Educrate

S10192928J | www.educrate.tk

Learning Languages One Pack at A Time

About Us

An interactive visual novel game that revolves around the player suddenly waking up in a foreign country, and needs to learn the language to navigate the game.

As the player progresses in learning the language, gradually more and more areas of that country is unlocked, and eventually the whole game will transition purely into that new language.

Main storyboard

Chapter 1 (intro): delusion

I can't accept this, spend the whole day trying to sleep, to wake back up into the original country

Chapter 2 (intro): acceptance

Player goes out to try to communicate but all speak a foreign language

Chapter 3 (intro): finds a foreign friend

Another player was caught in the same thing and Player learns new language from him (currently english, but will expand to more languages in the future)

Chapter 4: new language (MAIN game)

game component; needs to go out and communicate with cash register to buy essentials, talk with society, finds work at emart24 fmart25, needs to communicate with the customer

Chapter 5a: love? (optional side quest)

player has option to fall in love with this friend learn himself to find love, teaches communication in a relationship and further attaches the player's bond to the game

Chapter 5b: reality chases him? (optional side quest)

player given option to return to real world

How the idea came afloat? (Target Market)

I came up with the idea after finding lack of motivation/drive language learning apps, which doesn't really engage the user, whereby there is no motivation for the user from the app to learn.

Also the lack of use that memorising simple phrases can take you, for example, simply memorising how to say egg, won't help you say "I will go to the supermarket now to buy two eggs".

This game will target people who like to play games in general and who like to learn a new language.

Marketing Proposal (Marketing Strategies)

Product

Able to allow user to pick up a new language, appealing cute anime style art.

Visual novel style educational game, appeals to both casual gamers and people who like reading.

Price

Competition based pricing:
Free, ad-supported with in app purchases.

Hearts-based system similar to Coin Master, Candy Crush, which are high grossing apps. There will be a waiting time to regenerate hearts, in which you can pay $2.49 to refill 10 hearts.

Promotion

Customer engagement, using Twitter and Instagram to engage with potential customers

Influencer publicity? Try to get small YouTube/Twitch/Facebook influencers to play our game

Place

Selling through intermediaries: Online distribution channels; i.e. Google Play store.

We could also setup cross platform distribution channels, for example itch.io, to market to PC users.

Market Feasibility (Competitor Analysis)

We've chosen this as our business idea largely due to the low-barrier of entry into the market and that I'm confident that we are able to handle the technical aspect of this all by ourselves.

What we offer that competitors lack

In the purely language learning apps:

Duolingo

Technique used: quiz (lack of fun aspect, exclusively academical)

Problem: People who use Duolingo only lack even basic verb/grammar knowledge of the language, you learn by "parroting phrases"

(https://www.fluentlanguage.co.uk/blog/duolingo-review-fluentlanguage)

Memrise

Technique used: repetition flash cards

Problem: flash cards doesn't really help you to "learn" whereas you are really memorising

(https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/04/smarter-living/500-days-of-duolingo-what-you-can-and-cant-learn-from-a-language-app.html)

We try to make a difference by simulating an immersion environment, teaching and "forcing" our users to use the language to communicate and interact with the game. The user will learn the grammar and proper ways to form a sentence, by including educational tenses in the game we are able to hook people for both its game and educational aspect.

Then you might ask; if people are legitimately that interested in learning a language, why not go to a college where you can learn?

The answer, price & fun engaging factor. Here we're offering a freemium option (i.e. free with ads, or paid to remove them), and the plus to engage them with a concept of a game.

Logistics/Operational

App will be programmed using RenPy, a visual novel game engine. (by me)

Art will be drawn in Photoshop. (by me)

Basic game introduction will be in the foreign language, like Chinese, Korean, Japanese, etc.

The game will market to existing beginner English language users, and will expand on their use of grammar, and put them in a real-life simulation setting to test their communication skills. The game will also focus on common miscommunication between people, verb tenses, past present, future, etc. Initial introduction could be adapted from translators like Papago or Google Translate.

Market Positioning

We want our game to be positioned next to the other casual visual novel apps, such as Doki Doki Literature Club and Episode in the Fun engaging factor, however we would like to leapfrog into the educational value of the games.