المراجعات

• Trill Clinton

  Sep 8, 2022

  I really like the idea here, it just needs *more*. Right now it seems you can only explore the apartment, and it needs outdoor environments and stores and things as well to emulate life in another country. I read somewhere this game didn't get a whole lot of buyers and so further development has been slow, which is a shame because the core concept is great, but I think it'd need closer to 5000 words and 5-10 environments to really be a competitive vocab aqquisition tool. It's a lot more fun than say Anki or Memrise, but it needs more content. Is it possible to open it to mods? I'm sure the community would love to build maps for this thing.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 14, 2014

  Only useful for learning vocab. I know that this game makes it very clear that it will only teach you vocab words, but a lot of people bought it hoping for a good way to start learning a language. No software that exists, even comprehensive ones like rosetta stone, can't teach you a language quickly or thoroughly (no matter what the commercials say). This game utilizes visual and audio cues to increase your vocabulary pretty effectively, but don't bother with it unless you already have an understanding of the language or are currently taking a class.
• Alphabetmafia

  Jan 1, 2023

  The only reason I bought this game is cause I'm interested in finding a fun way to study a language. I enjoy gaming, so why not study while I play. The game starts you in an apartment and gives you a boring tutorial. It didn't really make much sense to me the tutorial just left me bored and confused. The music in the game is awful to hear and it could annoy you while trying to search for words. The character is stuck in his apartment trying to find 400 words, that will become boring after the first few times. It doesn't teach you any grammar, so don't expect to learn by playing this game. If you just want to hear some vocab and repeat it over and over then maybe this game is for you
• gamedeal user

  Dec 30, 2014

  GREAT CONCEPT BUT LACKING CONTENT First off you must understand this is a vocabulary learning game and nothing more. If you dont have another form of learning the language this game is pretty much useless. I got this to brush up on french I had learned in high school. I paid $5 for it on sale and even at that price felt slightly disappointed. I had no idea you would be restricted to a one bedroom apartment with access to only learning 400 mundane names of household items. If this game was expanded to a small town type environment where you could go to say the store, a trainstation, etc. This game would be 5 stars, If a DLC was released with at least an equal number of new words in a new environment i would consider paying another $5 for it.
• gamedeal user

  May 26, 2023

  Extra Lives!

  I've been playing this game since 2020, and love it! I decided during lockdown to put the time to good use and learn a language... German. I unlocked all the languages here in Influent and I found myself so absorbed in the language fun that I soon launched out into improving the Spanish I already had, and adding Brazilian Portuguese, and added Duolingo onto this game. Going on three years now, and I can read basic German, Spanish, and very easy Brazilian Portuguese. It all started here, running around the little apartment. I enjoyed discovering Chabouté's Yellow Cab hardback comic this past week in the Braz. Pt translated from the original French. That was a great feeling, and quite rewarding personally. But, the feels gained from learning something new is nothing compared to seeing the world through the eyes and words of a human being born worlds away. I feel like I've been born into three new lives... and isn't that what video games are all about?!
• gamedeal user

  Apr 7, 2015

  Influent is the best 'gamification' of vocabulary learning I have come across. I have spent over 10 hours with the Russian edition, I hesitate to call it a game so I'll say "application". Reading the negative reviews I am dissapointed with the community. You are simply a fool if you think you can just 'play' this and somehow become fluent or even remotely competent in your chosen language. Even a basic level of comprehension takes at least a year to develop with a lot of hard work involved in that year. Influent will not teach grammar, it is simply and audio/visual application that softens the monumentual blow of learning hundreds of foreign words. Personally I have found it incredibly useful. It works by giving you control of an avatar in a typical apartment, you can swap between third and first person to explore and click on items to have a native speaker exclaim what the items is and you're also given a textual display of the item. You can then choose to add the item to a vocab list and once you add 10 items it completes the list and allows you to come back at any point to attempt a 'Time Attack' where the items in the list are randomised, the native speaker announces what item they want you to find. I highly recommend Influent as an AID to your language learning, not the only source.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 16, 2015

  INFLUENT on PC 8/10 Tested with the Spanish DLC The bottom line: Learning vocabulary was a lot of fun and every student of a new language will find pleasure in this title. For intermediate students the magic in a language is learning verb conjugation and you will need to find this elsewhere. Mechanics: Walk around a 3D apartment and poke household objects to reveal their name. Every 10 object names form a List; repeat the List 3 times correctly and you have mastered those 10 words. Repeat until you find and master all 420 object names. This 'game' works because You get to choose which ten words to learn next; you made the choice and this engages the mind.... It’s a bargain price for learning 420 words so quickly, don’t miss out. 100% Steam Achievements in Spanish took 14 hours; my mother tongue is English and I am fluent in French. Next week I will try Japanese and I suspect it will take much longer.... My wishlist to the devs: Find a way to create a verb conjugation module, and an advanced vocabulary module…. I would definitely buy. I think you are on to something good. Oct 2015
• gamedeal user

