacted game title] definitely needs more love compared to it's predecessor. I understand all the complaints, and I believe them to be on the whole valid, but man do I just love [Redacted game title].
I actually haven't heard any complaints. Everyone who I saw play it was completely fine with it at worst and amazed and ecstatic at best!
I didn’t put it together what this meant until I remembered The whole spoiler thing
Its an extremely weeby game and unless you're into that sort of stuff I can't imagine you'd like it, but there's a visual novel called "Kotonoha, Expression Amrilato". Where you play Rin, a Japanese teenager who is transported to an alternate Japan where everything is in Esperanto. She starts building a romantic relationship with Ruka the young Esperanto speaking girl that helps you out at the start of the game, and slowly learns Esperanto throughout the game, which means that you, the player, learn Esperanto by proxy. It's definitely flawed but it's easily my favourite use of a conlang in any video game.
Again, it has extremely niche appeal, and if you can play it in Japanese, I strongly recommend doing so, as a lot of the dialogue makes much less sense in English (A lot of Rin's comments on Esperanto are her viewing it through the lens of a Japanese speaker) But if you are in the audience for this game, you'll absolutely love it.
If only there were a game like this, or the others jan Misali discusses in the video, for toki pona... @jan Misali, do you know of any such toki pona immersion/learning game?
Might have to try that, thanks
I'll be learning japanese just so i can learn Esperanto on this game.
@@vanillaannihilation5871 Do you want a Japanese tutor? ;)
@@avidrucker isn't frog language a relex of toki pona?
But imagine a non-English speaker; they wouldn't realise it's a relex. That is if the game has the English words translated to whatever language this person speaks. The relex in the game will have different grammar from theirs, which can be interesting. - So the game developers could have picked a different language as a relex, like Russian maybe.
I would also recommend this old flash game called Tork, that IIRC was made for an Australian game design competition. In it, you crashland on an alien world and have to learn to speak their language... one gimmick is that speaking verbs in the language will actually *perform* that verb if there's a matching object present, so you have to use the language to solve environmental puzzles as well as communicate.
Sadly, it's a Flash game (from like 2004, no less), so it's a bit difficult to play these days. But that's what Flashpoint is for.
i never figured out how to finish tork & it still Bothers Me
@@concessioncard *spoilers:*
Once you find the flashbacks, follow the healing-machine procedure and give the purple swirly thing to the sick alien, he'll give you the evil purple snarly thing, give that to the eyeball on the stalk that's preventing you from entering a cave, rescue the little'un and bring it back to the queen, then lead her to the spaceship.
(It's probably been a full decade since I last played that game, and I didn't even have to look up a walkthrough just now, I wrote all that from memory... wow)
Rabbit Cube omg hahaha thank you!!!
do you have a link? a quick google search isn't finding it
do u kno where i can find the flv file
While it's not about learning a language (though there's a similar puzzle in it I don't want to spoil) Riven is a great game about coming to understand the culture of the alien world you've been dropped into. There were some 'aha' moments in regards to figuring out what something meant to the people of Riven that I've never experienced in any other game. I wish more games were like it.
oh i loved the frog conlang puzzle! even as someone who wasnt interested in conlangs at the time i played it, it was still incredibly enthralling to figure out and im glad to finally see someone on youtube talking about it
What are you doing here
why are we in the same place outside of the V6 discord
Wow, my desire to play [the game whose identity is a spoiler in this context] has just increased immensely!
Coming here again to say that a new game under this theme released that's pretty good called Chants of Sennaar
It has several diff languages in it, all relatively simple but they all have unique elements which make them more than just relexes.
The game provides good faciilties inside it to take notes and such, also shows hints which can let you 100% confirm the words woth pictures. I found those hints to be a little bit too spoilery, so if you want something that's more realistic or difficult (which, i'm guessing most of the people on this video would) I recommend just avoiding looking at those
You might enjoy the interactive fiction title The Gostak. Here's how it opens:
"Finally, here you are. At the delcot of tondam, where doshes deave. But the doshery lutt is crenned with glauds.
Glauds! How rorm it would be to pell back to the bewl and distunk them, distunk the whole delcot, let the drokes uncren them.
