Judge feedback

Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.

• Hi! I am a MASSIVE language nerd and for the life of me would have NEVER expected a game written in Toki Pona. Just ask the other judges and they'll talk about how I was freaking out in our Discord lollll! I loved this concept! It reminded me of a similar game where someone taught Esperanto, another conlang, through a game you had to translate. As a fan of puzzle games and someone who studies languages as a hobby, you definitely found your target audience lmaoooo. This was a great interpretation of our theme! First, you had the whole untranslated bootleg aspect, but then since Toki Pona isn't 1:1 with English and has a lot of limitations, like some verbs being nouns and adjectives, you get some really great English sentences reminiscent of classic bootleg games. Now on to my critiques. I really wish you had the time to finish the game. :( If you had a bit more time, the beginning is where I'd suggest you work on the pacing a bit. Instead of just throwing players into the game, having a few "phases" where the game works on introducing the grammar would help. (Side note: a lot of language learning software focuses mostly on vocabulary, with little to no focus on grammar. Something to keep in mind if you ever make a full game like this.) I started out by figuring out the SVO pattern, then was looking for declensions and conjugations, but I'm not expecting many players here to know to do that. Some sort of confirmation that my guesses are right would have been nice. In "Return of the Obra Dinn", when you guess three identities correctly, the game confirms it for you. Something similar here would be great, especially if it explains the grammar too. (Another side note: when learning a language, it's important to have guidance in a language you're already fluent in every step of the way.) That way you can have the player figure out one "big" thing as well as the vocab. Like you could start with the SVO pattern then introduce a verb being an object, like the "open" in this game. Only other critique I might have is that it would have been nice to know ahead of time what language this game was in, so that others had the option to look up a dictionary. It just so happened that I knew a bit about Toki Pona ahead of time so I could let the other judges know in case they needed help. If you ever felt like making a full game out of this, the concept is definitely there and it would be refreshing to see a language based puzzle game about translating an entirely new conlang or maybe even to teach some other language! This game was a real treat to play and probably the best game that very few people will appreciate! Thanks for submitting! This was my #1 favorite game submitted here. :D
• Really enjoyed the complexity of working out words and then fixing them, it really made the experience something you had to think on. Greatly enjoyed playing! a very neat concept