Hi. I’ve been learning English on my own from scratch using the Internet for about one year and a half now. Playing The Sims has helped me learn a ton of vocabulary, so I’m curious if there’s any other games like that. Thanks.
Back in the days I learned most of my English playing adventure games: space/kings/police quest, maniac mansion, monkey island, leisure suit larry, you get the idea. Helped me get an A in my finals.
Many of them should be public domain by now.
Dota, league or any shooter if you want to exclusively learn curses and similar.
I learned “All your base belong to us” from a video game.
A winner is you.
Someone set him up the trophy
Probably any game with a story. Voiced might be better, but written has advantages, too.
Might not want games with a lot of fictional words or idiosyncrasies. Like Baldur’s Gate 3 is really good and well acted, but you’d pick up a lot of less useful fantasy words.
Just looking at what I’ve played lately.
Guild Wars 2 is a great game. Lots of content. Most of it voiced. There’s also other players you can talk to, and some might speak your native language. It has some fantasy jargon.
Grand Theft Auto 5 would probably teach you swear words and other stuff you shouldn’t casually say. Be careful with that one.
My time at Sandrock was fun. That probably would give you some vocabulary.
Many games with voices also support subtitles, personally I learned most of my English from my parents watching English tv with subs (in our language at first, then when I was a little older English subs)
Animal Crossing (New Horizons specifically) is very similar to The Sims and is all about daily life, decorating, and maintaining a household. So I would imagine that could help with daily vocabulary. It might also give you a weird depth on dinosaurs and fish, but that’s an ok problem to have. Likewise Stardew Valley should be similar
Can I play Animal Crossing on PC? Only have a laptop.
Technically? You could install a Switch emulator and run a cracked version. But that’s hardly ideal. I haven’t played it but I’ve heard Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time is similar and well received
Yes with an emulator. Look up dolphin for the gamecube version or torzu for switch. Dolphin + gamecube will be easier to run if your laptop isn’t very powerful
Animal Crossing has a mobile free version.
Grand Theft Auto San Andreas.
Half joking because GTA games and rap is how I learned a good bit of English.
I was actually going to suggest Red Dead Redemption 2. The English you learn may be a little bit dated (and have a heavy southern drawl) but you’ll learn a lot.
The Adventure genre is excellent for that. Try something from Lukas Arts. Monkey Island, for example. Classics and plenty of not-overly-fluffy text.
Guybrush Threepwood taught me the skeleton song. We don’t have that here.
100% recommend these.
You can get remastered versions on Steam (Full Throttle and Grim Fandango are both excellent).
Simon the Sorcerer is also in this genre, very funny, and voiced by Chris Barrie from Red Dwarf.
Animal Crossing! It’s slow paced, and everything has a fun and simple theme.
A lot of the Pokemon games are text heavy
Lego games
I like any sort of rpg that requires you to understand the text so you know what you need doing. Diablo 2 was my way to learning another language, but it’s fairly old now. Maybe something along those lines or that has a good crafting system? I would suggest stuff like Grounded, some of the Elder Scrolls (oblivion just got a remake so that might be nice), project zomboid, etc.
Minecraft, modded especially.
Earthbound. It is based in the present time so you get to learn vocabulary that is practical.
And cinematic storytelling telling games such as the Walking Dead or Detroit Become Human.
Present time? It’s about 30 years old! 😂
