Tag: language

Sethian
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Surprise yourself by learning an alien language in Sethian

Sethian is a game that positions you as an archaeologist of the future tasked with learning an alien language. You do this so you can investigate the disappearances of people on the planet Sethian—where the language originates. Learning a whole other language might sound pretty imposing, but the creator of Sethian, Grant Kuning, has done a pretty bang-up job of making the game fairly accessible. You sit in front of an alien computer, able to ask it questions to help with your study, starting with only the basics of the language as picked up by previous archaeologists. This is provided to…
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I miss the summers in Japan: How videogames overcome language barriers

I sat cross legged in front of the TV and watched as Alex carefully removed the Super Nintendo from its dusty, neglected box. Our grandfather hardly used it, preferring to play Shogi on his computer instead of the console. Also stored away were a pile of games with labels we couldn’t read. The Japanese characters were printed in bold intimidating letters, with no illustrations to help guide our interpretation of what the cartridge held. He fished around for a second before grabbing the Super Mario World (1990) cartridge, blowing into it. It was a very familiar ritual, repeated during our…
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Pathologic and the disease of language

Boredom is usually considered to be the death of a game. You play, you get bored, you switch off. Popular thought demands that videogames be engaging at all times, whether through direct action or intellectual thrill. It matters less as to how it’s achieved as long as boredom is avoided. But Pathologic, a game by Ice-Pick Lodge released in 2005 but re-released in HD last year, goes against this thinking—it forces its players to get bored and for good reason. Pathologic is a game about an epidemic. However, it does not follow the clichéd narrative of a crisis revealing the…
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Try to master the peculiar lingo of Victorian-era cockney slang in this videogame

Key to acquiring mastery of a foreign language is putting what you learn into practice. The red-faced pressure that overcomes you when trying to speak, say, French to a perplexed native speaker forces your brain to spew out something French-like. Eventually, with enough of this traumatic practice under your belt, your uvular Rs and nasal vowels may form actual French words, enough to converse on such grand topics as your name and where you live. You’ve done it. You learned some French. a playful lyricism to it  This intuitive approach towards mastering a language is your only choice in Victorian Era Linguistics…