Eloquence is a point and click language puzzle game. You learn to understand and eventually express yourself in a symbol language. The languages found in Eloquence are alive and used by NPCs, so the best way to discover what words or phrases mean, is by testing them on NPCs to find out how they respond.
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Classic Point and click games like The Secret Of Monkey Island, King’s Quest, and Day Of The Tentacle have you solve puzzles by finding, applying or combining objects. Eloquence has you solving puzzles as well, only you collect and apply sentences of a language you gradually learn to understand.
For Eloquence, I designed three symbol languages. I started out with the idea of an emoji language, where a string of emojis could substitute any phrase. This concept evolved into three symbol languages, each using different aspects of linguistic features that can be found in natural languages all around the world.
Eloquence emulates you being dropped in the middle of a foreign country, where everyone speaks a language you don’t (yet) understand. In such a situation, your first instinct will be to repeat whatever the locals will say to you. As you gradually figure out more about how the language works, you will feel empowered to form sentences of your own. By the end of this game, you will be fluent in one of the game’s languages.
There will be no writing in the game other than the symbol languages, even in the UI! The game will use visuals and sound to enhance communication with the player.
Eloquence was part of the Experimental Gameplay Workshop session at GDC 2019. You can watch the entire session by clicking on this link. My presentation on Eloquence starts at 39:40.
Eloquence was present at Gamescom 2019 as part of the Holland Pavilion!
Eloquence was part of the Leftfield Connection at EGX in October 2019!
My team is currently building a vertical slice of the game, which we will use to pitch to investors and publishers. We received a bit of development funding, thanks to the Creative Industries Fund NL!
Follow Eloquence on Twitter for regular updates!
Development team:
- Game and Narrative Design: Gerben Grave
- Art: Samma van Klaarbergen
- Programming lead: Luc van den Brand
- Additional programming: Leroy Freeth
- Sound Design: Jelmer Althuis
- Animation: Steffi Kick
- Project Management: Thomas Jager
Infinite thanks to our previous team members:
- Sound Design: Harm-Jan Wiechers
- Visual Effects: Zulfugar Eyvazov
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