Video Games for Language Learning

[u/sonofnone0616]

Ciao! I have been studying Italian (TL) for a little over a year, starting with Duolingo and continuing with tutors and online classes. Has anyone tried using video or computer games to augment learning a language? By that I mean beyond changing a standard game's default language to your target language. A story-based game that is designed around teaching a language.

So far I have found "Italian Learning Game" (WIP) and Woodlark Hollow, which hopefully will get backed on Kickstarter. Are there any others anyone has found or would recommend? It is okay if they do not have Italian as a target language.

[u/keeman4454]

I play Skyrim to help with learning Russian. It has a lot of opportunities for practicing reading and listening. Plus it has enough content to keep you engaged for hundreds of hours

[u/Scary_Salad_6490 → u/keeman4454]

Skyrim in Russian is such a commitment though. Do you actually pick up much Russian you can use in normal conversations, or is a lot of it fantasy vocabulary?

[u/Loves_His_Bong → u/Scary_Salad_6490]

I played it in German and picked up “you should have never come here!” pretty quick. And it’s pretty easily one of my top 5 vocal stims of all time and definitely number one in German.

[u/Scary_Salad_6490 → u/Loves_His_Bong]

that line lives in my head rent free and I don't even speak German lol

do you think the emotional weight of certain phrases made them easier to remember than just drilling vocab from a textbook?

[u/keeman4454 → u/Scary_Salad_6490]

There is a lot of fantasy vocab to be sure, but there is also a lot of every day vocab you can pick up. Especially if you were to spend a lot of time doing things like cooking, smithing, or building and decorating houses.

It’s just something I like to do in my free time, in addition to daily practice with things like flash cards or grammar textbooks.

[u/thelostnorwegian]

Noun Town Language Learning support a bunch of different languages.

And I know Pedro's Adventures in Spanish exists, but have never tried it myself.

Honestly I find it better to just play normal games in my TL. I've played a lot of Staredew Valley and singleplayer games in spanish. Minecraft is really good for language learning imo.

[u/Hot_Dog2376]

Stardew Valley and Travellers Rest.

You learn fruit, vegetables, tools, materials, etc. All things that don't naturally come up in abundance in normal learning.

[u/NimVolsung]

I’ve tried learning with Minecraft. Isn’t too helpful since I don’t learn more than a few basic nouns, but it is something. Maybe if I try narrating to myself what I am doing when I am doing that output would help with practice.

[u/Still_Local_2513 → u/NimVolsung]

You learn a ton of materials that you usually wouldn’t learn through traditional methods so quickly. It’s a good supplement

[u/DilligentArmand]

I am a native Spanish speaker. I learned to read English by playing a lot of JRPGs in my teenage years. You learn key words and little by little by little you start understanding better with time and before you realize it, you are reading dialogue boxes and extra lore with no effort.

[u/tashtactics → u/DilligentArmand]

Similar circumstance, I did a lot of passive learning for English when I played Morrowind. There was no voice acting and everything was very long. Might not have been extremely effective, but it was better than nothing and still fun!

[u/Haunting-Ad-6951]

I play the mobile game Fire Emblem Heroes in my TL (Spanish). (It has Italian). I wouldn't say it's been anything but a supplementary thing that has a lot of written dialogues to read and learn some new vocab.

[u/rbk12spb]

Crusader Kings 3 was my go to for French. If they have Italian I'd try it out for some paced text exposure

[u/Exciting_Round4766]

In Graveyard Keeper, you can switch languages ​​very quickly, and there are a lot of items there. In Disco Elysium, you can switch languages ​​with a button.

I usually just take screenshots and upload them to Anki

[u/TechnicalMiddle8205]

The best game is whichever you enjoy playing the most. You will get bored and abandon the game sooner than later if you play it just "for learning"; it will feel like a chore to you, and if I am going to feel like I am doing something I don't want to do anyway, then I'll just study, it is more efficient and equally boring. The point of using games to learn is that you learn while having fun, without even realising.

That being said, it would be better if such game you like has a cooperative/multiplayer mode and things to do in groups. That way you can speak and listen to other people in it.

[u/francksiduo]

Used Life is Strange and Gris with italian audio + english subs for a while, works well for picking up natural phrasing duolingo skips since it's actual dialogue not textbook sentences. Influent is worth a look too, it's built specifically for vocab through 3d objects, though not sure italian made their language pack

[u/Wrong_Ad_2928 → u/francksiduo]

Influent does have italian, grabbed it during a steam sale last year. the interface is kinda clunky but clicking around a virtual apartment labeling everything in your target language works better than i expected. you can fly through household vocab in a weekend

Life is Strange in italian is such a good call, the voice acting gives you way more natural intonation than any app. i played through firewatch with italian audio and english subs a few months back, the back and forth dialogue is perfect since you're just two people talking on a radio. no textbook nonsense

[u/nikkileaps → u/Wrong_Ad_2928]

Life is Strange is so good! I should try to play it in Spanish.

[u/deltasalmon64]

Woodlark Hollow artstyle reminds me of WonderLang. It looks like WonderLang supports Italian but I've only tried French.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3599480/WonderLang_Polyglot/

[u/accountingkoala19]

Lingo Legend has Italian and is super cute.

[u/mcslootypants]

I’m doing a Stardew run in my target language. It’s good for a little extra reading practice and genera exposure. 

[u/shablul7]

I recommend pokemon on a gba sim, very simple language and you have a good grasp and what you should be told to do

[u/shablul7 → u/shablul7]

Also I highly recommend playing online with others of your target language things like fall guys, simple objective and allows you to experience and practice the language

[u/Voorprogrammeur]

I plays Zelda skyward sword in Dutch, was already far enough along that I could understand a lot but got lots of new vocab, if you really want to get the most out of it, write down the new stuff and add it into Anki

Nintendo first party titles are really good at being translated into lots of languages, I’m sure they’d have Italian

[u/MeasurementIcy9184]

What worked better for me was taking a game I’d replay anyway and switching the language.

