Welcome to Noun Town! Population: you (with a better vocabulary) and a cast of fun characters This game has a lot of promise, and I feel comfortable saying that with time this could be a great language learning resource. I have enjoyed my time, learned a lot, and I would say I got my money's worth out of it already. It is very charming, relaxing, and I think it accomplishes what it sets out to do quite well: to teach you about 500 nouns in your target language. That said, it is very much an early access game, and if you are not the sort of person who affords games like that the patience it expects, I suggest you wait until a later release. For context, I have used the Chinese (to review a language I know well), the Ukrainian (to try a language I know a little bit of already), and the Italian (to try a new language I don't know at all). I plan to use it with French in the near future as well as Portuguese, should they add that in. Great Things -- At its core, the focus is on visually simple-yet-stylish nouns you pop out of boxes that you must say the word for in your target language. In combination with its built-in spaced repetition system (SRS) vocabulary review, this makes learning a lot of nouns approachable and easy. I've learned a lot of vocabulary much quicker than if I had just done my usual handmade flashcards with no pictures. -- Likable conversation partners around the town to chat with and improve your speaking and listening. They all have little quirks and relationships with each other that are fun to learn about, as well as cute designs and personalities. -- Relaxing music and simple visuals that make learning and reviewing feel less like "studying" and more like a "hobby" to unwind with. -- Learning Rush mode, which allows you to quickly review the vocabulary of each individual area, is great and useful. I'm a big fan, and I wish you could do multiple areas' vocabulary at once to further challenge yourself. Good Things -- Including grammar lessons to expand your understanding of the language at a mechanical level instead of just a "word collecting" level. They aren't particularly comprehensive, but they are short, fully-voiced, and a welcome supplement to the core. I would like to see the included explanations for grammar points expanded and the tests more comprehensive (perhaps a Cloze system?). Mixed Things -- The quality of the courses varies pretty substantially between languages. For example, the Italian and Chinese are fully voice acted with a diverse range of voices, both male and female, each with slightly different pronunciations and intonations so that you can hear a sample of the differences in native speech. While in the Ukrainian, the primary voice is text-to-speech for the noun boxes, though there are still actors for the grammar and conversations with characters. I would suspect, the languages with more learners like the Romances+Japanese are probably in better shape than the less popular languages. -- Personally, I wish there were more words included, though some learners might be overwhelmed by it, I would like to see a wider breadth of vocabulary. Were it possible for them, a full 1000 words per language would be wonderful and would be something I would purchase as DLC for an "advanced learners" pack or something like that. Questionable Things --Bugs. Yeah, there are a lot of them. The team does frequent fixes and patches, but there are many annoyances that pop up pretty much every time I pop in to use the game. Chinese: speech recognition struggles with single-character words. Italian: Speech recognition server errors are way too frequent, it's almost every third word (This was fixed in the most recent patch as of 4/29/24, works great now). Ukrainian: missing vocabulary in the dictionary page, often replaced with the Japanese word for "apple" (ringo); grammar is laden with bugs that cause the game to freeze or refuse to start lessons. There are others, but such is the early access experience. I genuinely dislike these things -- The numbers system. Having to scavenger hunt to learn the numbers out of order is frustrating and a little baffling. Throwing garbage at robots to do a speech recognition that stops them from littering up the place is also frustrating. Maybe a system where you have to bring/order items to numbered locations or characters, sort of like waiting tables or a reverse learning rush mode, might be better? -- The delivery robot system, in and of itself, is a good idea. Forcing you to actually use the vocabulary to navigate is a great way to gain practical experience using directions quickly, really helpful for travelers. However, the robot has very finicky controls that zip and crash into things easily; the vocabulary for directions/locations is very often not included in the dictionary tab, forcing you to go use a real dictionary to look up what word it somehow expects you to know and review; gating 50ish words behind playing this mini-game over and over and over again hoping to get the right words you are missing is probably the most frustrating thing about the game. I would love to get the last 30 or so vocabulary words I need in Ukrainian, but I can't because I keep getting "under," "above," "fence," and "stairs." Please just give me a terminal with a map that I can click on to learn these words or something. TL:DR This is a good tool that has the makings of a great, maybe even excellent, language learning resource in the near future. I have gotten my money's worth already. The developers seem engaged and committed to improving the game. I recommend you try it out if you want to learn a new language and would like a chill way to quickly expand your vocabulary base. I don't recommend you try it out *yet* if you are not comfortable being patient with bugs and flaws in its current state, but I do suggest checking back in with it in future. I plan to keep playing this game as part of my morning routine for the foreseeable future and look forward to how it improves with time.
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