Newcomer : A Language Learning RPG

I would not recommend this game. I read the negative reviews but decided to give it a try and started learning English -> Spanish. I quickly got called mija despite playing with a male character, and some other sentences felt off too, so I decided to test out how accurate the game actually is. As a native Dutch speaker, I decided to study English -> Dutch, and immediately noticed the pronunciation and intonation were off. For some words it's not too bad, for others it really is and it would greatly impair your ability to learn Dutch as you'd simply learn an incorrect pronunciation. Continued to play ('learning' Dutch) and the mispronunciations got worse. There were also a lot of mistranslations (e.g. "Ik ben goed" instead of "Het gaat goed", which is a clear direct translation from English that just does not work in Dutch). At that point, I immediately stopped using the game to learn Spanish because it can genuinely really harm language learning if you're simply learning the wrong things. Additionally, and this won't surprise you, but there were no real voice actors used, making the whole thing sound robotic. I genuinely enjoyed the concept, and I think that's why the reviews are as high as they are, because anyone who actually speaks any of these languages would immediately see it is machine translated and simply inaccurate. To the dev; I highly recommend having actual natives (preferably language teachers) go over this, and to also have native voice actors. Edit: I’ve seen the developer mention in comments that the game “shouldn’t be your main source” or that “mistakes can happen.” However, in a language learning game, accuracy is not optional; it’s the entire point. You WILL pick up vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar from a game like this, even passively. If what you’re picking up is incorrect, that doesn’t just fail to help you, it actively makes your skills worse. You might even end up needing to unlearn things you thought were right.

I bought the base game. I was impressed by the word and grammar descriptions. This is great supplementation to any existing learning from DuoLingo or school. I was curious about the intermediate DLC because it adds speaking. THIS CHANGED THE GAME. In the base game, you have to string vocab you unlock into questions and statements. The NPCs react dynamically to what you can string together. In Intermediate, I can type or SPEAK whatever I want in German to the NPC and they respond so well, like a Star Trek holodeck character. This felt like the future. Now an NPC and I are having a dynamic conversation about my irl dog and he's telling me about the local hunter and forest too. Amazing. I had to stream this to my friends. I didn't realize we had already arrived to a game like this. Very in depth grammar explanations, and great avenues for thinking about and developing dynamic conversation skills. Excited to keep playing. A great futuristic tool for language learning, especially in the intermediate phase.

I played this game in Italian while my Italian wife (a language teacher) was watching me. According to what she told me, many things I encountered during my playthrough were misleading or straight up wrong. Here are some examples: - the game addresses my character with feminine words, even if I selected to be a male character - the software that reads the words and the sentences uses the wrong stress on some words - some of the texts in game were randomly in Spanish - some words during dialogue with NPCs were made up (they don't exist in Italian) - the translation of "I come" was indicated as correct as "vado" and "vengo" simultaneously, without any explanation of why - the game wants you to translate "where are..." and "where is..." as "dove sono..." and "dov'è...", which doesn't make sense to learn verbs effectively in Italian, as "where are..." can be translated as well with "dove sei/siamo/siete" and "dove sono..." can also mean "where am I" To summarize, it's clear it's a game heavily based on some kind of machine translation software of debatable quality, it could be good to learn new vocabulary in a fun way, but it definitely cannot be your primary source for learning. To use my wife's words "I know this was 4 dollars but the bar is in hell".

Language modules are translated by a chatbot and are not checked by someone who actually speaks the language, so get ready for a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of inaccuracies and inconsistencies. (Wood being alternatively translated as Wald or Holz to refer to the exact same forest, Laufen being indicated as the translation of To Walk, which it very much isn't)

Not gonna lie, I was really excited when I found this as I've been looking for some language learning games that aren't just flashcards. I played for a bit, started with French as that's what I already have base knowledge of, found a few issues early on that didn't sit with me right as they felt like pretty egregious errors to have come from a human translating and writing the dialog (i.e. when talking with Helga in Mahda, the dialoge spells key (clé) as "cl'e" and steal (volé) as "vol'e", even though the next dialog box has "clé" written and pronounced more correctly). This led to pretty ridiculous attempts by the TTS to pronounce those words and raises concerns at the quality of the rest of the game when paired with other negative reviews this game has in regards to natural speakers reviewing and criticizing it. Not to mention that the game is built using Gemini, yet is not disclosed as utilizing genAI per Steam's own ToS - I had to read through the patch notes to find that. All of this plus the dev's vocal support for genAI systems and companies (including recently DuoLingo which has infamously been criticized for firing many of its human translators to replace them with genAI systems) is incredibly disappointing, as the concept for this game is amazing. I only wish I could actually trust the language learning I would get from it, but I currently can't.

