I did my first playtest with Emma today (yayy thank you!)
For P2, I wanted to make a game about what it feels like to live and study in a language you are still learning. The player takes on the role of a student who moves abroad for university, where everyone speaks Velen (a made-up language I created for the game). Over four years, the protagonist’s language level slowly becomes more fluent, and I hoped this would let the player feel the frustration of having so many thoughts but only a handful of words to express them. I’ll admit I wasn’t sure at first whether this feeling would actually come through in a card game – but my playtester today said the options provided made her feel like she has to fit what she wanted to say into what she could say, which was exactly what I was hoping for!
I structured the game around the student’s four years in college, with each year taking about 10-20 minutes to play. In freshman year, the player only knows a few Velen words, so the options are very limited and often cannot express what they really mean. In Sophomore year they started to pick up more words, but experience what it feels like to hear somebody else say a same thought you wanted to contribute but ended up delaying because of the language barrier. By junior year, the protagonist know enough to pick up on tone and respond more honestly facing tricky social situations. Senior year is the student goes back home, and now the Velen words have crept into their speech – so it is their own family who can’t fully understand them. I’m still figuring out whether this flip lands for players who only try one or two years, so for now I asked my playtester to play all four.
Some feedback and observation I had during today’s playtest:
- Emma said she liked decoding familiar Velen words but got frustrated knowing only two words in a passage. She said she liked having lots of thoughts but only two or three ways to express them. This meant the constraint worked.
- Emma felt like she had the most choice during Junior year (as designed!): She said she felt like she knew enough to understand and respond, and could pick up on tone. She also stopped asking “what’s the right choice?” and started asking “what do I want to say?”
- Moments she wanted to say something she couldn’t: The food scene (wanting to say her mom’s home cooking was better) and the class scene (understanding enough but not keeping up). The write-it-down option resonated since she always needs to write her thoughts first.
- Senior year flip landed: She felt she couldn’t escape Velen words anymore. Even choosing the easiest option for her parents, they still didn’t fully understand her.
- Personal reflections: The game reminded her of study abroad (though that was structured and with English speakers) and of moving out of state for college, which was hard enough in her own language.
Overall positive feedback so far. For next step I want to weave in more conflicts in junior year in tricky social situations where the protagonist tries to confront a friend’s friend who tries to make fun of them at a party. And also add in some time limit to when a player can choose from the existing option menu – like 3 seconds because that’s the usual pace of turns in conversations – if they didn’t get to choose within the time constraint, they will be defaulted to proceed with “said nothing and awkwardly smiled”, so that the player can feel the pressure of not being able to express themselves in a new language environment even more.