  Dec 13, 2015

  Influent is not useful for learning a new language. Walk through a landscape and learn a smattering of nouns for household objects and nothing else. No grammer rules, no other words, no cultural context. Can you guys even understand how useless that is? Learning how to say random words for objects you will probably not need to talk about without ever communicating anything about them whatsoever? Hell, you wll never need most of these nouns as a beginning student of a foreign language anyways. It would be far more useful to simply learn how to say "How do you say this?" in whatever language you are learning so you can learn words that are actually useful to you. I learned way more useful information on youtube videos in an hour than I ever did with this. The only good thing about this is the soundtrack by Lifeformed. It is the soundtrack from the game Dustforce and it is truly excellent. I have no idea why it is in this product. You will not learn how to communicate a single complete thought or simple sentence with this software .
• gamedeal user

  Jan 18, 2016

  [h1]An okay tool with several drawbacks[/h1] Having years of university training and real-life experience in teaching not only foreign language but also second language acquisition classes, I can say that Influent can work well as an [u]additional[/u] teaching tool to the ones learners already have, provided the players know what they’re doing and are aware that Influent is not actually teaching them how to speak the target language; It merely trains them in recognizing words from that language. Given that, Influent is fairly okay at achieving what it’s supposed to do and I can see it helping certain learner types, although at the same time, it is likely to be just a waste of money to a lot of people, especially as there are products out there that are much better at helping people learn foreign languages. The major drawback being that Influent does not teach grammitcal articles (grammatical gender) for European languages. More about that further down. [h1]Primary Issues of the software[/h1] Influent (2016) was developed by the US American game designer Rob Howland and published with the help of his alma mater, the University of Tsukuba (筑波大学), and Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (文部科学省【MEXT / 文科省】). Sadly, despite the academic support behind this project, its issues are clearly visible right away and it is very obvious that Howland does not have a linguistic background. The protagonist in the game simply translates nouns or adjective-adverbs from English into the target language and it is limited to objects inside the virtual apartment. To highlight what I mean, we can briefly look at the impressively handy, elaborate, yet slim Langenscheidt’s picture dictionaries, which contain words, transliterations, pictures (and if you own the TING pen even audio clips of proper pronunciation) of local foods, instruments, sports, holidays, animals, tools, jobs, lab & hospital equipment, body parts, family members, ethnic groups in the target culture, climate zones, and so on and so on and it even includes the necessary vocabulary for any occasion reaching from birthdays to funerals or visits to the barber shop or the postal office. And it is merely twice the price of Influent's base game despite offering that much more. Not only that, the roughly 300 page book can even be brought with you, so if you don’t know a word, you can show it to people. Influent on the other hand is limited to objects inside the virtual apartment (as can be seen on the store page’s screenshots) and the vocabulary is very narrow, albeit very useful. It can even be argued that one could simply use a normal dictionary and a language tandem to probably achieve equivalent if not superior results. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=603282417 [h1]Gameplay mechanics[/h1] The player can move the protagonist around a virtual apartment, click on objects, listen to how they’re pronounced and look at how they’re spelled in the target script or how they’re transliterated into Romaji, Romaja, or Hànyǔ Pīnyīn (depending on the language pack). Additionally, the player can create vocabulary lists and make his / her own quizzes. The game will then show and say a term and the player will have to click on the correct item in the room. You can pretty much achieve the same effect by pasting post-its around your actual apartment and by having a smartphone dictionary app pronounce certain terms for you, in case you forget how to say them. You could say that doing that in the game would be less work for you, but writing down new vocabulary, having to use / activate different areas of your brain (to write it down and to read the word) leaves a much bigger, better imprint of the target word in your memory than merely reading it and having the computer program pronounce it for you. [h1]Critique and conclusion[/h1] There are multiple issues when it comes to Influent, first of all, there are products out on the market that are much better than Influent and cost about the same, so I suggest going out to bookstores and checking them out before buying this. Of course it's definitely possible that they don't have any better alternatives in your area, in which case Influent might be good. Secondly, when learning a language, you usually learn four basic fields: Reading, Writing, Listening, Speaking. Influent can only provide the two “passive” skills, reading and listening, you still need a training partner or a formal education to learn (or at the very least have someone correct) the writing and speaking parts. If you cannot find a partner in your area, there are multiple online forums and websites that focus on connecting people for specifically that purpose alone. Influent will also not teach you anything about sentence structures, tenses, clauses or (in-)formal language, in fact, it will not teach you anything beyond the available vocabulary. When it comes to European languages with grammatical gender, Influent will also not provide you with the necessary grammatical articles (Der, Die, Das in German, for example). Let's say you click on the bed, Influent will merely play an audio clip saying "Bett" while showing the correct spelling, but it won't say "Das Bett", which would definitely have been the better choice. Grammatical gender is essential for many European languages, ommiting that means that learners will lack crucial communication skills. I can see Influent work as something you use besides the learning tools you already have (like school- and exercise books as well as audio tapes or movies), especially when trying to learn gender neutral languages, but it definitely isn’t enough to learn a language with. I like the digital / game approach to learning languages, however the execution isn’t perfected yet and still needs some work.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 16, 2016