But you are the gostak. The gostak distims the doshes. And no glaud will vorl them from you."
This is just the game I was going to bring up!
One thing that Megazver didn't mention is that since this is a text adventure game, the way you play is by typing in the actions you want to perform, such as "LOOK AT THE DELCOT" or "DISTUNK THE GLAUDS". You have to write in the game's fictional dialect to have your character interact with the game world.
This gives major jabberwocky energy
I was hoping someone would mention the gostak! Playing this game is an incredible experience because you can never, and I do not mean that as an exaggeration, know what a word in gostakian would mean in english. You can find out that "zanking" is an action that makes certain things (for example "pilters", but notably not most "glauds") disappear (or stop being a problem anyway), but not if they aren't "poltive". Does "zank" mean "kill" and poltive mean "alive"? Maybe "zank" means "exorcise" and "poltive" means "haunted". Maybe "zank" means "eat" and "poltive" means "edible".
You don't know. You can't know. You are interacting with the world through a semantic filter. You fumble around, if you do it intelligently enough you proceed, and you never know exactly what you just did. Words only ever have meaning in their relation relation to other concepts, but I don't think anyone is capable of thinking exlusively like that. It takes too much headspace. Sometimes you have to concede and for a while pretend you know the exact meaning of some words and see where that gets you. It's a fascinating experience cognitively, I highly recommend it.
The in-game dialect isn't particularly interesting, but I don't think it could be or the players would go insane. It is an English relex, though sometimes there are words with no apparent English equivalent, either because they're only relevant in the bizarre world of the Gostak, or because they seem to describe a concept English doesn't have a single world for. (for example, the word "fesh", as in "Vorling is the fesh of ghelipers.". Cross-referenced with other instances it seems to mean "intended, inherent purpose". Distimming is the Gostak's fesh.)
God, I love it so much.
@@AdmiralJota Look? What are you doatching about. You need to type "reb at the delcot" or it won't work.
you can turn any game onto a puzlle by setting it into another lamguage.
I actually learned a bit of spanish that way.
sigue así :)
That's how half of the millenials learnt English.
I mean I do this with a lot of languages, in games where not being able to fully understand the text isn't going to cause Huge Problems. Currently, that's Stardew Valley. Used to be Minecraft, and pretty soon it'll be Skyrim again (English text, Spanish item names, Japanese audio files, if I can swing that again -- was fun the first time). But like, what Stardew Valley has taught me? The Spanish, Finnish, and Italian names for a *ton* of fish.
Is there ever going to be an occasion where I'll need to know the Finnish word for "herring"? I sure hope not!
I think it's possible that the fish are sticking in mind purely because it's the only thing to focus on during a relatively slow and boring / low-effort portion of the game: Waiting for the next fish to catch. All you have is that new word, "aringa," and you get to contemplate it and store it in your head because there's not much else to do with your brain right then.
Not sure that's an ideal way to get people to pick up on new vocabulary, but it certainly worked better than the names for crops, which I'm storing more slowly, possibly because I've got too much stimulation coming in to focus so completely on any given word.
Been thinking for some time to create a game about this exactly. But with 3 difficulty levels. 1 a tutorial with an English Relex and a small room. 2. Some ruins with a syllabary system and you gotta get it's meaning from what you can find and 3. An alien space ship with a logographic system. Maybe a rosetta stone to start you off. All except the 1. Having perfectly developed grammars
I had considered suggesting Ancient for a Conlang Critic episode, but after thinking about it more I decided it wasn't much more interesting than Dovahzul. It's nice to see that you found a different way to talk about it that doesn't need to focus so much on its flaws.
That's a fantastic point. If a conlang doesn't make sense outside of context but the context makes it interesting, talk about the context instead! if you like I mean.
I have always really really liked talking to the frog. It's a very well designed puzzle.
I remember playing Breath of the Wild and really enjoying learning Gerudo words as I walked around Gerudo Town. It made me feel like I was really learning about a different culture and try to fit in, which fits the narrative context of the town perfectly. It made me wish Gerudo was an actually developed conlang.
