Lost Abroad Café: A Language Learning Management Sim

High school language teacher here :D This game is quite the hidden gem! Although it's still very early in development and far from being polished, I see a lot of potential in it. To me, the developers really understand language learning and how to make it fun: 1. The top reason why people give up on learning a language is that they dream of doing all kinds of cool things with it but, for the first months or even years, all they usually do is learning vocab and grammar without context and say some words and broken phrases. This game gives you real-life scenarios right away, and let you see the result of your learning: serving the right items and making the customers happy. This design is simple yet so powerful as it amplifies what's fundamentally fun about language learning, which is criminally ignored in most if not all language learning solutions out there. 2. This game doesn't treat you like a child: it makes you figure out the meaning of words and phrases yourself by listening to customers' orders and experimenting with the stuff you make. You are given a challenge but you feel in control: if you get it right, the customer is happy and if you don't, the customer shakes the head and no biggy, you try something new. You feel empowered not patronized/punished, while you learn the language by experimenting and doing, which is the natural way of learning a language (esp. if you are into Krashen's comprehensible input theory). 3. Speaking of learning by experimenting, this instant feedback system is really powerful as you get to see the result of your action. And when you get something right it feels so satisfying because you see the meaningful difference you make so you keep going (practicing the language). And because all the things you're learning is practical, you are actually acquiring language skills useful for the real world just by playing. This is so smart and I wish more games/apps are like this! 4. For Chinese, there is a tutorial mission and I really love it! It lets you click on each word to bring up a detailed window with the word played at 3 different speeds and you can even record yourself to compare your pronunciation to the original. It also comes with some "fun facts" that give you a cool background story and some tips to remember the word. My favorite is that for the word "cha" or tea, it sounds similar to "chai" and the character literally shows tea leaves being dried on the roof, i.e., the ancient tea making process in China. This is actually exemplary from a teaching standpoint and only done by the best teachers out there. I know it must be time consuming to do this for every word for every language, but I would love to see it rolled out for the cafe game itself. 5. The developers seem to be quite responsive on their discord with the user feedback and the bugs have been fixed quickly as each update rolls out. I just discovered that they actually have a TikTok and Insta account as well doing some fun language and culture content for Chinese. It's worth checking out actually as some of the videos are hilarious! 6. A small criticism/suggestion: currently the game is almost identical for all languages. I know this will be time consuming but ideally it will be great to see language specific interactions showcasing the culture in that language to make the game truly authentic. Overall, I think the game, although small and unpolished, demonstrates what learning language while having fun should look like. The developers also seem to really care about their product and are good people. I look forward to seeing the game grow and become the thing I wish I had learning languages myself back in the days. I'm so gonna give this as homework for my students once the school opens back up haha!

Please support this game! I want more language learning games on Steam!

A very bare bones game at the moment but it will help you learn the words it does teach very well. I like this quality over quantity in language learning. I have been looking for language games that teach through context because I believe that is the best way to teach language because it is the way we use language. Words never stand on their own. For the price its a steal for learning the words it teaches and the teaching method. (Also check out the game Sheng Tian for learning more Mandarin in context)

Wonderful concept! There are a few bugs, but noting unexpected for a game in development. There wan't much to learn in early access stages in the Japanese cafe, since all of the food in the game uses katakana, but if they're working on making conversations possible, I think this game could be revolutionary in the language learning world. I will be sticking around for the full release which sounds like will be in a few months.

The text where you say Hello isn't showing.

Very good learning game! The devs are actively improving the game!

I want to love this game since its such a good idea, but theres a lot of bugs like customers blending into one another and you cannot proceed without ending your day, and customers basically just say the same thing all the time although IRL people dont really say the same sentences all the time when they order stuff. It would have been nice if there was some story to it as well, even small ones, where we get to hear daily convo and other things aside from just ordering food.

This is a refreshing take on language learning apps! I love that you are thrown directly into a realistic setting where the vocab you learn actually matters. Although the game is still early and clearly there is still a ways to go for features and graphics, this is an amazing concept for language learning. Some downsides to the game is that the progression caps out quickly, and after you've bought everything there really isn't much else to do. However, there are regular updates to the game it seems so hopefully more content comes out soon!

中国大陆地区进游戏不能直接steam登录, 换地区节点进去之后玩了一下发现大部分都是重复内容, 就那么几句话来回说, 难度就一直a1水平, 而且"地区特产"就是右侧食物架子上换两三种, 内容少到爆

my brain has to think about the French. I could order new stuff for my shop, but i am not ready yet. when i order more stuff for my shop, the customers will request more stuff. I dont know enough French to do that yet. This game is nice because the reward is improved language skills rather than in game advancements. In the typical game, you gain super powers, new outfits, or whatever. In this game, achievement equals real-world gains. you do not merely add inventory to the store. you add inventory to you linguistic abilities. Well done Lost Abroad. Great Language Development Game !!