Tag Archives: Esperanto

Cover Games, The Expression: Amrilato

The Expression: Amrilato – Konversacio kun SukeraSparo

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One of my favourite aspects of being Someone Who Writes About Games is that you occasionally have the opportunity to sit down with the people who created these experiences and pick their brains… or at least exchange some questions with them via email and interpreter!

For me, there’s always been a certain amount of mystique surrounding both game development and the art of bringing a commercial product to market. I’ve felt this way for as long as I can remember — even to this day. It’s an aspect of what is, I guess, childish innocence that I’m keen to never let go of; video games, visual novels and creative works are exciting, and the people who create them are magicians, and I don’t ever want to forget that.

With all that in mind, I was delighted when MangaGamer, localiser and publisher of The Expression: Amrilato’s Western release, agreed to let me have a chat with the developer SukeraSparo and find out a bit more about where this unusual, fascinating title came from.

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Cover Games, The Expression: Amrilato

The Expression: Amrilato – Nova Vivo de Rin

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A lot of Japanese popular media tends to place adolescent characters in leading roles. There’s a very good reason for this: adolescence is a point in your life where your understanding of the world and your beliefs are at their most fluid and dynamic.

Many dramatic Japanese stories explore the concept of adolescence as a turning point in one’s life. For most people, adolescence is where they truly establish who they really are, how they see the world and how they choose to live in it.

Most of us don’t have to go through an ordeal quite as turbulent as The Expression: Amrilato’s protagonist Rin as part of this journey of discovery, however…

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Cover Games, The Expression: Amrilato

The Expression: Amrilato – Suddenly Voiceless

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The prospect of learning a new language is a daunting one for many people — particularly English speakers, who tend to take their language’s position as “default” for granted.

What this means, more often than not, is that if you’re not put in a position where you have to learn a new language, chances are you won’t. There are exceptions to this rule, of course — some people learn a new language to improve their career prospects, some learn to broaden the range of language-dependent arts and entertainment they can engage with and some just do it for fun — but for the most part we, as humans, are rather lazy when it comes to this sort of thing.

When The Expression: Amrilato’s protagonist Rin finds herself in a version of her hometown that seems to be all “wrong”, she soon finds herself learning firsthand what being in a position where you have to learn a new language is like.

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Cover Games, The Expression: Amrilato

The Expression: Amrilato – Introduction

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Video games have been used as a means of helping people learn things pretty much since the early days of the medium; even the humble Atari 2600 played host to basic spelling and mathematics challenges.

As technology has advanced and creators have become more proficient at using interactive media to tell stories and express themselves, more and more ways to educate people have become readily accessible.

Best of all, people have realised once and for all that we don’t need a hard divide between “games” and “educational software”, so today we find ourselves with titles like SukeraSparo’s The Expression: Amrilato, a visual novel that provides its audience with both a romantic story of blossoming love between two girls, and the opportunity to learn some Esperanto.

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