Narrative review here:

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.

As always, full review here, but I should warn people it's a little *longer* than usual because I go into more detail on how I rate these games for language learning than I've done thus far.

I ended up bringing ranges back to my CEFR ratings, because I feel like this game will be especially polarizing to B1 and B2 readers, with low-B1 readers struggling to engage and high-B1 readers being the ideal player for this game.

This game combines day planner game mechanics with visual novel elements and the visual novel elements are too daunting for novice learners.

I'm somewhere between novice and intermediate and I struggled, especially since I got really tired of translating early on in the game.

I really hoped it would be a good experience for an early language learner, since Growing Up is a life schedule day planner game where you train skills like cooking and fashion design.

But I ended up conceded that Growing Up is much better for intermediate students instead.

But okay, looks like I said a lot anyone, oops.

Full review here <3

As for cons, this game employs a trigger system which makes relationships challenging to progress, especially to language learners, and only B1 and above students will probably get much out of the dialogues and relationships if they're not playing with a wiki open.

Also, this game is fully voiced in English and features a very professional cast, including Valerie Rose Lohman and Erika Ishii....

Which is to say that this is an amazing game to learn English, especially because I imagine it'd be popular with teenagers.

In particular, this game features a non-binary character/potential love interest who uses pronouns besides he/she (er/sie auf deutsch) and that's not only great representation but great language exposure (they use "Xier" auf deutsch).

Text is clear and the world is beautiful. The characters are diverse (though player options are limited to a femme-presenting character with some romantic history) and many levels of language to engage with.

I felt bad giving Stardew Valley such a low rating so I tried to find a good farming sim that could double as a language practice and I feel pretty good about this one!

See you next week when I review Wylde Flowers from Studio Drydock :)

Tschuss!

As always, here's my longer review:

And on the flip side, the game's medieval setting offers antiquated language like 'Beisasse', a term for non-resident aliens in pre-1900s Switzerland, which means it has something to teach foreign language veterans as well.

Overall, I feel that this game could be useful to large swaths of language learners.

There's frequent narration of major world events ('you now have a daughter', 'a family member is dying'...) and the repetition is super useful for getting the sounds of an language across to a new language student.