About eight months ago, I impulsively decided to learn Japanese. To be honest, it had never occurred to me before that it would be good for me, or particularly possible; but because modern life does have its benefits sometimes, I was able to act so quickly that before the thought had time to pass, I was stuck in the first Japanese lesson offered by Duolingo.
237 days have passed and the green bird has yet to find a chance to scold me for missing a day of school, and although my Japanese is not fluent—if a real Japanese person actually tried to speak to me in real Japanese, I would definitely panic and lose any ability I have—I have made some obvious progress. I can slowly read the titles of the videos on the Japanese version of the Pokémon YouTube channel, and understand all the Japanese equivalents of “BLAM” and “POW” when I was reading the comics, and so on.
As far as language learning apps go, Duolingo is pretty gamified, but when I first heard about it, You can say that: An independent puzzle game coming to Steam and Itch.io that aims to teach English speakers the basics of Japanese vocabulary by letting them explore a charming pixel art Japanese town. At least in my experience, as someone who loves gaming as a hobby and has made it a career, you can never also More gamification.
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I had no idea how deeply I would be moved by So to Speak when I played its demo at Steam Next Fest this month. As a child of the 90s, some of the first video games I played were simple early learning DOS programs on a second-hand IBM PC my family bought when I was very young, and So to Speak completely recreates the feel of these forgotten retro educational games. Even the tone of voice the game uses to communicate with the player is perfect.
You see, So to Speak has a simple core teaching tool: you click on characters or objects in the world, then drag and drop the corresponding matching word or phrase, which is available in English, romaji, and kanji/kana. Often a pixel art Japanese child will appear pointing at a cat while saying “neko desu!”, leaving you to infer conclusions on your own and feed your understanding back into the game in order to move forward. You know at that moment that this excited player avatar is a child because they’ll always be accompanied by a taller pixel art figure, implying that they’re the responsible adult.
I found this all very fitting, as I think my language skills should be about the same as a Japanese baby by now – despite my precocious nitpicking about the layout of train stations – and I was grateful that So to Speak didn’t try to feed my ego by suggesting otherwise. Instead, it stood quietly beside me, like a reassuring adult, watching me silently – but always ready to lend a guiding hand, in the form of a switchable dictionary containing all the words I’d learned so far – while I excitedly identified the parking lot signs correctly.
I doubt So to Speak will make me a master of my chosen second language the way Duolingo did, but it ticks a lot of boxes: A pleasing pixel art style combined with an obvious understanding of its roots in niche retro educational games? Check. Fun puzzles that rely on absolutely no outside-of-game knowledge to solve? Check. Did my Japanese vocabulary improve noticeably after playing the demo for half an hour? Surprisingly, yes, even that — I can now say “tree.” There you go, Duo.
Check out iGamesNews, RockPaperShotgun and other games featured in Eurogamer’s Wishlisted event on the hub page – which includes a great, informative video showing you why we’re so passionate about collecting games.
Check out So to Speak on Steam and try the demo for yourself.
