Tristan Dahl
Creator of
Recent community posts
Lingotopia is a language learning game about being lost in a city where you don't speak the language. Learn Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Russian, Spanish and more! You play a little girl shipwrecked on the shores of a strange island. In order to get back home you'll need to explore the island and talk to its inhabitants. Sadly, no one speaks your language! You'll have to learn words one at a time to decipher what these strange creatures are saying.
How does it work?
- Explore a lovingly handcrafted city.
- Click on objects in the environment and your guide will teach you the word for them.
- Learn words by talking to the city's inhabitants.
- Voice recordings by native speakers teach you the correct pronunciation.
- Learning a language with a different script? Toggle between the romanised and native script at any time.
The trailer should help explain how the game works:
I've worked on the game for over and a half years and am very anxious and excited to release it out into the wild now. I'll stick around so please shout if you have any questions.
Hi!
I've just released a new demo to my language learning game Lingotopia. It's a game that simulates the feeling of being lost in a city where you don't speak the language.
https://tristandahl.itch.io/lingotopia
You can explore and entire city district of Lingotopia and by clicking on items and chatting with its inhabitants you learn words. The more words you know, the more you can begin to understand what's being said and feel at home in this strange city.
I've been working on this game since the beginning of the year and am going to use this demo to get feedback, more translations and perhaps even get the interest of a big famous publisher who'll shower me with money. Fingers crossed!
Hi! I've just released a webgl version of the very first prototype for my language learning game, Lingotopia. In it, you play a young girl lost in a strange city full of anthropomorphic animals ( who speak a real language, such as French or Swedish).
The city mentioned above isn't in the game yet, right now there's of the few planned dialogue minigames that teach you a word of a language. It's short, but if learning a language is something you might be interested in, then please give it a try!
https://tristandahl.itch.io/lingotopia
If you'd be interested in expanding the amount of languages available in the game for the next demo (which will have more mechanics and words to learn then I'd be super grateful! German and English are covered but all other additions are welcome.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YKL_lKNgJK...
Have fun! - Tristan
aaaand the game is now out on Android and iOS! yaaay
Hopefully I'll get a few more downloads than the 11 I've had on itch.io so far. I did send out my press releases in advance this time (2 weeks) and touch arcade already wrote a short article announcing the release date. So I'm crossing fingers.
www.tristandahl.co.za/oneshowonly.html
I'll post here again with some download numbers in a month or so, because I think a comparison between itch.io (few users, but better visibility) and the mobile storefronts (billions of users, no visibility) could be interesting. But then it'll be time to start a new thread for some new game (finally)!
Yay, my first reply :)
Well, the press release was quite concise and pointed the reader to the website and presskit. I think if one were to just link to a website it would seem a bit lazy.
Good feedback regarding the trailer. I think its difficult to make a turn based game seem exciting and I probably should have used a faster pace. I kept it slow to make sure everyone would be able read the text and understand eveything.
And good point regarding the facial expressions. That's something I had planned early on, but lost track of the idea somewhere during development
The game has now been available on itch.io for 6 days and has sold 9 copies. Which is a lot less than I would've hoped. I have also gotten zero press and non of the 30 or so youtubers I've written have responded. So If anyone has any tips on what I should've done differently in the press release I'd be super grateful
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1trkyG988qMTBJK...
Also! Here's the release trailer
And the game is now available on itch.io!
https://tristandahl.itch.io/oneshowonly
yay! It'd be great if you'd give it a try. Right now I'm getting less downloads than expected. Zero to be exact :'( But maybe that'll change and I'll post here again in a week or two, since some of you might be interested in knowing how many downloads a dev with no name can get on itch.
Hey!
I've been working on a little game called One Show Only for the past 9 months or so. And I just released it on itch!
https://tristandahl.itch.io/oneshowonly
It's a detective game where you interrogate witnesses to a crime by playing a card game against them. See the gif below:
I've been keeping a devlog here on the forum as well, so if any of you want to have a look at its development process:
https://itch.io/t/13886/one-show-only-a-narrative-...
Hope you have fun! Happy sleuthing!
Okay, I'm nearly done with the game, there are just some bugs to fix and optimizations to do and since I had to capture some footage in order to hand my game in for IndieCade I ended up making a little trailer.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=BArq3SLaX8A
I plan on releasing the game on itch.io first and then mobile a month or two later. I've always been interested in seeing how games sell on itch.io so I'll share my numbers here then.
Thanks for reading!
The two aspects of the game that still need a lot of work at the moment are the interface and the fact that the card game and the dialogue system don't complement each other as far as the gameplay is concerned.
The UI contains a lot of visual noise at the moment, so by removing ui elements until they are required, the player can more easily see what they should interact with. An example of this are the text bubbles on the left hand side. They are now only displayed after you have asked your first question and they begin to fill with dialogue.
To further simplify the UI I have changed the text displayed on the players cards. Whereas they used to display the first three words of that question, I.e "where were you…" they now simply say "Question 1" or 2,3 etc. The important thing is that one can still differentiate them. But the text no longer grabs your attention when the most important part of the cards UI are the arrows showing their movement options.
The game can be played and beaten without reading any of the dialogue on the left hand side of the screen at the moment and I want to circumvent this by giving the player hints as to who has the answer to that question. So by successfully bringing a card to the top row against the ringmaster, he might then say, "I don't know, but you should ask the magician". This information will then also be stored on the card itself. The text on it now says:
" Question 2
-Ask the magician ".
This will reward players who take the time to read the dialogue and make the process of deciding which person to interrogate next less random.
And this is a page from the intro comic at the beginning of the game