ΛLIENGUIST

Nice idea for the theme and looks cute. creating new linguistic symbols must be hard.But it could be more interactive but good work

Thanks @finnthepirate ! The language was carefully constructed by @Chao, and he definitely did mention he was way more tired than normal for this jam!

Wondering if you might have any suggestions for how it could be more interactive?

I like the idea but i could not figure how the language works. But i blame sleep deprivition and perhaps stupidity. Nice graphics, nice sound, specially the alien words. Goodjob and goodluck!

Thanks @appoxgames ! No worries, we have trouble working out the language ourselves sometimes too, it's definitely not a game for early mornings pre-coffee!

If you need help with the language, the translations should slowly reveal themselves as you speak different sentences. New letters only appear when you speak a new unique sentence though, so make sure to try as many different sentences as you can!

Thats a fun game! Its a very nice idea and approach to the topic. I wonder how large the map ist, at least i can speak first sentences now with the aliens. They must think i am stupid repeating words at them lol.

bombadädum biep biep :D

@raomer Thank you! The map is a reasonable size, it's not big but the amount of content you can get out of the language balances it out I reckon.

@sansman01 dingg dabdabdabdap biep biep!

Can I have some hints to get fuel/red ball?
can't figure out how to get more interaction :'(

@eggshelldog It's hard to tell what you need to do without knowing where you're up to, but it might help to know that you don't need the red ball, and that the guy in the middle in the middle island has the fuel.
Hope that helps!

@chao yeah I saw that guy have fuel
I tried talk to them a lot and somehow he change the sentence to "fuel ?" when I approach him. (I guess "question" = "?")
but I can't really get the fuel
Is that mean I am almost there and I can get the fuel when I organize the right sentence?

@eggshelldog Yep, that's it. That part is pretty ambiguous, try thinking about it in terms of what kind of fuel do you want.

Wow finally I finished the game, and that's why the red ball there!
Actually I think If there are less words, and you somehow can manage to let player really learn the words by themself (like the alien pointing to a box and keep saying a word mean "box").
The gameplay will be much much better
The way you give hints and reveal the word to player give me kind of "checking dictionary" feeling in the late game.
Btw nice music, it fits the game well!

@eggshelldog Nice job!
Less words would have been nice, we probably should have thought more about how we were going to cut down the word count earlier on.
It's definitely a concept that we're still really interested in though, so we might end up expanding it later, taking all this stuff more into account.
Thanks for the feedback!

The most original idea I saw this jam. Graphics, music and the alien language are really good. The game is very polished and the gameplay is fluid. Good job!

I could learn all the words that were avaiable to me at a given time but could not make any advance in the game beyond that. Phrases like need fuel question or similars didnt produce any results. Well, maybe is my lack of english knowledge (not my primary language).

Anyway, the graphics are really nice and the sound is astonishing. The music is good and set a nice mood to the game but the sfx are something else. Really nice interpretation of what a alien language would sound while spoke by a human.

Excellent job!

BEEP BEEP!

This was really fun and funny! I love the idea of learning a new language and the process to figure how to communicate was really enjoyable. Thanks for making this :D

Overall: This game put a smile on my face and it shows off some strange gameplay in a strange world. Thanks for making it!

Fun: Good! It's a really unique experience and fun to go through. The silly sounds add to the fun. I cheesed it a bit by just going X?? X??? X???? etc. with a lot of words, which is a straightforward but slow way to find all the letters of a word. After filling all the words, I got stuck for ages not knowing what to say to get the fuel - but after finally figuring it out, I have to admit that it is a fair puzzle and I was just a bit slow-witted about it.

Innovation: High. I'm sure I've had to figure out a language in games before, but it's always some code to decypher - the gameplay here is really something new.

Theme: Yeah, I think this is a very creative interpretation!

Graphics: Good! The unusual bright colours are suitable for this weird world.

Audio: Wonderful.

Humor: Yes, I laughed at the human trying to reproduce all the alien sounds.

Mood: The bright colours, the music and the sounds put me in a cheerful mood.

could not figure out what to say, even after the words were shown in human language. Had fun anyway.

I love SO MUCH your game guys !!!!
Really, I played several times and I always had fun :id:

I really love your concept and the way the game works, well done guys :)

Oh and, I thinks this is the better voice acting I've ever heard :joy:

I really liked this game. The idea of having to talk is quite interesting,
just at the beginning that may be a little confusing. I started by trying to mimic the phrases I see, but after some time I stopped to progress, so, I started to guess and speak random words.

In the game it's a little hard to start understand, so, I guess that was the intention, because it's complicated to start learn new language. But I think would be nice at the beginning to learn some basic words, and after that, during the game learn the more complicated, or the ones that have more meaning).

Also, I think this game has a lot of possibilities of improvement and add new features... would love to play a version of this one in future.

Cool! Definitelly one of the best games I've played this jam!

Had a lot of fun speaking to those aliens... And then my kid noticed the game and spend like half an hour going from one alien to another making funny sounds )))

Pretty innovative. Reminds me of Captain Blood and their pictographic langauge - check it out, if you haven't seen it yet.
There was also Tabula Rasa with their icons as a language.

So cool! I think with a bit more work it could be better, but that is just my opinion!

This very smart - much smarter than me! Really feels like trying to learn a language by repetition of what you've heard others say and trying to join the dots in your mind - a brilliant simulation and puzzle!

I love linguistic games! Great work and nice use of the theme :)

It was a bit hard to figure out how to fill in the words and what you needed to communicate to the aliens. It would have been nice if the player's text would have appeared below the sprite so it would not have overlapped with the aliens' text.

@rodrigo-denubila @prodigalson @johnny-rainbow @wolfens @sharbelfs @sillyman987 @mediyaz Thank you!!

@derek-volker I actually thought it might be easier for players who can speak more than one language, as multilingual people generally find it easier to accept unfamiliar linguistic concepts. We actually originally had the language as a different grammatical structure than English, and changed it to be the same as English later, when we thought it might be too hard, so maybe it would indeed now be easier for someone who speaks English natively. Thanks for playing!

@reheated Thanks for the detailed review! Yeah originally we didn't have any method of revealing letters and just had empty boxes for players to take notes in, but we found it was just way too hard. We tried a few different methods of revealing letters before landing on the current one, but it definitely has a few loopholes still!

@invader I'll make sure to check those out, thanks!

@arzi You can simply move your character up or down so it's not on the same row as the alien, and then the text won't overlap :) But perhaps it would make overlapping less frequent if the text was on the bottom for the player.

Wow, I can't describe how incredibly fun this game was. I was playing with some friends and we were laughing our asses of playing with stupid dialogue options and also trying to figure out puzzles and decipher what was happening. This was an incredible game with an incredible concept and i NEED a full version with more dialogue options and combinations as it was a bit frustrating to not know what to say. But overall amazing job and I hope for the best for this game and all of you talented people!

Definitely the definition of "start with nothing"! Like many others, I started just clicking around on the words trying to piece it all together. I started out thinking it was a Simon Says type of game, but little did I know you guys put in SO MUCH MORE to the game. It was fun parsing out the language and syntax, though I think later on when there were many NPCs and many words, I started to lose track of who I had said what to (not sure if that had mattered) and I started to really get stuck in the later areas. Regardless, the game is very bold and unique. I normally think Mastermind-inspired games are too cookie cutter but all the elements of this game came together to make me want to play and explore more. I really felt like I was learning stuff about the world along the way so that was probably it.