Now, here comes the fun part (at least I think this part is fun). Now you get to make your game culture’s alphabet!
Having an alphabet for your language will help players to be more engaged with your game’s story both visually and emotionally. How an alphabet is created will help define the culture’s way of life.
You Culture Alphabet in Your World
It can help the player be involved with the environment by creating advertising signs, street signs, and lots of other things using your new language.
Maybe it could be a lost culture from another planet or dimension that your player has stumbled across.
Your New Alphabet with Puzzles
You could use your new alphabet as part of the strategy for your game. Maybe when the player has stumbled across your fantasy world, the player is unable to speak or read the language of the inhabitants. So, you create some puzzles and strategies for the player to solve to move the story along.
Or maybe, the player must interact with an NPC using a Pictionary style puzzle to get some info out of the play NPC. There are lots of things you could do with your game design to interact with your new language. But first, you must create it.
Creating Your Game Culture Alphabet
First off, what type of culture is your alphabet for?
Take the Roman alphabet. This is the alphabet we currently use, but its creators were from ancient Rome. They were full of order, discipline, and were a very masculine based culture. They were not a messy culture, so to speak. They created symmetrical architecture, and therefore their alphabet is very symmetrical.
Now, here’s the Egyptian Alphabet. A showy culture, loves to dominate weaker races, but also enjoys art and story telling.
And then there is Tengwar (Elvish) alphabet by J.R.R. Tolkien from The Lord of the Rings. The elvish people are graceful and magical, and full of secrets.
How Advanced is Your Culture?
This is a key element in how the alphabet should look. Can this culture create with their hands, or do they use their claws to write? Does your cultere have tools such as a paint brush, pencil, or computer? Or does your culture use their finger, claw or paw?
The Roman alphabet pictured above was and still is a more advanced culture’s alphabet. When it was created, the culture was using a pen of sorts, and had the mental ability to to keep symmetry using math and science.
Futurama’s creators Matt Groening and David X. Cohen created Alienese as a way to write inside jokes to fans willing to decipher the code. The Alienese alphabet is very science looking, with a hint of space. The characters resemble moons, molecules, planets and other various future space-like things.
And then there is pIqaD, from a future space species called Klingon. Klingons are a race of humanoids in the Star Trek series. They are antagonists of the series. The sharp angles of the alphabet is to show that they are a sophisticated, barbaric, militaristic race.
Research Some Alphabets
Lastly, you’ll want to research some alphabets. See what is available, what other people have done, and learn about the different cultures that created the alphabets. Your alphabet, should you choose to create one, will be another piece of your game that will help a player to interact and feel like he or she is a part of your fantasy world.