Edit: Apparently, negative reviews with valid criticism lead to the dev gaslighting you. Even the dev response sounds like it was written with ChatGPT. ------- This game is just another AI slop. I wish I had watched the trailer with audio because it's really obvious that they used AI voices. Personally, I wished they had used no dub at all instead. I really like the concept of using an RPG to learn a language, but Newcomer is doing such an awful job with this that you are better off using anything else. *By "awful job" I'm referring to the fact that some translations are just straight up wrong. Some other reviewers assumed that the translation was also done by AI and not checked by a person who actually speaks the language, which kind of makes sense.

On the whole, the concept of this game is quite cool. I like the basics of it to be sure. Some things that need fixing / removed though: - Creating an account before using the game is terrible, pointless and annoying. Doubly so on a Steam Deck. The text boxes don't auto even popup the keyboard - it took quite a while for me to sort out how to even type to create an account, and I am still mad I had to create an account; it doesn't make any sense and it's intrusive. It's really, really, really lame. - It keeps asking me for my opinion about the game as I play the game, and I find that to be annoying as well. It's made even worse by the fact you can't read most of the text of the questions on a Steam Deck. Please stop with all this overt measuring or don't charge me money for the game - I paid for this? - The joystick works on the Steam Deck, but almost no other buttons do, so you have to use the mouse - I suppose, I should just say "lacks Steam Deck support in general" :) Aside from those gripes, the game play is a cool idea. The graphics are simple, nice and clean. If you have a level of about A1 French you'll find a lot of stuff you already know, but also some neat vocab you might not mixed in. If the developer turns off the need to create an account, and stops interrupting the game with questions (a lot of questions), then I would recommend the game - until then, yeah... it's ok... maybe go for it. It's such a good idea and it's ruined by unneeded "features" :-/

Maybe not just yet? I do love this idea, and I actually do enjoy the game. But as it is right this moment? I don't think I can recommend it. I love the method of going through the story and slowly using more and more of the target language. I'm learning Deutsch. Or rather, I'm refreshing it as I took 4 years of it 12 years ago and would like to improve it again. However, I am unsure if the AI voicing will be updated at some point, or if maybe a DLC could be added to fund better AI voicing? Right now it can pronounce some words incorrectly, or as another comment mentioned can give incorrect translations. Overall, I understand that I am audio sensitive, but many of my friends and acquaintances are as well. However, I will be sure to come back and update my review as it is updated. I really do enjoy this game other than the above criticism, so I look forward to seeing it progress.

I don't think I can recommend this game quuuuite yet. I am annoyed that Jeremiah literally tells you who he is and then you still have to ask for his name to appear over his head. The text to speech voices are not the WORST but I don't think it should read your selections then read them again as your dialogue screen. It would also be nice if you could select a SINGLE word and not JUST phrases. The enemies respawn is crazy fast and it doesn't really add any phrases or words that the npcs say to you to your phrasebook. I DO like it and I AM enjoying it but I'm not going to recommend this until it's been worked on more. I believe that this has great potential!

I gave it a negative review because I feel it needs work, not that it doesn't have potential to be a good game once fixed. In short, the game consists of having conversations with NPC to gain XP and complete quests. The quests so far have been fetch quests; nothing fancy. As you level up, you gain more words that can be used in the combat translation minigame. Pros: - The NPC appear to have an AI behind the scenes powering conversations. When it works, this leads to a natural conversation that actually feels real and engaging. - You can click on unfamiliar words and it will give a good definition and inform you of the conjugation Cons: - Sometimes conversation tasks don't work. E.g. if you are tasked with asking a NPC about their job, they will reply with details about their job, but the task won't be marked as complete. This isn't always due to spelling or a typo: using google translate and copy pasting will sometimes not work. - combat is very tedious. Enemies respawn very quickly, and translating a small pool of words gets old fast. There is no motivation to kill enemies, so I've been trying to avoid them to get the quests done. - voice to text does't work. It just freezes the game up. I don't use it, but some might. What I would like to see: - longer respawn times for enemies - more variety in combat: power attacks consisting of harder words and more damage. Maybe some conjugation instead of just translation. choice to type out answers instead of click. - little bit more of a story (so far its pretty basic after 3 hours) All in all, I consider this an investment and I hope the dev keeps working on this and updates regularly.