Twospeak

Twospeak is the working title of a new two-player puzzle adventure from Tokoronyori, the developer behind BOKURA and BOKURA: planet. The project is explicitly not part of the BOKURA series, but it takes over the idea that two players receive different information and can only progress together.

This time the focus is not the different perception of the world, but language itself: the two characters initially do not understand each other's symbols and must work out a shared understanding during the game.

Twospeak currently has no release date yet. Kodansha Game Lab lists the project as a title in development; the final name is also not yet fixed.

The announced target platform so far is PC via Steam. Other platforms have not been confirmed yet. A commercial Steam store page is not currently linked publicly.

Twospeak is designed exclusively for two players. Both characters meet without understanding each other's language. Only a puzzling machine speaks to each player in an understandable way, but it cannot translate the two languages directly either.

Each player has a dictionary with known meanings such as “I”, “you” or “search”. The key point: the matching foreign characters look different to each player. Whoever chooses a word and says it only shows their partner an unknown symbol at first.

New meanings are worked out from behavior and context. If a player points at a triangular stone and says an unknown word, the partner can guess that this symbol means “triangle”. The pairing can then be noted in your own dictionary.

Notes can be picked from preset meanings or typed in freely. The language you learn later becomes part of the actual puzzle solution, when shapes, wishes or actions need to be passed on precisely to the other player.

Besides the decoded words, there are emotes that convey simple feelings such as joy or sadness. This keeps communication possible even when the necessary vocabulary is still missing.

The Twospeak demo started with very simple terms and gradually introduced players to the system. Towards the end, armed figures appeared and chased both characters, a hint that the finished campaign weaves the language puzzles into a larger story.