I didn't know there were actual games about learning conlangs tho! I'm a game dev with a lifelong love of linguistics, so maybe I could try my hand at something similar one day haha
yeah! the gerudo language is by no means a fully developed conlang, we really only learn a couple words, but I don't think it needs to be fully developed to be effective for its intended purpose: increasing immersion in the world of Hyrule by presenting multiple different languages spoken by multiple different people across the kingdom. However, I do kind of find it disappointing that all the Gerudo you meet in the game are completely fluent in [insert player's native language here], and none of them have trouble understanding Link. I kind of wish there was some sort of minigame or sidequest in BoTW or ToTK that involved learning more than just the basics of the gerudo language in order to communicate with someone who didn't speak [insert player's native language here]
@@jelliefishr2336also, there are no other languages besides gerudo and the player's language. Not ancient sheikah, not rito, not zora, not Goron, not korok. The sequel has zonai and ancient hylian, but you don't even get to see them, someone who knows them just gives you a translation. It comes across as a world with 4 languages, 2 of them long dead, one link is fluent I'm, and one link knows a few words from. Which is fine, but disappointing from a worldbuilding perspective
I love Heaven's Vault because it has you putting the effort in mentally to solve stuff instead of just doing the majority of the work for you. It's similar in that sense to Obra Dinn, and I think the thing they share that makes it so is that the game doesn't immediately confirm whether or not you are correct about the puzzles you solve, forcing you to actually work it out properly in order to succeed.
Who’s excited for David Peterson’s interpretation of the Dune languages?
oh shit he's involved? I might have to be interested then
This sounds like a cool kind of game! Also hi jan Misali!
Hi
there is also the famous esperanto anime visual novel The Expression Amrilato
It's interesting to see how, no matter how hard native speakers of a language try, they can't really create something far enough beyond their own language without experiencing other languages first. Kinda like trying to describe a color that you can't see.
I’d argue that you could use things other than human languages for inspiration. Programming languages, for example, have a certain rigid syntax to them that could inspire a conlang. Sure it’s based on English syntax, but only to the extent that it doesn’t impede on machine readability. Assembly language is even less English-like. And emojis basically are ideograms. It doesn’t take much inspiration to imagine different verb orders, or particles of language that combine or split up the common noun, verb, adjective, etc. Making tenses more or less explicit, or removing certain aspects entirely are easily investable by an English speaker who studied his own language’s structure. To that end I’d like to see more conlangers coming up with features not found in any earthly language but still sounding natural enough. But adding aspects that don’t appear in English or it’s cultures at all probably are harder to expect an English speaker to invent. Phonology, for example. Consonants and vowels we’re not used to hearing are probably some of the most out-there.
It's not an inability to create something different from one's own language, though. It's just unwillingness.
You say "no matter how hard they try" but the thing is they aren't trying very hard at all.
I already knew English (which is my second language) when I started making my conlang, so this isn't the best example, but...
My conlang had from the beginning very few things in common with my native language (Portuguese), like word order and the existence of several words that don't quite correspond to any one word from Portuguese (or English for that matter). Most notably, I have completely by accident made my conlang an ergative absolutive language, which not only neither Portuguese nor English are, but is a concept I would only learn about years after it being present in my conlang.
It may not be easy, but a monolingual speaker can definitely create a conlang that is very different from their native language.
Learning more languages (from different families I should say) usually does equal to more natural conlangs. Like usually when you see conlangs made by people who only speak Indo-European languages, you can see it lol.
But I get why the games use simple conlangs like these. If you were to make a game about learning an actual naturalistic conlang that would fairly represent the process of learning a language, it would take years to play it and you could have spend the time learning an actual language instead :D
@@valkeakirahvi yea t.bh most conlangs are just like a rearrangement of indoeuropean languages. little more than setting different parameters instead of inventing new concepts or using concepts that don't exist in IE languages. usually the case with heavy use of language-specific grammatical terms.
@@Scrogan That would be .la lojban that is based on logic and programming... maybe I should actually try learning it again later...
