By Cecilia Lin
物語は、あなたの頭の中で動き出す……
open your mind, and let the story unfold……
Square Enix’s 2021 newest role-playing video game Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars (Voice of cards ドラゴンの島) reimagines board game for the new digital era! This artistically genius game is, however, only localized into English besides its original language Japanese. It is a real shame that such fantastically imagined game was not localized into more languages, especially Chinese since the Chinese gaming industry has always had a special place in their hearts for Japanese RPG.
In hopes of demonstrating the potential of this game entering the Chinese market, I have chosen to localize five flat image sources, including the landing page’s header (01), introduction (02), character (03), specifics of the game (04), and the DLC poster (05). I will be using Adobe Photoshop to complete the localization process.
What is Voice of Cards?
Voice of Cards: The Isle Dragon Roars is an RPG game consisting purely of cards, thus the name voice of cards because everything in this game derives from traditional board games. Besides fantastically imagined visuals, a fully voiced Game Master will guide players through this enchanting adventure alongside our main character “The Would-be Hero” （自称勇者) Ash and his adorable magical companion Mar.
https://store-jp.nintendo.com/list/software/70070000012594.html
Step 1: Logo
My first step was localizing the logo into Chinese since this logo is repeatedly used in the localization process. I used the paintbrush tool to create the half-transparent paint texture of the original title and resized the banner below to fit the Chinese title better.
Step 2: Header
The header page took the longest time. I had to find the source image and layer that on top of the upper part of the page to recreate the Chinese title logo. I created a white mask layer to re-create the source image’s color. After spending 30 minutes trying to find a font that looked like the Japanese font, I settled on Fang Zheng Kai Ti from Adobe fonts. Honestly, it doesn’t resemble the original text, but I think the font looked good on the pages in general.
Step 3: Introduction
Text contraction in Chinese was one problem I encountered localizing the introduction page and every other page, to be honest. It was hard lining the Chinese with the Japanese. Eventually, I shifted towards aiming to produce the best visuals instead of aligning every word with the original text.
Step 4: Character
I had some fun translating the character description. The English translation is down below (translated by me):
What’s the most important thing in life? Everyone’s got a different answer.
But to him, money comes before everything else.
Aiming for the extravagant bounty, “The Would-be Hero” began his journey of slaying the dragon.
Step 5: Game specifics
Aligning the text was a pain in the neck on the game specifics page. Since I was already using a different font, it was even harder to align everything and make everything look nice. Plus, there was a lot of work done to make the background look even.
Step 6: DLC poster
The DLC poster, compared to the landing pages, was relatively easy. The only problem I encountered was for the 好評発売中 (Now on sale with great reviews), I initially used Fang Kai Zheng Ti and did some brush tool editing to recreate the texture, but soon realized that the two looked way too different. I then switched to using Song Ti which is more squared than Kai Ti, and redid the line. Although I am not 100% satisfied with the outcome since the font is a little out of place compared to all the other text, the localized version alone looked pretty decent.
Afterthoughts
I had a lot of fun doing this project, partly because I enjoy Photoshop and partly because I genuinely think this game should be localized into more languages. Some improvements I could’ve done include translating the text before doing DTP to save more time and finding a font that resembles the original font more. Overall, I am proud of what I have produced. Hopefully, this project could demonstrate how well the game would fit the Chinese RPG market, especially now, where the murder mystery game is a massive hit in China.
I highly encourage everyone to buy this game and try it out, especially if you are into board games! If you are a fan of Yoko Taro (横尾太郎), then, needless to say, you have to play this game! Not only is this game a genius recreation of digital board games with a human touch, but the art and music are, as always, a masterful depiction of traditional Japanese RPG and the fantasy world of Yoko Taro.
Citations
https://rdlp.jp/archives/otherdesign/lp/120463
https://voiceofcards.square-enix-games.com/en_US/