Ta-da-aa!
My next project is Stoning Rosetta. It is a small game to learn languages. It's purpose is to upkeep word dictionary in your memory and learn conversations like how to say hi, what to do in restaurants and so on. It's not intended as a primary study tool but something that goes along with your normal learning routines.
The game name is of course a similar to Rosetta Stone, a rock containing same text in three languages and which was the key to the modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Quite cool, ha?
[Rosetta stone by Hans Hillewaert, used with CC BY-SA 4.0]
Design factors
As I have already told the point of the game is to learn languages. Well, kinda it's not a game at all but it's not normal app either. One of the early design influences was Texas Instruments' Little Professor
Thus one of the design factors was to have a professor which glorifies your success in the game. And, since the plan is to make money as well the professor shows advertisements if you fail too many times. You will be punished by ads!
The gameplay mode was designed to be so simple that you could play it while waiting in coffee line. Many other language games need the player to input text but this game player needs only clicks. Player selects one from four different variations. In principle while in one task player can guess with 25% success rate, to pass by guessing without failures the probability is low 0.25^n where n is task count. Thus with 5 word game the probability to guess without failures is only 0.000977%.
Second important design factor is word context. It makes no use to learn words that have low connectivity in real life. One session in game should focus on words that form interesting context together. If player is not very interested in to learn, say car parts, she should be able to skip the session (excuse my sexist language).
Third design factor is cognitive. Our ability to recall words and phrases lowers by time. It is important to remind our memory about the words. Thus, the game is designed to be played over days and months. Player will repeat the old material but only when it starts to "rotten" in memory. Thus, it uses cognitive model of forgetting to keep player remembering words.
Last but not least, I have connections to maintain the content to contain different languages: Finish, English, Spanish, Italian. Like in Rosetta Stone, the idea is to write same content in different languages.
Sketch of new user flow
New users need to select the mother language or base language, the language they want to learn and professor. I created some very minimalistic designs for the user flow.
The user needs to login into the system, or actually not, we need something that we can use to identify the player. I like not to even gather the user information since then it cannot be stolen by hacks.
Sketch of game flow
Once the user has logged in to the system the game is ready. There are two screens: brain screen and game screen. When game is ongoing there is time pressure for player but once one level has passed the brain screen mostly waits in shows status of the learning progress. The idea with the brain is that once you learn some context, e.g. colors, the word flows around the brain and shines. Once the time passes the word shines less and less until it drops to selection area to be selected and re-played. Selection area contains four items at time and there can be new or re-remember items. Professor in the view gives you some statistics.
The game screen is really easy. At the top of the screen there is a item to match and you need to match it with the four options flowing from right to left.
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