I wrote my MA thesis in linguistics on the problems with processing words with multiple meanings, particularly in different languages, and with special attention to semantics. One part of it went into the question of how the meanings of words are acquired, particularly by children who are learning their native language, since they have nothing to translate to. While writing it I played this text-based game called Gostak, which is like half in English and half in this weird conlang that is never explained to you. You have to figure it out by context and by interacting with characters. It was a bizarre experience that made me feel a little bit like I was learning my native language out of nowhere. This video reminded me of that. You should check the game out, it's pretty cool!
Yes, I wasn't expecting you to bring up the Frog Fractions 2 puzzle! I never see anybody talk about it, but it's really one of my favourite moments.
Literally only one person has mentioned The Expression Amrilato here
In the first chapter of the Kings Quest remake (2015 I think) there is an entire section dependent on your character and a character who doesn’t speak any English trying to enter a dragons lair steal something/slay the dragon, and escape, all without being able to understand each other. The puzzles of trying to learn your companions conling while also trying to navigate the lair of a dragon are simple compared to these examples, but are so entertaining and fascinating, I felt I should bring them up here!
Ooh, I've always wanted a video on this! Even just simple alphabet swaps always piqued my interest in games like FEZ.
When I Clicked On This Video, I Had Only Heard Of One Of The Games Talked About. Now I Want All Of Them.
So many people here are recommending Gostak, I'll be another such person. An entire game in English, but with all content words replaced, so the player, using familiar grammar, is forced to learn both unfamiliar vocabulary and an unfamiliar world.
Speaking of interactive fiction games, there's also Suveh Nux, where the conlang is used for magic spells and some spells can be even five words long.
There are also three small games about fixing crashed spaceships/airplanes by trading with aliens/locals: Alienguist, Lost in Translation and Tork. Alienguist and LiT are smaller, and I'd say unfinished games, but Tork is a pretty good one. All are based on analytic languages with small vocabulary and, except for LiT, ideographic writing system. Out of these three, I'd recommend Tork.
Wow, I hadn't read the comments, so I thought I was being original recommending The Gostak. Still, glad to see others like it.
@@argenteus8314 Gostak is simply that great.
I play it ages ago, but I think I forgot enough of it to play it again.
Speaking of IF games, have you played The Edifice by Lucian Smith? It has a small conlang puzzle in it as well.
@@AdmiralJota Yes, I did. It's a nice little game.
Oh my god, I didn't realize how badly I wanted someone to do a video about Sethian till today. I agree it was way too short but it definitely had some very interesting mechanics, and I'm glad I get to learn about some other games with a similar idea
A recent release in this genre is Chants of Sennaar. I highly recommend it to all watching!
Haven't heard of Heaven's Vault or Frog Fractions 2 before, they look really cool!
Here are a few more games to add: Tork, a cartoon-y flash game where you have to decipher the glyphs the aliens are using to interact with them and solve puzzles to get your ship fixed.
Blue Rabbit's Climate Chaos, the glyphs tend to look like what they represent and you don't use them inasmuch as you try to decipher info for some puzzles. I had fun with it as a kid though and it has language-y sound effects.
The Expression Amrilato, mentioned in other comments, you learn Esperanto in a Japanese visual novel.
Tribal and Error was in development and I don't know if it will be completed ever but the short demo is available. It's like Tork but with cavemen.
There was another game I forgot the name of where you traded goods with passersby to try and get enough repair equipment for a ship I think, you needed to figure out the words of the goods and what they would/wouldn't buy because I think you only got one chance to make a deal with each NPC.
There's an older game with a dragon I think and an hourglass and it's a point-and-click RPG and there's a part where you have to get the right directions to reach a location in the desert by figuring out who can teach you some of the language, I remember the word tratratrashab for home or something from shab, sand (tra made a word into some other abstract concept). Yeah, just recall that snippet. You died a lot in that game.
From Earth is probably the only game I've played that has "language learning" mechanic.
You crash land on an alien planet and you have talk your way out.
You can convey ideas with gestures or construct sentences with words you've heard elsewhere.
It's an interesting idea, but in certain situations it's really easy to brute force your way forward by . The other characters don't get mad or refuse to talk to you. Annoying the locals turns out to be the best strategy to progress.
Ow and you immediately know when a sentence is 100% grammatically correct and how many of these words are correct.
