About eight months ago, I impulsively decided I wanted to learn Japanese. To be honest, it wasn’t something that had ever occurred to me as either beneficial or indeed especially possible for me before; but because modern life does have its upsides sometimes, I was able to act on this whim so fast that, before it had the chance to pass, I was stuck into my first-ever Japanese lesson, courtesy of Duolingo.
Fast forward 237 days and the green bird has yet to find occasion to chastise me for skipping a day, and although I’m hardly fluent — and would undoubtedly be flustered out of any proficiency I possess if an actual Japanese person actually attempted to speak to me in actual Japanese — I’ve made some definite progress. I can slowly sound out the video titles on the Japanese Pokémon YouTube channel and understand all the Japanese equivalents to “BLAM” and “POW” when I read manga, that sort of thing.
Duolingo is decently gamified already as far as language learning apps go, but naturally I was very excited when I first heard of So to Speak: an indie puzzle game coming soon to Steam and Itch.io, which aims to teach English speakers the basics of Japanese vocabulary by having them navigate their way around a charming pixel-art Japanese town. At least in my experience, as someone who loved their gaming hobby so much they made it their job, you can never have too much gamification.
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