"Vanishing Voices" is a legacy card game that transforms the abstract concept of language loss into tangible experiences.
During the course of the game, players create a language together and collaborate to save their language from extinction, experiencing struggle and losses that mirror real-world language loss.
"Vanishing Voices" transforms the abstract concept of language loss into tangible experiences through a narrative-driven legacy card game. Players become the last guardians of their language, making choices and experiencing losses that mirror real-world language extinction.
Motivated by my finding that my mother tongue, Manipuri, is a potentially vulnerable language according to UNESCO and inspired by Thorny Games' “Dialect”, I designed this game to engage players emotionally through carefully crafted game mechanics.
There are ~8324 documented languages in the world, out of which ~7000 are still in use. Of the ones that are still in use, only 65 languages (0.9%) fall under the “safe languages” category.
(Source: UNESCO World Atlas of Languages (WAL))
UNESCO World Atlas of Languages (WAL), an interactive online tool that documents different statuses of languages around the world, there are ~8324 documented languages, out of which ~7000 are still in use. Of the ones that are still in use, only 65 languages (0.9%) fall under the “safe languages” category.
Key Challenges and Design Decisons
How do you make language loss feel real and immediate?
The mechanic of physically tearing up a card creates a tangible, irreversible moment that mirrors real language loss.
How do you create personal investment in language preservation?
Players create their own language cards at the start, investing them personally in the preservation of these elements.
How do you use permanent destruction as a feature when it directly conflicts with traditional game replayability?
What began as workshop data analysis revealed a broader usability issue, reinforcing the importance of staying open to unexpected insights. This experience has transformed how I approach user research: