So to Speak
Community
About the Game
Have you ever wanted to learn Japanese? Have you tried studying but feel like you aren’t getting anywhere?
In So to Speak, you use context clues to guess the meaning of what you see and hear. Unlike other games and tools, meanings aren’t revealed immediately. Every word is its own puzzle – to proceed, you must connect it to nearby objects or text with the same meaning. For example, you can drag a Japanese sign for “entrance” onto an actual building entrance located nearby or the English word “entrance” in the game’s description of the entrance.
The game is a love letter to the Japanese language and the experience of wandering alone in another country. There are no drills, no fights, no minigames, and no distractions. The entire game is a series of situations, and each one helps you discover the meaning of something new.
Features:
- Learn more than 300 words covering topics such as travel, nature, family, colors, numbers, time, and directions.
- Explore cities, rural areas, gardens, and temples filled with signs and conversations to decipher along with clues to help you.
- Grow your knowledge from simple words like “car” and “tree” to complex sentences like “The parking lot is for convenience store customers only.”
Game Discussion
Steam User 73
I've been anxiously waiting for this game's release, contextual learning is the best way for me to learn personally. I love this. Please support the developer.
Steam User 45
TLDR: I've tried the first couple chapters of this game, and I like it quite a bit. If that opinion changes I'll return and update this review. Would love to see controller support added.
Disclaimer: As noted above I'm still pretty early in the game, and that's because it works quite poorly with a controller, basically just letting you mimic a mouse with R3, which aggravates my wrist amost immediately. I'm not in a position to use a mouse for a bit, but I did not want to wait to post my recommendation since this is a brand new game.
Two slightly separate reviews:
As a game: Not a lot of actual gameplay here, but it does what it says on the tin. Audio is great, visuals are simple but executed well. Nothing in the first two chapters required moon logic or heavy mental lifting, other than matching japanese to english.
As a learning tool: This game, like every other Japanese learning game I've seen to date, is essentially flash cards in a more engaging wrapper. This one is, in my opinion, a pretty fun way to do your flashcards of words you already know and/or mine some new vocabulary and kanji. If you want to actually learn and remember what you pick up here, I recommend you create outside flashcards for review. (If you need an easy way to do that, I recommend looking up how to generate Anki cards via Yomitan.) Or I suppose you could play the game over and over. I also recommend you learn hiragana and katakana before you play this and turn off romaji in the settings, thereby also giving you reinforcement in reading and remembering the kana.
Quick aside for context on my perspective: I'm not yet to N5, having done a bit more than half of Genki 1, KKLC, Tango N5, and vocabulary mining in Anki from places like Supernative and Duo. The vocabulary and Kanji in the first couple chapters were already known to me so this was just review, but scrolling through the levels I do expect to pick up words I don't know yet.
Steam User 28
This game is a fun way to get familiar with Japanese grammar and vocab for someone who is pretty new to the language. As someone who finds learning grammar difficult when learning new languages, I felt challenged but not overwhelmed.
It would be cool if this game had more chapters to study for the early JLPT exams or a mini game just to help with repetitive practice of learned vocab.
Love the game. Thanks for making it.
Steam User 24
The game needs some repetition mini-games to really drill in the vocabulary, but it's a really good puzzle game and you'll learn a lot after a few playthrus
Steam User 19
I definitely recommend this game if you want to enjoy a little bit of puzzle, a lot bit of Japanese language learning. I have about two years of high school Japanese, and so the first chapters were pretty easy, but I feel like there was definitely material I didn't know later in the game that I really had to think hard to figure out.
Other random things I loved:
* the voice acting is so cute! You cannot help but want to repeat the words out loud in Japanese!
* I think my favorite thing about the harder material is that the game breaks down long sentences into their grammatical parts, and it really helped me understand things more.
* there's a good mix of new stuff and repetition of stuff you previously learned to make you feel good about remembering things.
* It's available on Mac! Woohoo!
Also, hot tip: You can go to settings and turn on "No romaji" mode, if you want to play the game in hiragana. I think it can be fun to go through it twice, once with romaji, and then again turning off romaji.
Steam User 11
I'll start by saying I'm not technically a beginner. I have a lot of fractured Japanese but So To Speak is bridging the gap. I am extremely familiar with hiragana and with a few kanji, so I've moved through it quite quickly so far. The way it helps you put words together is fantastic though and helps you notice patterns/similarities. It also builds in a way that feels fluid, it's trying to show you those patterns so you can apply them yourself.
It's much more intuitive in my opinion than Rosetta Stone which (tbf I have not used it since like, 2016 or something) uses a lot of repetition so you can recognize the grammatical patterns. Every time you put a phrase together you also get information on the purpose of specific particles in the context of that sentence, which is wonderful and you can see how things that sound or look the same are different in a new context or next to specific kana/kanji.
Another thing I like is they use a wide variety of voices and tones. I can't say I have any complaints off the top of my head. Your dictionary can be sorted or you can type in for a search. It runs smoothly, no bugs that I've encountered. I would still recommend playing this game while using another resource, but honestly the way this game works, some graded readers will be a simple and great accompaniment. (
Steam User 20
Great educational game to learn Japanese. Simple and straight to the point!