  At the time of writing this review, I've mastered all 420 words the game has to offer, and completed all the tasks on the 'To Do' list. I played the English version of the game, so that's the one I'll be reviewing. I also own the Japanese pack, but I haven't completed that one yet. One thing I'd like to start with is that 'Influent' never advertises, nor does it claim to make one fluent in any of the languages available here (and I double checked this). The description of the game here on the store page clearly states that it is a game focused on VOCABULARY ACQUISITION and PRONUNCIATION. It never claims to teach one grammar, syntax, conversation, or any other facet of language. I feel like a lot of people thought 'Influent' was a full-blown language learning tool, which it is not. The negative reviews here are unnecessary and uncalled for. Having addressed that, let's move on to the actual content. The setting of the game is limited to the main character's apartment. You can explore his room (and even open the dressers!), the bathroom, living room, and the kitchen. The point of the game is simple: as you explore, you're expected to click on various items that you encounter and collect vocabulary. Upon clicking on an item, you hear the word as it's spoken by a native speaker, and you can find more information about it such as its word class, phonetic transcription, synonyms, or you can just add it into your vocab list. In total, there are 420 words to collect — but in reality — there's "only" 284 items that you physically come across in the game. These items mostly consist of normal household articles, but there are some small surprises here and there like a cat nestled on the chair of the protagonist. As of now, there are no other locations available, and the words are very basic in nature — so don't expect to become a walking dictionary just by playing this. The game *WILL* equip you with a very nice elementary vocab though which can give you a nice head start. One thing that I particularly liked was the fact that certain words feature synonyms, and the player has the ability to switch between them (e.g. you can decide whether you want to call soft drink a "soda" or a "pop" as both are commonly used in the U.S., although "soda" is preferred in the West Coast). I thought this was a nice touch. Another thing that I really liked was the whole unlocking system which allows the player to acquire new words in the form of adjectives and verbs that are usually applicable to the nouns connected with them — "usually" being the key word here as some choices seemed extremely random (e.g. "beer" is apparently "disgusting"). Another thing of note is that 'Influent' teaches American English, and there's no option to switch to British English. The vocabulary and the pronunciation recordings reflect that. So, this may put off students of British English, even though it shouldn't bother them that much. Speaking of pronunciation, the game uses the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) to transcribe English words in order to show how they're really pronounced. That's all neat and great, but there are some truly odd transcriptions for many of the words featured in the game. Not wrong, just a tad nonstandard. In some cases, I thought the transcriptions in the game actually reflect how the words sound in real life much better than what you usually find in dictionaries. For instance: calendar, magazine, and milk were transcribed as [ˈkæl-ɛn-dəɹ], [mei-ɡə-ˈzin], and [mɪəlk] instead of the more traditional [ˈkæl-ən-dəɹ], [mæ-ɡə-ˈzin], [mɪlk]. However, the /ɔ/ vowel is frequently confused with the /oʊ/ diphthong, and so you get funny transcriptions like ['fɔ-tʌ-gɹæf] for "photograph," [pɪlɔ] for "pillow," and even ['skeit-bɔʊɹd] for "skateboard." Some transcriptions left me puzzled - for example: [ˈkæɹ-pɪt] for "carpet," [ˈwɑʊ-lɪt] for "wallet," and [ˈbʌl-ə-'tɛn-bɔɹd] for "bulletin board." There are also words in which the stress mark is often placed on the wrong syllable, e.g. [pɪk'tʃʊɹ] or [flʌ-'fi]. I'm honestly quite surprised nobody's pointed this out yet. So, this might get a bit annoying — especially if you're already accustomed to different transcriptions. All in all, I thought 'Influent' was an extremely auspicious effort — one that could potentially become one of the best language learning tools out there. It'd be great to see new content and locations added into the game, and something tells me that we will. There's certainly a lot of room for improvement, but the groundwork had been laid and it is very solid. While it won't make one fluent, it is a brilliant supplement to, say, an elementary level textbook.