Is This Anything

is this anything

Rereading TPoH and what. is. this.

I know about drawings of the House of Paint and Idea on Hero's wall, but this thing? It's a broken temper. I'm sure of it. And it's on the third page. The drawings were on the previous one

new quiz y'all! worked on this until 4 am lol. reblog and tell me, what kind of supervillain are you?

Sometimes I envy people who can draw and want to learn how to do it, but then proceed to not learn because I'm too lazy for it :/

The fact that individuals on the aplatonic, aromantic, and asexual spectrums see the concept of love and humanity differently than the rest of society literally makes us the coolest people in the world.

No, this is not up for debate.

I still really want to see a story-driven game that would incorporate language learning into the game mechanic. Starting with singular words and simple sentences, Duolingo-style, with all kinds of minigames where the goal is to either construct a sentence, understand instructions, being able to recall the correct words at the right time, but it's set into a story that you play through.

This could be a whole genre of games, with different locations based on what language you're learning, but the basic format would be pretty similar each time. Your character has been dropped in the middle of a completely new place where they don't speak the language at all, you meet characters who quickly realise that you don't have a way to mutually communicate, and start teaching you as you tag along to whatever they are doing.

There would definitely be a learning curve, but as the characters understand that you don't understand, they start with simple sentences. "My name is Aila. This is my daughter. My daughter's name is Lena. What is your name?", and once you've figured out the very basics, they progressively get more advanced.

Naturally it wouldn't be only grammar tests and vocabulary quizzes, there would definitely be more tasks and more standard game puzzles in it as well, but the instructions you are given are also in the target language. The whole point of having a plot is being immersive, and weaving the learning into the game.

Like the party you are travelling with needs you to get inside a house to fetch a specific item, and you are told - in the target language - what to do, where, and when. "Go in through the second window on the back. The book is in the living room, on the table. There is a dog, do not wake it up." And whether you accomplish the mission is about equally about the challenge of the mission itself, as how well you understand and remember the instructions.

Maybe also quick time events, when you're supposed to say something correctly within a very limited time range, and the fate of your party depends on whether you can quickly pick the right dialogue option. A car is coming and you've got 30 seconds to pick a word or sentence from 3 options, if you well " a car is coming!" they'll have more time to act than if you choose "look out!" and if you either do nothing or choose the completely wrong one and yell "monday!", you lost.

Every once in a while you also overhear dialogue (considering the added difficulty of hearing comprehension, I think the game would need to be largely text-based, or at least have subtitles) or find letters/notes/etc that you don't understand at all, which can work as foreshadowing or worldbuilding - understanding anything out of these wouldn't be vital to progressing the game, but trying to deduce some their meaning on a hunch is rewarded in some way, as an added bonus or easter egg.

Very early on in the game you get the dialogue option of asking "what does _____ mean?", and the characters try to explain it to you, point at it in the environment, or use a notepad to draw what the word means. Every character explains the same word slightly differently, so you can ask every single member of the party the same question if you don't understand the first one.

As the story progresses and the language gets more complicated, you may also notice that different characters have a varied amount of knowledge about the same things, and give a different amount of detail about the same things - if you ask one of them what [word] means, one of them says "it's a gun", while another one will tell you that it's a specific kind of shotgun, and draw you a picture of two shotguns, circling the one that is the specific type.

Considering the nature of language learning, the genre of the game would definitely be mystery - as you start to understand more and more of the language, you also start to pierce together the answers of your own story. Where are you, and how did you end up there? Who even are these people, and what are they trying to do? What are they trying to achieve with these tasks you have been helping them with, and why are they helping you in the first place?

A game like this would definitely have the risk of becoming mentally draining, so there would need to be a lot of in-between breather parts, the option to regularly go explore, craft and do stuff that requires no boring grammar tasks or word memorisation, but which still includes little things in it that keep the learning process fun and rewarding.

Like hey, while exploring this place you found a tin box with two words written on it and a picture of a lemon. You don't know the other word but you know the other one is "tea". You correctly deduce that this is lemon tea. You bring it to the character who mentioned liking tea, and she is delighted. Your friendship meter goes up.