After years of hard work – writing stories and dialogue, hand crafting artwork, voice acting, programming, and fine-tuning – local Fargo gaming startup Beach Interactive launched the first chapter of their French language learning game, The Abettor’s Letters, now available free for the iPad.

“I can’t really believe it, that it’s actually out there for people to consume and comment on and perhaps fall in love with,” said Sarah English, founder of Beach Interactive. “It’s been weird since it launched…especially because of how much work went into this first chapter, how much life and perseverance and teamwork.”

The Abettor’s Letters idea

The Abettor’s Letters is an interactive game for iPad that aims to engage players in learning French by leading them through a compelling tale of espionage.

Sarah English, the ideator behind the game, began forming the idea back in 2008, after she became frustrated with the existing methods of computer language learning. They just weren’t that interesting or effective, she thought. She didn’t take action on her idea for a storytelling learning game until 2012, when she began drawing storyboards.

A few months later, in September, Kyle Weik joined the team, followed soon by McCal Joy Johnson who contributed her artistic work to bring the Abettor’s world to life.

From there, the game began to take shape; they recruited native French speakers for voice acting (Weik did some impressive voice acting himself), they continued developing the gameplay, and Myriad Mobile worked with them to program everything for iPad.

Meeting challenges along the way

The journey took them through many highs and lows. Some of the biggest challenges, the team said, were gamifying the language learning process as well as articulating the big idea to developers.

“Finding the balance between being a game and being a learning tool has been the hardest challenge, and yet it’s so important because it’s our biggest selling point,” Weik said. “It was a fun process taking traditional RPG (Roleplaying Game) mechanics, and finding ways to incorporate language learning in them. Our core learning mechanic, the DIS (Dialogue Interaction Sequence) was based on traditional turn based combat found in games like Final Fantasy. Once we had the DIS finished, everything else fell into place.”

One particularly rough patch was when the team released a Kickstarter campaign from July 11 to August 10, 2013, but was unable to reach the goal (although the video is magnifique, watch it here!). However, Weik said, that low led to a high point where the team was able to regroup and re-commit to completing their goal.

“After our Summer 2013 Kickstarter, the whole team was feeling a little down since it wasn’t the success we were hoping for,” Weik said. “After taking a bit of a break, the team came back together in full force and we decided that we weren’t ready to give up on the project, one way or another we were gonna get it done. I joke around, and call it our “Burn the Ships” period (in reference to Hernando Cortez burning his ships, that there’s no turning back). The team buckled down and within a couple months had all the gameplay, story, UI and art assets finished.”

Another highlight, English said, was working the voice actors. They worked to find native French speakers so that when learning the French phrases, the accents the players hear are as authentic as it gets.

“There was a lot of laughter, funny impressions, and our wonderful French actors really made the game come to life,” she said. “Also, the first time I played a build with the sound effects implemented, I thought to myself, ‘It’s ali-hi-hive!'”

Johnson agreed, stating that when they realized they could make this game a reality, and the first moments of testing it on the iPad, those were some of the happiest moments.

Three years of hard work later, and the first chapter of The Abettor’s Letters is now available to the public. It is free and can be played on the iPad.

“I am very proud of what we’ve built,” English said. “It’s gorgeous and hilarious and I love it even more than when we started working on it.”

Ready for user feedback

Now, the team said, they are ready to get some user feedback and iterate to make their game better and better.

“It’s nice just to have it out there, now we can start making more objective decisions on the project based on this feedback,” Weik said.

The ultimate goal, English said, is to acquire funding so that they can continue to build the full French game and then expand to other languages. They also hope to bring it to other platforms besides the iPad, based on its success.

Two ways you can join The Abettor’s Letters fun:

1) You can catch the Beach Interactive team tomorrow morning at 1 Million Cups! 9:15 AM at the Stage at Island Park.

2) This Saturday is The Abettor’s Letters official Launch Party! There will be crepes courtesy of Fargo Hotcakes, a cash bar, live music from the Carluster Crumplebee Orchestra, and several iPads for testing the game. Starts at 7 PM at Ecce Art Gallery. Claim your tickets, here!