If you want a free experiment of this kind of gameplay, check it out. It is muddied with other game mechanics though, which is a shame. Reading the dev's postmortem was definitely satisfying.
Was hoping someone would mention that game.
West of loathing had the best conlang :)
It would be really cool to see an Addendum to this video with TUNIC
I learned the whole "language" of Tunic myself, and it was a super cool challenge!
The language kind of reminds me of Sethian a little
Edit: nvm he just started talking about that
Edit 2: Not a video game, but there’s a Japanese novel called “Book of Xion” that’s about a girl who goes to another world and learns a fantasy language called Arka (an actually complete one with 17000+ words at that). Never read the novel itself, but it seems pretty interesting
Any more information about the novel? I can't find anything about it online.
Have you played The Gostak? It's not a conlang so much as semi-coded English, but the fun comes from everything being written in the new language, right from the start. Even the credits and the help pages are in that language.
Which, of course, is key to understanding the language itself - if you know what to expect from a text adventure game.
Kell Willsen i cant recommend the gostak enough. it is one of my favorite experiences, ever.
i started a gostak meme group on facebook. “gostak memes for unheamy teens” 😂
I love language learning integrated into gaming.
Now that chants of sennaar is out, there's yet another one
Just bought and 100%ed Chants of Sennaar in a single 24 hour cycle so I’m here craving more.
My review is it isn’t perfect, but the linguistic puzzles specifically are extremely satisfying and it’s definitely worth the $20 I spent. Not too much more than that though, unfortunately. It’s short and the many branching rooms got me lost a few too many times, where I either forgot to check a path or forgot to come back to it. Still, worth it if you’re looking for more!
Let's learn names in other languages:
English: George smith
French: Pierre Jacques
Polish: Gregorz brzęczyszczykiewicz
The Polish one is easy once you have had your daily bottle of Spirytus Rektyfikowany.
There's a little puzzle in Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy, Puzzle 104, that is a twist on this concept. The game provides you with three lines from a conlang, in-universe use by the Azran, and a translation, and asks you to locate an specific word in that text. Since you have the translation, but the symbols do not directly match English grammar, your work is to figure out the common words in sentences and the way the sentences are constructed to find the word you're looking for.
The gostak pelled at the fostin lutt for darfs for her martle plave.
The darfs had smibbed, the lutt was thale, and the pilter had nothing snave.
Addition you should check out if you haven't heard of it already: chants of sennaar
i loveeeee rhythm heaven! hearing you mention it in one of your videos makes me so happy because i've been into the series since like 2016 and dedicated a large portion of that year to figuring out how to mod custom remixes into megamix with some friends. anyway good video!
I just-
*Chants of Sennaar*
I'm so glad I'm not the only person who played [REDACTED] here it threw me through a loop
the game Cinco Paus is a game written in Portuguese but designed by and for english speakers (or at least non-portuguese speakers). the theme of developing a vague understanding of a language is an extension of the major theme/mechanic of the game which is discovering how different items work in a game.
Holy shit i swear to god I've been thinking about language mechanics for months and hoping I would come across someone talking about them. We had multiple exercises in my intro to linguistics class that I thought could be gameified and was wondering if any developers were doing it! THANK YOU for compiling these!!!
nobody else has brought up hamchat yet so i guess i have to. in the anime it mostly consists of onomatopeias, but a few hamtaro games have you learn hamchat over the course of the game, which isn't really a language so much as hamster slang for different words.
every word has a specific action or gesture or facial expression tied to it so that you can learn the word from context.
new game Chants of Sennaar to add to the list
I don't play video games myself but man I enjoy watching video essays about them. It introduces to me such interesting ideas with complexity about mechanisms of human thinking, understanding and construction of concepts.
I see Heaven's Vault, I click the video. I've been playing it lately, and so far I'm liking it a lot
THE GAME WITH THE MARS DUDE AND ALIEN? I finally figured out where the QnA animation Meme comes from
jan, if you haven’t played the gostak, stop what you’re doing right now and play it. it’s a transcendent language game experience.
