There's something strangely comforting about Civ 7 being a messy little mess on release.

Like my government is a mess and probably getting messier.

But my Civ game is a mess and will almost certainly get better.

As long as I tie my mental health to Civ improving, my mental health will be well.

And my game for this week is Stacklands and I do recommend it for early language learners: it's cheap and will teach vocab.

It's also my first zero-star rating ever (for advanced students), but if anything that's an endorsement of how accessible the language in the game is.

Okay I didn't want to post yesterday because I was feeling the vibes a little hard,

but here's a review a day late.

I tried RTSs (which I love!) #AgeofMythology & #AgeofEmpires

Sadly, RTSs are paced too fast for effective immersion :( but the games and fun and (would) teach interesting vocab.

Hallo zusammen, this week I played Growing Up by Vile Monarch, which I was really excited to do (it was a holiday present!)

I have a sick pet :( so I don't have the energy to go in depth about my game of the week, but I thought I'd share my review all the same:

It's Wylde Flowers by Studio Drydock and there's a free demo on Steam if anyone wants to check it out!

As promised! Here is my foreign language game review for The Guild 2: Renaissance, an old favorite of mine that is currently on Steam sale for $2.49.

It was an interesting game to rate because the game is medieval so the language is fairly historical.

Hey sis, it's christmas (eve)!

I usually post my reviews on Tuesdays (+ some Thursdays) but since it's the holidays I'm going to wait to share my foreign language review of the *The Guild 2: Renaissance* until the end of the month/early January.

Happy Holidays everyone <3

Okay so this might be my most *controversial* opinion so far (sorry for the clickbait energy but I'm scared of being attacked for this) but I played Stardew Valley at the suggestion of the internet and it was *not*! helpful for me learning a foreign language

I wanted to see how effective roguelike deckbuilders would be to study a foreign language and I settled on Monster Train since I'd never played it before.

I ended up very conflicted about its utility. I think generally roguelike deckbuilders aren't a great genre for language learning, but...

So I'm not a capitalist or anything but I just saw Polygon's Black Friday sales roundup and it was so uninspired that *I* was inspired to make my own Black Friday Sales roundup.

Six iconic videogames that advanced language learners (B2-C2) can benefit from playing.

My CEFR ratings for playing Humongous Entertainment's classic children adventure games to learn a foreign language: (context below)

[not pictured, but always in my heart: Putt-Putt, SpyFox, Pajama Sam]

There's something wild to me about the fact that German uses "Oh Junge!" as an exclamation even though it's a literal translation of an equally silly English expression (Oh boy!)

Does anyone know if one language copied the other? Mein Freund blames Mickey Mouse, but he doesn't have any proof, lol.

Just published my review of playing Planet Zoo to study a foreign language (German, in my case) and it was such a mixed bag that I amended my rating graphic (below) to include a range of scores... [1/2]

Multiple resources on the internet listed The Sims as a good videogame to learn a foreign language, but I still went into the Sims 4 with absolutely no faith.

But I was super proven wrong! It was super useful! For example I now know how to say "potty training" (Töpfchentraining) in German.

For the last month or so I've been reviewing videogames on Substack from the lens of how useful they are to learn a foreign language.

I thought I'd condense my reviews down into a PNG and share them with the world on here (+ on Instagram).

Pop over if you want to see more! #langsky

In comparison to Pokemon Platinum I learned so much from PokeRogue (the unofficial Pokemon roguelike fangame).

I would fully recommend this game to anyone with a semester or so of language experience looking for ways to level up their language skills.

I struggled trying to play Pokémon Platinum in German (not my native language) and had one very unhappy experience trying to get a bike so I ranked this game pretty low.

Turtwig was very cute though. He gets 5/5 stars for being such a good tanky boy.