GAME

Polyglot Pirates - Design Document

polyglot logo

Polyglot Pirates is a pirate themed language learning game with in-game progression, unlockables, achievements, multiplayer games, leaderboards and tournaments, playable on Web, Desktop and Mobile (Discord, Steam, Itch, iOS, Android). The style is watercolor, and the goal is to go from island to island by winning language minigames.

Overview

Polyglot Pirates is an online game where players select a character, customizes it, play minigames with other people while earning highscores and new items.

Plot

During the night, sea creatures steal your treasure. You need to chase them and get it back.

The world is 2D, movement is done on water by ship. There are different obstacles, such as the sea creatures you chase, which you can shoot with the cannon.

Customization

The player will be able to customize his character, clothes and special items. As he plays more, he will also gain special items by either winning a lot of times or winning against a number of players or gaining a specific score in a game. This will also unlock special modes of games.

customization_player

Gameplay

The heart of the game are the minigames. In each minigame players guess words by finding, guessing or matching. Each minigame has assigned a dictionary pack. The player needs to find matching words from his native language to the language he learns.

In the word match game, you need to match words in order to win:

match

In the word guess game, you need to guess words in order to win:

hangman

In the word find game, you need to find words in order to win:

find

Dictionary Packs

There will be different regions, each with their own dictionaries.

Dictionary Packs contain a set of words and can be advanced by playing (each level up gains you 3 new words). Based on the level of the dictionary packs you also gain more coins.

Marketing

The marketing strategy begins with the first launch of the app. Our strategy is basically to go slow and collect advice and feedback to improve the game.

We are focusing on a good quality app as our strategy is not ads but subscriptions.

First Phase

  1. Innternal release: Collect feedback and bugs.
  2. External release with selected users (100): Collect feedback and bugs.
  3. Release to everyone.
  4. First target analysis: Investigate user needs and improve based on that, make polls.
  5. Create Youtube / Twitter / IG / Tik Tok / Newsletter.
  6. Wait and see what we need to improve on next (eg. levels, equipments, etc.)

Second phase (after 20K users):

  1. Publicity, recruitment, partnerships