The Challenge

The AAS Press based out of Japan was looking for an experienced partner to develop an elaborate language learning game

The Outcome

Tintash proposed and executed upon a project plan to carry this vision to the pilot stage in several Japanese school and beyond

The AAS Press shared a vision document and related sketches of a series of mini-games embedded within a larger city-building game. Progress in this game was meant to be the outcome of improvement in language skills mechanics. There were thus game components as well as a web-based portal so that teachers and administrators could use this setup to assign language learning quests to students and review progress. Tintash submitted a proposal on the team required, the process to follow and estimates on costs and timelines.

It was key to get a basic game loop in place within about 6 months so piloting could begin. A map structure was put in place where you could access the quests through mini-games while watching your kingdom grow. There was a content database for scalability and compatibility with the constraints of the Japanese language. There was a user portal where Japanese-English language pairs could be selected and assigned by teachers for practice through ‘quests’. This kept things true to the original vision of building out a platform with interchange-able content that could ultimately be used for any form of language learning.

The process was iterative since much needed to be figured out and improved upon. Weekly calls with the AAS Press team helped with relevant discussions and clarifications. An active slack channel meant that we could always get quick feedback on shared mechanics and visuals. The project management system at the Tintash end and daily internal standups ensured that a team of artists, designers, engineers and testers that varied from 5 to 12 as needed had all its documentation in one place and daily tasks were aligned towards the common goal.

Once we had a stable and testable game loop in place, the product was in a position to be piloted. As students in Japan tinkered with it, we started getting immediate feedback on which mini-games needed enhancement, how the game economy and enemy ‘strengths’ needed to be tweaked and what kind of glitches might arise at the teacher and student end during live use of the system. The team spent the next few months debugging for individual user accounts to makes the system more robust. In tandem, new features were constantly added from the perspective of making the gameplay more engaging and also increasing the educational rigor, from dashboards with precise analytics to live people on the map scene. More subtle elements such as lighting and water effects were continuously added to support the vision of really making this a magical experience in acquiring the English language.

A year later, Tintash and AAS Press share a combined vision for making this game even bigger and better and taking it well beyond the Japanese market. Tintash continues to focus on scalability and enhancements as the user feedback pours in. We are thrilled at the opportunity to contribute to the global pursuit of learning facilitated by technology and that remains central to our mission.