Lands of Languages

Note there's a free demo (see further down)

Lands of Languages (LoL) is a hobby project developed with the objective of learning language vocabulary in a fun way. Learning requires repetition, which is often boring. So here the repetition is embedded within the grinding tasks of a role-playing game, and the development is heavily focused on gameplay.

In LoL you explore a procedurally generated world inhabited by different beings, which you can capture and train in battles. These battles are the core gameplay, and your battle success depends on solving translation challenges. As your beings level up, you gradually encounter harder challenges and can explore new areas of the world. A free demo is available allowing for hours of initial progression.

System requirements:

• Uses 653 MB (Linux) or 1.09 GB space (Windows) for the game installation.
• Uses about 200 MB RAM while running.
• The game runs in a window with resolution options from 1024x512 to 1792x896.
• Currently available for Linux and Windows. If you are interested in the game on another operating system, let me know.

Links:  Wiki | Discord | YouTube | SoundCloud | Mail (contact)

Languages and Translation Challenges

Currently, LoL supports a limited number of languages with verified translation challenges. The number that are verified in a playthrough requires they are verified in both the language you pick to learn, and the base language you pick (which you know already).

• English (All 2474 translation challenges are verified)
• Danish (1912 verified)
• Mandarin Chinese (1292 verified)
• Turkish (527 verified)
• Vietnamese (311 verified)
• Bosnian (259 verified)
• Croatian (259 verified)
• Serbian (258 verified)
• German (186 verified)
• Russian (75 verified)

In addition to the verified translations, machine translations are also available for the remaining challenges. These are marked in-game by [MT] and can be reduced/disabled. When including machine translations, LoL supports a total of 30 languages. Within a game world you can view a dictionary of translations you have encountered, and see statistics of how many correct/wrong answers you have for each translation.

Quests

To progress, you must also solve quests from different NPCs. By default, these are communicated in the language you learn, but you can also get them translated by an NPC at a cost. Currently there are 59 quests, and their translations are verified almost only in English and Danish. The purpose of quests in terms of learning is to show full sentences with words in context, to supplement the battle challenges with are primarily single words.

The World

You can choose a random seed to obtain different worlds. Within a world you encounter different biomes, and generally wild beings become more dangerous (higher level) the further away you venture from where you start. Accounting for this, there are several square kilometers to explore as you progress. You can keep track of what you have explored on a world map. Some biomes can be hard to traverse, as the natural landscape forms different types of mazes.

In the world you will find many items such as berries/food for healing, but also items you can use for crafting tools and other items. This enables you to have an impact on the world, farming, mining and building structures.

The world also gradually changes due to seasons, day and night. A day in-game lasts 24 minutes, and there are 168 game days per year. The world features axial tilt, from polar to equatorial environments several kilometers apart, but also biomes with fantasy themes.

Towns are scattered across the world. Here you can find buildings such as distribution centers, schools, forges, arenas with trainers, and flight centers you can fly between after discovery. As you progress you also unlock new means of transport, including sailboats and riding. Jetpacks are planned for the late game.

Caves can also be found across the world, leading to the underground cave world with different depth layers. Here you can find useful minerals for crafting.

Demo vs Paid Version

If you consider playing the game, please start with the demo, so that you know the game works on your machine and that you are happy with the game. The demo has all features up to about level 20, with hours of gameplay where you encounter about 400 of the more basic translation challenges, 39 of the 59 available quests and about 8 km^2 to explore.

In the full paid version, the saves folder can simply be copied over from the demo to continue. The paid version currently has a level cap at 50, to balance the gameplay with number of translations, progression and leave space for future updates. By level 50 about 120 km^2 is accessible.

Arcade Mode

An arcade mode is available as an alternative to the RPG world setting. In the arcade, you can simply set up two groups of beings to battle. You can play against the computer or control both sides with the keyboard (for a local 1 vs 1).

Soundtrack

Part of the game soundtrack is the LoL Original Sountrack (46 tracks, 77 minutes)

The soundtrack also includes over 4 hours of music from different publicly available sources:

• CreatorChords [creatorchords.com]
• alkakrab [alkakrab.itch.io]
  
• Kevin MacLoed [incompetech.com/music]
• SuloSounds [sulosounds.itch.io]
• Tim Beek [timbeek.itch.io]
• The Cynic Project [opengameart/cynicmusic]
  
• Sonatina [sonatina.itch.io]
  
• Spruce Studios [spruce-studios.itch.io]
• Clement Panchout [clement-panchout.itch.io]
• escalonamusic [escalonamusic.itch.io]
• Rafael Crux [freepd.com]
• SVL [svl.itch.io]
• 8 bit Ensemble of August 1st [youtube.com/@bayibali]
  
• jhaeka [joshuuu.itch.io]