Counterfeit Funky

I had this idea for a weird twist on the game Counterfeit Monkey by Emily Short. It can be found on the Interactive Fiction Database (ifdb.org).

This was also brought up in semi-private Regular's chat some time ago, (like January-ish?). Suggestions made at the time have been incorporated and more has since been accreted. 

Instead of changing individual letters, you change the language of the word of an object.

Ever play with machine translation for Google Translate? 

You put in an English phrase or paragraph and it translates it into French, let's say. Great. Now copy and paste that French translation into a French to English machine translator. 

Hmmm... Your original phrase isn't the same. 

It morphed due to the peculiarities of translation between the two languages. 

Now copy and paste the English phrase back into the English to French translator. It changes again!

Eventually, this morphing shifts synonyms on both sides until it finally finds a direct translation and the shifting stops, often on words that are very tenuously attached to the original word.

Instead of machine translation, you have a "translation machine."

When you do this, it actually changes the object physically to that translation.

The intention being to imitate the game's central mechanic of swapping out letters with the imperfect nature of literal translations between languages in a creative manner.

Let’s say you start out with only English and one other language, perhaps French. But as you go, you could get the chance to load other languages into your translation machine, exploring not only words and concepts that don't directly translate between English and other languages, but also between those other languages, like, say between Spanish and French for example.

The hard part would be generating all the translations as google translate has gotten slightly too good at some languages to work for this so you would want to manually implement a dictionary translation.

You would figure this out ahead of time and have the incremental changes for different words already written into the game. 

In other words, the author would generate the translations via a translation software and then hard code them in.

You zap it with your translator and it would just jump to the next translation. You could also reverse this.

Being able to rewind this process allows you to cycle an object back and forth through a series of different versions.

A chain on a door gets French zapped; becomes a chaîne. Zap it again, it's a string. Zap it again, it's a fil. Zap it again, it's a wire. You can then switch the polarity and roll the object back through all 5 states.

You might zap it only twice to get through the door, but if you take it with you, you might have a wire you could also use later.

The testing would be a nightmare, and the multilingual reviewers will surely nitpick you to death, but it would still be fun.

Hopefully, with the number of multilingual peeps on the forums, you might find some solid beta testing assistance. Or a polyglot could just write the game themselves.

There is an issue of non-determinism. Oftentimes, players wouldn’t be able to anticipate what might happen and make strategies unless they are very fluent in multiple languages.

To get around this, I suggest making sure the puzzle designs are based on predicting changes

Simply changing the object isn't enough. It's remembering all of the states these objects can exist in and combining and using them in unique ways. Like making a torch from a stick and some cloth (neither of which were originally a stick or a cloth) and then using the translation machine on the new combined object might create a flashlight.

Also, adding languages vastly increases your potential inventory. For example, taking the chain while it’s a fil and then zapping it with the Spanish zapper changes it to a brizna. Zapping it again with the English Zapper would turn it into a blade. As you add languages, you massively expand what each object in your inventory COULD be.

You could even get the dialect accessory to do stuff like english-american for fun, like serviette to napkin to diaper, or trunk to boot to shoe.

You could also play with false-friends with some of these translations, like a "one-piece" in English is a swimsuit but in Japanese is a dress, or “mansion” between the same two languages.

The possibilities are endless.

I'd also like to explore concepts or words that simply don't exist in other languages. I find that idea fascinating. Like the whole blue-green thing with a whole host of languages.

Two last points, I'd like to release the game with a language selector at the beginning.

This would be a vorple link that would boot one of several hosted vorple games, each one for each core language represented in the game.

That way, someone could play the game with French prose and and commands, but with largely the same object and verb set, still bouncing back and forth the same way between the languages.

I feel like making a game that celebrates the differences between languages, but then requiring the player to understand English to play it is.. I dunno, not right.

The second point is I want the title of the game to change dynamically based on your actions in game in a goofy and tongue-in-cheek way.

Here are all the 3 syllable words  or phrases rhyming with Counterfeit: 

about it, after-wit, amazfit, anahit, appetit, aquavit, arrowslit, artoolkit, ask for it, b-toolkit, baby-sit, baseball mitt, berashit, bereshyt, be with it, bit-by-bit, bit by bit, brace and bit, cable-knit, candlelit, canker-bit, cannon-bit, carmelit, centerbit, center bit, centre bit, chickenshit, closely-knit, closely knit, cuckoo-spit, datakit, diddly-shit, double-knit, double knit, douglas pitt, drilling bit, dualit, duravit, dylan schmidt, euosmitte, gin and it, hamburg-mitte, hammerschmidt, harzburgite, hawk and spit, heraklit, heremit, hipocrite, hippocrite, hissyfit, holy writ, horgavitt, hunger-bit, hypocrit, hypocrite, interdit, interknit, intermit, intromit, isn't it, is this it, kuhlenschmidt, loosely knit, mandalit, manumit, megahit, messerschmidt, messerschmitt, miryachit, mother wit, overhit, packagekit, palafitte, parasit, parasyte, parikshit, pelesit, photofit, pilibhit, pilot bit, pissenlit, pretermit, quamoclit, readmit, recommit, resubmit, retransmit, retrofit, reverse split, roller bit, see to it, sewing kit, sirikit, size of it, superbit, superhit, take a hit, tanartkit, the least bit, throw a fit, tightly knit, toilet kit, travel kit, unaquit, underwit, underwrit, under it, waffenschmidt, wagon-lit, wait-a-bit, weather-bit, weatherbit, wolfenschmidt, work permit, worldremit, you said it 

And here are all the 2 syllable words or phrases that rhyme with Monkey: 

bunkie, bunky, chunkey, chunky, clunky, flunkey, flunky, funky, gunky, hunky, junkie, junky, lungki, munki, plunky, punkey, punkie, punky, skunky, spunkie, spunky, tunki

Mix and match based on whatever silliness occurs in game, I'm sure I could come up with more near or non words that would work too.

To be done well, I feel this game would need either a different author (probably a polyglot) and lots and lots of testing, probably both.