You have probably come actoss languages created for books or games. Thanks to them, these works were unique, and races speaking their own languages were more believable. Does it make sense and if it can pay off at all, in the case of an independent game?
The idea of starting work on languages in Driftland: The Magic Revival was born in the head of Luke the Drifter from our team. At this point, it should be noted that the whole process took him a difficult to quantify amount of work spread over time - in a row it would probably be weeks, many weeks. Deciding on this step, we wanted to give depth to the game, but it turned out that it's also the way to save some money on voice overs.
Creating a new language is to a large extent research, research and once again research. Different cultures, different dialects and sounds. Here we have as many as 4 languages, that is 4 times more work. All of them have different grammar. Each language is also distinguished by its sound. And in the language of Wild Elves there are, for example, single words that have a wider meaning, e.g. "sulaene" is "a place where something will be reborn". You can see that we haven't tried to take shortcuts, as the following examples show:
Xala'hash varam shyri'varakh (Dark Elves)
Elei silue lai Mallevah (Wild Elves)
Mathroi zan overud (Humans)
Mezarath-bjor Mur-gahuld (Dwarves)
However, it should be noted that these languages are not fully usable and functional. Created for the needs of the game, they refer mainly to fantasy worlds and it would be difficult to use them on a daily basis - unless dragons appear on Earth:) Nevertheless, they are well-thought-out and if the vocabulary were to be expanded, they could be successfully used in everyday life. For the game itself, however, there was no need to create such an extensive vocabulary, cause it does not affect the final reception of the game.
One of the biggest challenges was to write lyrics for the choir in the dwarf language. It took a long time to match the number of syllables, dynamics or rhymes. In addition, the lyrics were long. In the end, we managed to write a few very nice songs 😍
Answering the question posed at the beginning, we first have to answer the question - why do want to do this? Driftland: The Magic Revival is a game in the fantasy world and it is easy to justify our decision. In addition, we were lucky that a person from our team undertook this task with pure passion. Did it affect the game? Certainly. Languages have become one of unique features. Thanks to them a really rare soundtrack was created, which would not sound so oryginal in English. And for sure it wouldn't build such an atmosphere as dwarf language.
One could say that this is just an unnecessary whim. But aren't such whims defining games made with passion and commitment? We have proved that a love for games and a bit of self-denial is enough to make it happen. Will it pay off in case of your game? You need to answer yourself.
A small bonus for fans of Elvish music, language and beauty ❤️