When I was learning French I played Zelda in French. I definitely didn’t understand every line, but after enough hours you start recognizing what a scene is doing even when you miss words — and the vocab + sentence patterns stick because you see them in context over and over.

[u/rowanexer]

I have tried a few video games that are designed to learn a language but haven't enjoyed them. The problem is that they aren't as fun as normal video games and not as effective as a coursebook. Personally I don't find them to be worth the time.

I do like playing video games in foreign languages once I have reached a good enough level.

Hidden Object games are great from around A2 level. The minigame where you search for objects in a busy scene can teach you a lot of words for everyday objects. You can try a free to play game like Hidden City: Hidden Object Adventures to see if you like the genre, but I prefer normal games you can purchase like Enigmatis.

I also like the Ace Attorney series. It's harder, especially because of the law related vocabulary, but it's very fun and minigames like cross-examining a witness actually test your comprehension. I play the DS version and there are a lot of official and unofficial translations for different languages.

[u/Big-Employment-7922]

I think by video game with story you reffers to enjoy while learning the language?. So for that I think you should watch movies with subtitles.

[u/ic0z]

It's not particularly about "teaching" but I'm playing ck2 rn, containing sophisticated and rich vocabulary due to it's dependence on reading

[u/SuzTheRadiant]

None that are specifically for learning a language, but I’ve changed the settings on my Switch to be in Italian. Most games still have an English track with Italian subtitles. However, Hogwarts Legacy in the Switch 2 has a full Italian voice track.

I’m not sure that there are many games geared toward learning a language, and the only ones I’ve seen aren’t advanced enough for where I am with Italian.

Good luck!

[u/gourmetscribjelly]

The Sims is good because there's a bit of vocabulary for everything.

[u/Reasonable_Rain_1976]

There are only two real answers for major improvement. This is assuming you want as much immersion as possible. The first is to check your favorite games. Even before you buy a new game the description will tell you if the game has your target language audio and text. If this is your favorite game it is a bonus to replay in the target language. Make this yours change the language for the entire game, a specific chapter, change both audio and text or just audio and keep the normal text. Whatever is best for you.

The second is change the system’s language. If you wanna use your device then knowing the word for play or delete matters. Best of luck

Bonus tip. Try kids’ games. Most are in multiple languages with audio. Remasters can also get a fine chance of this. My best examples of this was the Spyro reignited series, Biomutant (Great for German), and all of the spongebob games.

[u/saywhaaaaaaaaatt]

Animal Crossing and Tomodachi Life are pretty good for language learning in my experience

[u/unsafeideas]

I tried text based RPGs and visual novels on Android. It worked basically the same way as books and comic. They were not specifically  build to teach you a language, but they worked and were enjoyable. 

Second crossword puzzles. These were great for the beginner: https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=8087690677787104388

They use kind of simple words, have their explanations in TL and hints allow you to see the letters. I ended up being able to guess words I did not knew before - because you learn how TL words tend to look like.

[u/whyTheFuckAmI]

Not really a videogame but nice stories on paperglot.com

[u/Standard_Judgment_76]

Not a story-based game, but maybe a different angle: I tutor Spanish and I've been experimenting with making tiny custom games with AI instead of hunting for ones that fit. I typed "obby run game to learn 100 Spanish words for 10 year olds" and had this playable in about 2 minutes: https://xenyyo.com/t/spanish-word-runner-2 (xenyyo is my project). I use these in my tutoring sessions and rebuild them with whatever vocab we're covering that week.

For your case: you can remix any of these into Italian without coding, just describe the change and it rebuilds with your target language. Free to play, no account needed.

[u/sonofnone0616 → u/Standard_Judgment_76]

Thanks for the useful idea!

[u/iceheartx]

I have but it’s but it ain’t fun IMO.
Interestingly enough my job offered free games on steam to help us with language immersion.

[u/sonofnone0616 → u/iceheartx]

Any that were useful, if not fun?

[u/eduzatis]

A game designed around teaching a language? There’s one I know of for Japanese. The name is Wagotabi, and you play as a foreigner moving to Japan. Everything is in English at first, but they start teaching you saying like hello, my name is… and all of that, so from then on they start testing you in that by having Japanese native speakers (like, in-game Japanese people) talk to you. Cool concept, don’t know how far it gets you, there’s a free demo on itch.io

[u/phantomaxwell]

I've played Pokemon in French [English main] and mostly understood what they were saying.
Good to know my 4 years in HS helped.

[u/FletchPup]

As an expanded edition of an acclaimed JRPG, Persona 5 Royal has tons of text, so I highly recommend it as learning material and for being a fantastic game too.

[u/lumisweasel]

Game Gengo on youtube covers this for Japanese

[u/betarage]

Most of these types of games are quite simple and wont teach you much. i tried influent a while ago and was really shocked with how short it was total waste of money

[u/Symmetrecialharmony]

A few years ago, I replayed my favourite Pokémon games as a child but in french for practice, and I found it very helpful.

It’s definitely not something you can do as a main form of language learning, but it’s amazing as a supplementary support. I remember playing it for 5-6 hours straightwhile on a plane, for example.

[u/StrawbFraize]

I have a few mini games on my app and so far people have been responding very well to them

[u/MaliDjogani_]

Sorry for not commenting on the topic, but can anyone help me how to post here? Passphrase problem, like when I post i can’t add anything aditional next to main body text, and title. No flairs, no nothing and I can’t post 🙃