In the first edition of Heading Into Language Land language learning card game, a wordwizard named Metamet, who simply intended to journey out on a mapmaking mission, found himself pulled into the center of a rapidly-escalating war. About 50 language learners from around the world joined our online game events in 2023, to play their own roles in this fantasy story, bringing it to life, and enriching their target languages at the same time, target languages including: Mandarin, Spanish, Japanese, French, Turkish, Arabic, German, and more!
Heading Into Language Land 2 (HILL2), with the working title “Uncertain Alliance”, promises to be even more refined and sublime, lifting our language learning to even higher heights, nay, another physical plane beyond this one! In the second edition of the game, Metamet will journey with his allies into the realm of Langaia, a nation comprised primarily of earth-element wordwizards and treefolk, in order to propose an alliance between his native Wordhaven and Langaia, which would hopefully be capable of resisting the increasingly aggressive forces of evil.
My Approach/Process
As always, my intent is to carry out this project with a high degree of intentionality, bringing my best creativity to the table (literally!) through a process of slow productivity. I could hardly do otherwise. Having a full-time job which is NOT game design, and being a family man, a father of two little children, my free time to do this kind of work is extremely limited, so I have to pick my targets carefully and execute consistently over time with patience. Though the protracted process can be torturous to me at times, and maybe to some of you who are super excited to see HILL2 come to fruition, it can be a good thing, because it gives me a longer timeline to collect more inspirations, and let them mix together well in my subconscious before making decisions.
The Artwork
A few art pieces are already done, a few more are in the pipeline, and several artists who worked on HILL1 have returned to work on HILL2: Gabriel Schwepler, Caitlin Rain, Jess Winton, Sakuya’s Art, and Snailien1909. It’s been so much fun to reconnect with them. And something that’s astonished me, is that an email chain for one piece of completed art could easily have 30, 40, or 50+ emails between the artist and I, so I’m incredibly grateful for these artists’ generosity in terms of their time and talent. They know they’re contributing to something remarkable. And I hope and plan to interview them again, as I have done in the past, to discuss their workflow and process, so you can understand more about how hard they work and take a behind the scenes look, so to speak.
Game Card Templating
In terms of the actual game card design/templating, I have already completed a rough draft of all the cards. The general layout of the cards will be identical to HILL1, and there will be roughly the same number and types of cards as before. I’m looking forward to working more with our top players and gamemasters, such as Nate and Ian, to hone the word categories and rules, as well as improve the overall functionality of the game. I would also love it if Leon and Jay would help us playtest HILL2, too, (as they did for HILL1) when it comes time.
The Story
The HILL2 story is largely complete, weighing in at about 10,000 words (light flyweight division). As many of you know, I like to write the stories before I design the games, to help make the characters more interesting and give the game a feeling of depth. I have a goal to write a 10,000 word story for each HILL edition. And, if I can produce five HILL games, which is my long-term goal, we’ll not only have a cool series of games at the end, but a novella! I’ve never had enough patience to write a single story that could qualify as even a novella, so this was my roundabout way to try and short circuit my monkey brain and make it happen! (To give a little teaser here, one of my favorite pages I ever wrote for HILL is the first page of HILL2. It introduces a new and important character, a young girl who escapes from Embertell.)
A Possible Release Date
Now, for the grand finale: when can we expect Heading Into Language Land 2 to be released? Well, I don’t want to commit to any hard deadline. If an artist has 100 mediocre works, it doesn’t “add up” to being better or greater than one stellar masterpiece. So I want to obsess over the quality of HILL2, without being concerned about the length time it takes to finish it. That said, it definitely helps to establish a general target in terms of a deadline or else I might waste too much time, never get the game done, and players would be pissed off! And so would I! Thus, I plan for a release date of February 2026, with summer 2025 as a “stretch goal”. Furthermore, I will be meditating on whether rolling out a beta version of this game earlier might be prudent. Doing that could potentially quench our communal thirst for a next edition as well as prove useful for informing the best final version of HILL2 possible.
In The Meantime…
I know that February 2026 may still seem like a very long time to wait, but I plan to do a few things to keep fans and followers happy in the meanwhile. The first is to continue running our free, virtual card game events using HILL1 every Saturday, with the assistance of our incredible gamemasters. You can see our upcoming schedule and/or sign up to play on the homepage of this site.
And the second is, I will be trying harder than ever before to document and share content related to the game’s development. That is something I’ve been lazy about, or written off as unimportant compared to the actual game design itself. But when I look back at the scant recordings and blogging I did about HILL1, I think it’s pretty cool and fun. And I know it means a lot to some of you guys and girls who are following, because that can be your chance to check in and see how the project is going and help shape the direction of it. Indeed, I value your input and I want to incorporate your ideas, so don’t hesitate to leave a comment, question, concern, or suggestion, wherever and whenever you see me sharing about HILL2.
Probably the primary place I will be sharing about HILL2, is via the HILL2 playlist I set up on my YouTube channel. And then, probably less frequently, here on this blog.
Thanks for reading! And if you haven’t yet learned about or experienced HILL1, you have some catching up to do! To learn more about the HILL1 game, including how to have your own personalized game card made, visit the shop page here. We want you with us on this unforgettable language learning journey.
