Adding Cultural Context to my Game | Weekly Update #28

This week I was working on something I wanted to tackle for ages. I want the player to really feel like they are surrounded by Austrian culture, and one big part of that is conversations with NPCs.

After all, it would be counterproductive to the goal of trying to replicate the feeling of dipping your toes in the lovely world of the Austrian mountainside when everyone talks perfect plain English with no added flavor. So my goal is to interleave Austrian idioms and words within conversations to give the player a sense of place.

Now, without any context or explanation, this is not going to be useful though, just random words that most people won’t understand – that’s a no-no.

To allow me to add some Austrian flavor to conversations but still keep things clear, I added something I call ‘Cultural Context.’

Other games have done this before as well, most recently Avowed from Obsidian, for example, to convey different cultures to the player and also give context about the wider world.

Anytime an Austrian term or idiom pops up during a conversation, it will highlight that term and also give the player the option to show/hide the cultural context during that conversation.

Let’s take a look at how this looks in action.

Now, if we open the context by either pressing ‘F’ or the button on the right side of the conversation box, we get more information for any special terms during the conversation.

I am also planning to be able to play a short sound clip, sounding out the term or idiom for players to get an idea of what it would sound like (unless I manage to voice over the whole game, but that’s somewhat doubtful as a solo indie dev 😄)

Hopefully, with this feature, I will be able to provide a better sense of place while avoiding confusion for players and maybe teach them a thing or two along the way. ☺️

And that’s it for this week, hope to see you next week for a little artsy update for a change 😁 Have a lovely week 🌈👋