9 Games That Created Their Own Fictional Languages
Featuring dragon-speak, park parlance, and both alien and ancient scripts, these games went to extra linguistic lengths by constructing new languages for us to encounter, tangle with, and translate!
Posted 11 days ago
For some developers, creating an entire digital world for us to wander through like tourists trying to sample every sidequest in town isn’t enough of a challenge. No, a handful go even further by constructing entire languages too – you know, those agreed sounds and written shapes humanity has been tinkering away at for tens of thousands of years.
It’s an impressive feat. All for us to learn a few words, and then almost certainly forget them as we shift to a new virtual realm. So join us in taking a moment to celebrate some of the best constructed languages in gaming, be they spoken by dragons, theme park attendees, or civilizations from the distant past.
1. Heaven’s Vault - Ancient script
©inkle / Restart
Non-linear narrative archaeological sci-fi game (and you can’t tell us that isn’t a cool genre blend) Heaven’s Vault is close to the gold standard when it comes to concocted video game languages. An ancient pictorial script is etched across the very nucleus of this moon-hopping mystery.
As archaeologist Aliya, you’ll discover fragments of script in ruins, using supposition to piece together meanings of each batch of carved symbols, and perhaps even the grammatical mechanisms used to craft them. Discoveries offer genuine moments of revelation as your broadening understanding of the language forces you to rethink previous assumptions and texts.
2. Planet Coaster 2 - Planco
A park sim with its own language? Yes, really. We have a full interview with developer Frontier about Planco you can read here, but the short of it is this: Going far beyond the lovable but nonsensical gobbledegook of Simlish, the Planet Coaster series (and Planet Zoo, too) incorporates an entire made up language called Planco. It sounds like gibberish, but is actually entirely translatable and consistent. Planco takes the same structure as English but swaps out words for onomatopoeic and often amusing sounds. Though confusingly, English also exists in the Planet universe.
It isn’t just your park residents who’ll speak it, either. There’s an entire suite of in-universe commercials in Planco, and even in-park music with lyrics and rhymes formed entirely in the made-up language. So next time you hear your park attendees chatting, hit up the official Planco dictionary to eavesdrop. Check out the full interview for more!
3. Dragon Age - Elvish and Qunlat
©BioWare, EA / Restart
Several fantasy games make use of ciphers to convey a believable fantasy language, basing the core foundations and phonemes on English. But the Dragon Age series deserves special credit for incorporating multiple – Elvish and the Quanri-spoken Qunlat – and expanding upon each to include idioms and metaphors that add an extra veneer of credibility and intrigue to players.
Elvish is by far the more detailed of the two, with some fans going to extensive lengths to detail their understanding. Qunari is less comprehensively covered, which only makes sense given the Qunari value brusque communication. That said, some fans have put in the work to build dictionaries and explainers covering everything they’ve learned up to the release of Veilguard. Invaluable resources for anyone planning to work on mods or write fan fiction within the universe.
4. Final Fantasy X - Al Bhed
Another cipher language, Al Bhed takes the more simplistic approach of substituting every letter of the English language (or the start of kana in Japanese) with another. As such, it’s far from a true language. But the fact that Final Fantasy X made deciphering the language a quest makes it worthy of mention in our view.
5. Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom - Maherian
©Enigami
Whenever linguistic buffs are given free reign during development, you’re likely to get a result in the vein of Maherian from action-RPG Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom. The Maherian language spoken by the anthropomorphic creatures of the game was, according to the developers, created using inspiration from numerous real-world languages including Japanese, Swahili, and French.
There’s even a Maherian language pack which swaps all English voice acting to the constructed language. Sadly, the developer of Shiness shut down soon after the game’s release, meaning we’re unlikely to see or hear more of Maherian.
6. Skyrim - Dovahzul / Thu’um
©Bethesda
The dragon language of the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is far and away the most popular entry on this list. That’s thanks in part to Skyrim being released on nearly every platform on the planet, but also due to chanting that's featured in the game’s main theme. That, and a certain air-blasting phrase. Admit it, you're already Fus Ro Dah-ing in your head.
The dragon language has a written aspect comprising 34 runes whose appearance convey the idea of being carved by a dragon’s claw. Much like other fantasy languages, it primarily borrows its structure from English, but there’s an expansive vocabulary to learn, and some impressively detailed guides out there for anyone looking to understand a bit more.
7. Jade Empire - Tho Fan
©BioWare
Constructed languages are far from a new concept in gaming. Back in 2005, Jade Empire was already putting in far more effort than most thanks to the team’s then linguistics PhD student Wolf Wikeley. Taking inspiration from languages including Japanese, Mandarin, German, English, and more, he crafted a functional language that would sound consistent and believable to players as they read the translated subtitles. In-game, Tho Fan is an older language falling out of use over time. Sadly, with little information retained about the language, it faces the same fate outside of the game.
8. Sethian - Sethianese
©Duang! Games
Sethian presents you with an alien computer interface that utilizes a geometric language long forgotten. By following your journal and its prompts, you can begin to decipher the meanings of each icon and any response given. The aim is to piece together both the language and what happened to those who created it.
It’s a great concept, even if the game’s actual structure is a lot more rigidly defined than the premise would suggest. The Sethianese language takes inspiration from Chinese and American Sign Language, but utilizes its own grammatical systems to create a believable lost language. One that some have found intriguing enough to attempt translations of important texts.
9. Chants of Sennaar - The People’s Languages
Chants of Sennaar is a puzzle game about learning languages. Not just one, but five of them. The people of the tower have lost the ability to communicate, but by observing and speaking with residents, you begin to understand elements of each of their pictorial languages, and make connections in your notebook.
Given the inclusion of multiple languages, the extent of each is much more limited here than in the likes of Heaven’s Vault. But each draws inspiration from different real-life languages and regions. In an interview with gamesindustry.biz, developer Julien Moya noted that the language of The Devotees draws from “Latin and Phoenician alphabets, with a touch of cuneiform,” while The Bards’ was based on “Arabic Kuffic and Indian Devanagari.” Chants of Senaar is a must-play for anyone with a passing interest in languages and gaming. It helps, of course, that it’s gorgeous, too.
