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So, it is the Steam next festival and I thought I’d grab a few games and give you my impressions. These games are random and not chosen in any order, other than that they work on Linux. (Afterthought, my exclusions, like dating sims, will be absent.) If they all turn out to be train games or point and click, know that these games are just me going down a list and clicking install. Since Christmas is around the corner, I suppose I’ll have to make a list and check it twice. (You know, the naughty and nice stuff, nudge-nudge)
As you can see, I’ll start with the first one and work my way up the downloads. I know nothing about any of these games, so you should expect just impressions and no pondering.
The first game is Wagotabi. The demo was a reasonably small download, so it may be short. If, after reading this, you want to try it for yourself, Steam will be the only place I checked.
The game turned out to be a Japanese “word” game. (Similar to: “So to speak”.) It teaches the Japanese language in interactive mode. You read, you write, and you listen to the words. You may “write” this off as a boring text game, but I genuinely had fun in my first half an hour.
The game starts you off with a character creator and very low resolution graphics, that is scaled up really big. Since my spectacles are at the optometrist and I’m feeling blind at the moment, I made a blind kid avatar. Don’t judge. If you ever played any Nintendo RPG before, it always starts with a kid in a bedroom sleeping. It has become a trope now and here it is only slightly different.
There isn’t much to say about the graphics, other than they serve their purpose. It is faux 8-bit with basic characters. The old master, I imagine to be Jeong-lee Hwang, with long white eyebrows and a long white moustache. (Yes I am aware that he is Korean, but he is a great actor and my favourite movie bad guy!) If you are in this for fancy graphics, you will be a bit put out. However, the font used is *not an 8-bit one, thank the pope! Since you will be reading a lot, the font is clean and clear. When it comes to the “scroll” part, where you practise your Hiragana, everything is easily assimilated, thanks to the legibility.
You practice writing – the letters are huge, for easy copying – after being shown the order of the strokes. This makes it easier to learn a language with alien script if yours is Latin. However, writing with a mouse is not easy, if you have a tablet, I would say 100% try that. If you have the means, a Wacom one S works great with Linux and is under a hundred dollars. On the flip side of the coin, when one struggles with something, you tend to remember your struggles…
On to the sound. Though the jingle in the background repeats, I did not get annoyed or bored with it, as it immediately goes silent when you click on any word that the computer pronounces for you. Honestly, this is something that every “game” of this type needs. I do hope that when the game releases there are more tunes to play in the background. The pronunciation on my tinny laptop speakers sound just fine and I almost expected the game part to be voice acted as well.
Gameplay.
So far it is a solid game loop. Honestly I could not care about becoming the “next grand master” hokage or whatever. For me the story is secondary. I like it (the package) and I think it is a great tool, before it is a game. If one could pick up a $10 signature-type tablet with this game, I could foresee an awesome tool for schools. (Homeschoolers included) It feels well thought out, to keep a kid’s attention and I suppose Weebs too. If you have a Steam deck and languages are a thing that interest you, I imagine you will have a ball with this. Unfortunately I cannot afford one of those, so I cannot test anything on there, before you ask. I’d like to say that I find this game easier to play than “So to speak” where you get dropped in the deep end really quickly. I’ll add this to my wishlist on steam now and I think you should too.
Ubuntu.
Honestly the Steam installation went without a hitch and I have had no crashes or hang-ups or slow-downs, partly because the game is so simple in nature and not demanding at all. (There are no particle effects or ray tracing or whatnot.) It plays on my potato PC and on my 4K laptop, but the mouse cursor on there is tiny! I do see speed differences, but it is to be expected. However, it is early days and I hope they get all reported issues, like the tiny cursor, sorted before the release. I may need to say goodbye to my dual core PC soon, so my lowest test machine would probably become an i3 second generation, in the future, we will see. If there is anyone gaming on something lower, let me know and I will see what I can do.
I have been at the demo for at least an hour between the two machines and I have had no issues and enjoyed learning Japanese. And that my dear reader, is the crux, enjoyment.
At the moment there is no set price, as the game only releases next year, but they have this to say about it. “Wagotabi is an educational RPG teaching Japanese from the ground up. Immerse yourself in the language through interactive dialogues, quest-solving, and puzzles, all while exploring Japan and its rich culture. Will you become a Japanese master?”