u/ssfak520

Hi Reddit!

I lived in Chiang Mai for a while and fell in love with the food, the culture, and the people. I wanted to learn Thai, but I have a pretty short attention span, and I struggled to stick with the apps I tried. That's on me, not them, but it got me thinking about what would actually keep me coming back.

I'm also someone who used to get completely addicted to roguelike games. So I had a thought: what if learning a language could actually feel like a game? Not "gamified" with points and streaks, but a real game you want to keep playing, where the learning process stays fresh because of different monsters, relics, and runs.

That idea turned into Glyphraid.

Here's how it currently works:
- Before each battle, you learn new words with flashcards and hear the pronunciation.
- In battle, you type the answer to attack monsters. I went with typing instead of multiple choice on purpose. With multiple choice I'd just memorize the answer by elimination and it never stuck. Typing forces me to actually recall it.
- Each word has its own mastery level that grows as you get it right across multiple days, so the game keeps bringing back the ones you haven't really locked in yet.
- It's a roguelike, so each run has different monsters, relics, and rewards to keep it fresh.

Right now it's a small MVP with one theme: Thai travel phrases, with monsters and backgrounds to match the theme. Down the line I want to add more themes, more question types, more relics, and eventually more languages.

A few notes:
- It's iOS only for now.
- Pronunciation currently uses the built-in iOS text-to-speech. I'd love to switch to a better TTS model later.
- This is an early build, so expect some rough edges.

On the business side, I want to be upfront about where this is heading. The plan is that the game itself will never lock you out. You'll be able to play all the content for free. I'm thinking there'd just be ads, with a subscription to remove them for convenience. And if you leave feedback after completing a run in game you'll get any future paid perks unlocked for free, forever, as an early tester.

If you're learning languages and this sounds fun, I'd genuinely love for you to try it and tell me what you think:
[TestFlight link]

Any feedback is welcome.

Thank you so much for reading 🙏

Hi Reddit!

I lived in Chiang Mai for a while and fell in love with the food, the culture, and the people. I wanted to learn Thai, but I have a pretty short attention span, and I struggled to stick with the apps I tried. That's on me, not them, but it got me thinking about what would actually keep me coming back.

I'm also someone who used to get completely addicted to roguelike games. So I had a thought: what if learning a language could actually feel like a game? Not "gamified" with points and streaks, but a real game you want to keep playing, where the learning process stays fresh because of different monsters, relics, and runs.

That idea turned into Glyphraid.

Here's how it currently works:
- Before each battle, you learn new words with flashcards and hear the pronunciation.
- In battle, you type the answer to attack monsters. I went with typing instead of multiple choice on purpose. With multiple choice I'd just memorize the answer by elimination and it never stuck. Typing forces me to actually recall it.
- Each word has its own mastery level that grows as you get it right across multiple days, so the game keeps bringing back the ones you haven't really locked in yet.
- It's a roguelike, so each run has different monsters, relics, and rewards to keep it fresh.

Right now it's a small MVP with one theme: Thai travel phrases, with monsters and backgrounds to match the theme. Down the line I want to add more themes, more question types, more relics, and eventually more languages.

A few notes:
- It's iOS only for now.
- Pronunciation currently uses the built-in iOS text-to-speech. I'd love to switch to a better TTS model later.
- This is an early build, so expect some rough edges.

On the business side, I want to be upfront about where this is heading. The plan is that the game itself will never lock you out. You'll be able to play all the content for free. I'm thinking there'd just be ads, with a subscription to remove them for convenience. And if you leave feedback after completing a run in game you'll get any future paid perks unlocked for free, forever, as an early tester.

If you're learning Thai and this sounds fun, I'd genuinely love for you to try it and tell me what you think:
[TestFlight link]

Any feedback is welcome.

Thank you so much for reading krub 🙏