I was totally thinking about that third one when you were talking about the previous two, and was glad to see it mentioned.
i hope this video blows up. Heaven's Vault is a great experience, and the video is well put together. (I'd recommend upgrading your mic at your leisure.)
I restored the Empress's memories on my first play through, but never got around to playing again afterwards.
Heaven's Vault is an amazing game. I'm very happy to hear someone talk about it.
I'm glad you introduced me to the Frog Fractions lore and allowed me to explore it largely for myself without spoiling it.
An amazing example in this category is the text adventure game "The Gostak". If you like learning languages, I think you'll really like it, and a text adventure game is a great way to make learning new words feel rewarding (how exactly should become obvious once you start playing it).
Tork (www.freewaregenius.com/tork-learn-an-alien-language-in-this-online-action-adventure-flash-game/), a Flash-based browser game, is similarly based on communicating in an alien language. Unfortunately, it seems to no longer be online.
*Edit*: I found a copy at www.nectarine.com.au/samplework/tork/
Some parts of Heavens vault endgame imply that thoroughly studying Ancient (as well as some scraps of its oral form) may lead to a different ending or at least some lore. I was too lazy to figure it out, maybe someone did it?
It sounds like your ideal language game would just be learning Chinese lol. In terms of “ideographic language that’s a somewhat more interesting relex of English”, well Mandarin is pretty damn close to that. By far my favorite language I’ve studied for that reason to be clear
Very cool video I haven’t watched yet but it is still cool
I once played a game quite like the one you suggested would be a perfect match for you. You crash land on an alien planet and do not know the native language whatsoever. You have to ask words for things by asking the aliens what an item or building is. I'm describing it poorly, but it's awesome and free. I know you're probably not going to see this, but I really hope you play the game. I can't remember its name but it has a much different story depending on if you kill and intimidate to progress or use diplomacy and stealth. It's free on steam last I saw. Please play it.
Thanks for the video! I've purchased Heaven's Vault recently and am about to start a playthrough, but from what I've seen it looks like a really fun game! This makes you the third channel that doesn't actually do sponsorships, but actually gets me to buy new games, and I thank you for that, because if it wasn't for you, RTGame and YakkoCCM, I wouldn't have ever discovered the marvelous wonders of underrated indie games! Also, I haven't gotten to the surprise mystery spoiler game section of the video, is there any way of downloading it before watching? If not I'll gladly just continue, unless the spoilers are too blatant to ignore
I dare some to make a fully fleshed out version of the frog language
I will do it. After I finish learning Japanese. And russian. And arabic. And Hindi. And..
Okay, I started making it (12/11/2022 (DMY))
It's essentially Toki Pona but I'm gonna make more words
Frogese original volcabulary:
◆ (Black diamond) : Cat
♣ (Black club) : Gorilla
♀ (Female) : Key
𝅘𝅥𝅯 (Sixteenth note) : Thanks/Thanks for
§ (Section) : Red
↑ (Upwards arrow) : Push/Grab
[ (Left square bracket) : Box
⌂ (House) : Want
ì (Latin small letter i with grave) : Me/I
¥ (Yen) : You
Γ (Greek capital gamma) : No/Not/Isn't
µ (Greek small mu) : Fish
τ (Greek small tau) : What?/?
Φ (Greek capital phi) : Blue
δ (Greek small delta) : Fruit/Pear
∞ (Infinity) : To Eat/Eat
≈ (Roughly equal to) : Water/River/Lake/Sea
√ (Square root) : Give
Frogese Grammar & Orthography:
1. ì is the default pronoun if a verb is at the start of the sentence.
2. Frogese has an SVO word order.
3. There is no gender in frogese, only first and second person pronouns.
4. Frogese is an Ideographic language with no spaces.
Frogese new vocabulary:
× (Multiplication) : We
£ (Euro) : To Live
= (Equals to) : Rational
% (Percentage) : !
