Influent (2014)

Influent es un juego muy efectivo para aprender palabras simples en el idioma que te interesa. I picked this game up in early 2015 during Humble’s “Made in Japan” Weekly bundle for $5.20 along with five other games. I splurged on an additional 15 languages both then and in later Steam sales for a dollar each. I started playing back then on a Linux machine with only onboard graphics, and I’ve spent practically all of my time with the Spanish language that I’m continually learning (2+ year daily streak on Duolingo!), but also have most of the other languages installed.

I really love the concept and basic execution of this game. I’m a very visual learner, and this taps into that aspect wonderfully. You walk around a small apartment in either third- or first-person view, selecting common objects and discovering what they’re called in your chosen language. As you build up a list of ten words, you can take a quiz on the list where it will prompt you with the foreign language and you have to go find the object. Later modes unlock additional vocabulary (a few adjectives and verbs), a different way of moving around the apartment, additional quiz options, and small cosmetic bonuses. You eventually uncover 420 different words, most of which are nouns, and you “master” them by repeatedly selecting the right answer in the quizzes.

Aesthetically, the 3D bits work well enough for the gameplay, but there’s also a lot of charming artwork on magazine covers, photos, and such. The music may sound familiar as it’s also been used in a famous Kickstarter project as well as the Dustforce soundtrack; it’s good, but I eventually turned it off as it gets repetitive. There are also a couple short animations that are perfect for giving a backstory to the game. There’s no resolution to the story, but it doesn’t really need it.

The development team is mostly driven by a single individual, and a very small budget. There was talk soon after release of being able to go outside the apartment, but that hasn’t come to fruition, and I don’t think it ever will. However, new languages are still being added, albeit infrequently.

On the complaint end of things, sometimes finding every object can be difficult, but when I re-played the game from scratch this month it only took me about three hours over 3-4 sessions. Movement can also be awkward, and selecting small items, or some of the items in the fridge can be frustrating since the camera is very floaty. Also be sure to right-click on everything to see if it animates, revealing new objects; my very last word was because I’d neglected to turn on any of the faucets!

But… how well does the game actually teach you a new language? I would say that it doesn’t. But that this is okay. There’s no verb conjugation, and no sentences. No conversation options, no alphabet instruction, and no grammatical structure. But, I would still find myself repeating the Spanish words for random things as I wandered around my real-life kitchen, and was happy to know the names of these common things when other (more language-focused than vocabulary-focused) tools hadn’t yet taught them. As I wrote at the start, Influent is a very effective game for learning simple words in the language you’re interested in!

Concurrency (2017) / DeathMetal (2016)

These two were a pair of my most recent SG wins – a backlog itself that I often feel guilty about not spending much time on.

Deathmetal (2 hours to beat) is Arkanoid/Breakout, but boring and a little annoying. The “deathmetal” riffs are fairly bland, basic chuggy stereotypes of metal. The 21st achievement is for having six balls at once, which is mostly dependent upon being lucky. The power-ups (or power-downs) are random, and it’s bothersome to repeat levels where the “Extra Ball” might be slightly easier to come by since you have to go through a set of ten levels from the beginning to get to the one you’re after. There are four sets of ten levels in the game. Each set has a different layout, and it gets progressively more difficult (read: more annoying) as you just wait for the random bullet fire power up that makes any level stupid easy. Additionally, there’s not a lot of strategy in where you bounce the ball off the paddle. It reacts only slightly, taking away a large part of what I think makes a good Breakout/Arkanoid clone.

Concurrency, on the other hand (5 hours to beat), was kinda cool. I know it’s supposed to play like some sort of rogue-lite 2D hallway traversal game with a (not so) hidden additional parts, but I somehow stumbled upon the not-so-hidden part really quickly. From there, it plays like an interesting variety of short games with the same aesthetic loosely connecting them all. They aren’t particularly good short games, but they’re okay. If I were the solo dev behind them all, I’d be proud of them, but wouldn’t release them to the general public except in this collection-style format. There’s one space-themed one with a “mining” aspect that was a bit difficult at the start, but if you’re stuck on that, circle your attack ships around the enemies by constantly clicking in a circle around them, then just get mining when you can. Also, the main platforming game that isn’t so short can be very difficult. Simple persistence and slowly growing skill will overcome that one. Also, from reading the forums, I’m not sure, but two of the achievements might be broken. Overall, definitely not bad for free or maybe even a dollar. I don’t mind having spent some time on it.