♡ (Heart) : Kind
> (Bigger than) : Creature
/ (Slash) : Need/Require
~ (Around) : To Create/Summon
》(Double right arrow) : Language
| (Line) : Can
○ (Empty Circle) : A Couple
● (Full Circle) : A Lot
¤ (Target) : Get/Receive
@ (Email thing) : Scary
□ (Empty Square) : Mean/Bad
# (Ladder) : Food
€ (Pound) : Hello
☆ (Star) : Bye
* (Asterisk) : Learn
= (Equals) : Scared
《(Double left arrow) : Money
( (Left Parentheses) : Past Marker
) (Right Parentheses) : Future Marker
_ (Underscore) : All
Π (Capital Pi) : This is (זה)
σ (Small Sigma) : Singular they
Σ (Capital Sigma) : Plural they
φ (Small Phi) : To Show
θ (Small Theta) : Below
Θ (Capital Theta) : Above
Ξ (Capital Xi) : Heart/Soul
λ (Small Lambda) : Take
η (Small Eta) : Forcefully (בכוח)
New Frogese Grammar:
1. If you do not state an amount, then it is assumed to be one.
2. After a sentence ends, you put a space.
3. Present is the default time.
4. The time marker is placed at the end of the sentence, but before a τ
5. In a question, you say "¥|¤#τ", not "|¥¤#τ" (you put the pronoun before the can)
I called it frogese for simplicity
Came back here after playing Chants of Sennaar. You should play it, it’s a lot of fun.
Jan Misali has finally found the perfect topic I think. What a synthesis! 👏👏
new small game called Epigraph. very barebones, no assistance-very grounded unlike either Heaven's Vault or Chants of Sennaar
Suveh Nux is another great example about learning a langue. You accidentally lock yourself in a closet with a book full of magic you haven't learned yet, and must escape. The book is mostly just a vocabulary without definitions if I recall correctly, so most of your learning is by experimentation.
Play it online here: iplayif.com/?story=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ifarchive.org%2Fif-archive%2Fgames%2Fzcode%2Fsuvehnux.z5
That's an absolute banger of an outro!
Heaven’s Vault was sick as hell, one of my fav adventure games.
How in the world did I end up here? One moment, I'm writing a program and doing some ワニカニ practice, and the next moment, I'm studying up on ZZT-OOP and some frog's language learning process. What is my life? How did it come to this?
Have you played the text adventure game The Gostak? I've never been able to get very far in it, but it's a game where most of the important words in English have been replaced and you have to figure out what everything means.
jan misali uploaded, pog
I'm so glad that (spoiler game) is getting the praise it so rightfully deserves
"And now this isnt a sponsored video"
-Includes paid promotion-
Idk where I am in the world but whenever I see you post I know I'm watch something so interesting I eont mind
Uh okay
I’ll be back when I know what This Game is
Should I start at the beginning of the trilogy?
I recommend starting with the game of the decade edition
jan Misali it’s even free! I’m excited
I see; your essay videos keep getting more views than Conlang Critic, so you're making an essay video about conlangs. Very clever.
There was another game about learning a language with a really cool demo called Tribal & Error, but unfortunately, it seems to have died in development. I'm disappointed that it has since it seemed really promising (it even won some awards). Here's a link if anyone wants to play it: grotmangames.itch.io/tribalanderror
There is a game on itch.io called Tôtem where you encounter a few different alien entities and have to figure out their language. It's really cool!
You should play “Chants of Sennaar”, it’s a language game, and I think you’d really like it
Oh, I've been told that Lingotopia (tristan-dahl.itch.io/lingotopia) does a decent shot at being a language-learning game for real-world languages, though I haven't yet tried it myself. It was in the huge BLM itch bundle a few months ago, so you might already have it.
I was half expecting to see Shadow of the Colossus here, but this is great too!
In no man's sky you can "learn" a language but it isn't a main part of the game and the game just tells you what words mean, but you get three (technically 4) different languages to learn that will help you speak to aliens
I wish studios would make genuinely compelling games about learning real languages instead of making "games" that you would never play for more than 30 seconds. It's not like they have to be amazing at teaching you the language, either - it's not like Duolingo is particularly good for learning languages further than just getting a little extra vocabulary in.
I've been told that Lingotopia (tristan-dahl.itch.io/lingotopia) does a decent shot at it, though I haven't yet tried it myself. It was in the huge BLM itch bundle a few months ago, so you might already have it.
I would say the same thing about programming.