WonderLang Beyond

Choose your language

Choose the language you want to make progress in. Our Wave 1 target languages will be available at launch: French, Spanish (Latin America), German, Korean, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, and English.

Support text and explanations can use your preferred base language: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Portuguese, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Dutch, Indonesian, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, or Arabic. For deeper immersion, set both languages to the one you’re learning.

Italian and Portuguese can join Wave 1 if we reach their stretch goals. Other possible later additions include European Spanish and Russian; those releases are not committed. Every game edition includes all available learning languages and future language updates at no additional cost.

Choose your next challenge

Beyond’s core teaching starts in late A2 and focuses mainly on B1 material, with modes for A2, B1, and B2 learners. The same adventure gives you different ways to work with the language as your confidence grows.

The main story and most NPC dialogue will remain shared, while the challenges change with your mode. For example, sentences you are asked to form will be more complex at higher levels. You’ll receive less help and fewer mandatory reviews, with more expected of you as an independent learner. Grammar challenges will also be adapted to your level.

Replay at a higher level for more demanding challenges and less help. Beyond will offer more differentiation between levels than the original game.

An early level check helps you choose your mode. Japanese and Korean use equivalent JLPT and TOPIK scaling.

The adventure continues

Your brother Ben is still a beanie. To break his magical curse, you must head north in search of a missing great-uncle who may know how to bring him back. Lush forests, treetop villages, and winding jungle paths become places to spend time with your target language, meet people, and discover what they know.

Why players love learning with WonderLang

A good adventure gives you a reason to keep practising. Here’s what players of the original WonderLang say about learning through its conversations, quests and mini-games. WonderLang Beyond builds on that experience with a new adventure for intermediate learners.

Read this review on Steam

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Because Beyond is made for more proficient learners, we can tell a richer, more engaging story and build deeper investigations around it. Conversations can carry subtler clues, and understanding what someone means can matter as much as understanding the words.

You don't need to have played the original WonderLang to follow this sequel.

Choose a male, female, or gender-neutral protagonist. All relevant in-game lines will be adapted to your choice, including voiced NPC dialogue when characters address you.

Learn through dialogue

Spend time following conversations that give you a reason to pay attention. A villager’s advice or a suspicious remark introduces words and expressions in a situation you’re trying to understand. You read and listen to find out what happens next, while learning how the language works.

You won’t have to puzzle through unfamiliar language alone. Tap an underlined word to look it up, replay the audio, or open sentence and grammar explanations. Bookmark a line to find it later. The help is there when you need it, so a difficult sentence can become something you learn from.

Then use the language yourself. Build a reply by picking words in order, typing an answer, or speaking aloud with speech recognition. Conversations give you practice both understanding sentences and forming them.

Keep track of what you’re learning with tools available anytime: a dictionary of words you’ve encountered, a notepad for taking and organizing notes, and a message log for revisiting recent dialogue. You can return to a useful expression or clue when you’re ready to work with it again.

Understand more. Go further.

Intermediate language opens up more possibilities for investigation. We can build mysteries around details, relationships, and meaning, giving you a stronger reason to read carefully, listen closely, and connect what you learn.

The original WonderLang followed a more linear journey. Beyond will use knowledge-based progression: talk to people, investigate places, and use what you understand to uncover secrets and open new paths. A remark that seemed unimportant might make sense when you reach another location.

Several regions will be open early, so you can follow different leads without solving every mystery in one region first. Revisiting a person or place with new understanding becomes part of moving the story forward.

We draw inspiration from Outer Wilds, The Forgotten City, and Chants of Sennaar, while keeping Beyond an RPG. The aim is an engaging adventure where spending more time with the language helps you understand both the story and the world.

Make your learning stick

Encountering a new word is a beginning. Beyond brings vocabulary and grammar back for spaced-repetition reviews in combat, giving you chances to recall what you’ve learned over time.

Correct answers power your attacks, and your character’s stats and combat strength grow with demonstrated language progress. The practice has a place in the adventure: what you remember helps you face the next challenge.

For Japanese and Mandarin Chinese, learn to recognize and draw Kanji and Hanzi through special monsters you can capture and collect. Review characters you’ve learned and practise drawing them to capture new creatures and grow your collection.

You can also choose your moment to fight. Monster shadows move around the map; try to avoid them, or make contact to begin a battle.

Learn a new word in conversation, look it up, then put your memory to work in battle. Different attack types give you different ways to review what you’ve encountered. Watch the longer gameplay demonstration below, including complete review questions, attacks, and the end of the fight.

Vary your practice

More time with your language can mean more than reading another conversation. Mini-games let you change the pace while practicing vocabulary, grammar, and reading in different ways. Make connections between words, work out a pattern, or reason through a language puzzle.

Crosswords, memory matching, conjugation battleship, and reading games return alongside board-game sections, word association games, deduction games, and many more old and new activities. The variety gives you more reasons to stay engaged and keep practicing.

Make time for your language

An adventure you can return to on different devices gives you more opportunities to spend time with your target language. Beyond is being developed for PC, Mac, Android, and iOS, whether you want a longer session at home or a little practice during your day.

Choose a single-platform edition for PC/Mac, Android, or iOS. PC/Mac backers can choose a Steam key or a DRM-free direct download. Multiplatform Adventurer and higher game-access tiers include all three platforms, unlimited personal mobile devices, and cross-platform cloud saves. Every game license provides permanent access with no subscription.

Meet the Team

Jonathan B.

Jonathan B. is WonderLang’s creator, a 39-year-old French developer whose life has taken him to Sweden, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Korea. He speaks several languages, and his engineering background, MBA, and leadership role in a tech startup shaped his approach to building things. His love of languages and RPGs gave him the idea for WonderLang: an adventure that makes you want to keep learning.

For the past two and a half years, Jonathan has worked full time on WonderLang, adding languages with native-speaker freelancers, expanding the adventure, and improving the game in response to community feedback. That work has been made possible by family, friends, freelance professionals, and the backers of our first Kickstarter campaign.

WonderLang is built with RPG Maker MZ. Its familiar RPG foundations have been extensively customized through years of plugins, scripts, and development to support our language-learning systems. The engine remains the foundation, while WonderLang’s tools and learning experience continue to grow.

Ivan

Development Assistant
Returning from the original WonderLang, Ivan helps create maps and scenes and test the game.

John Renard

Location and Character Designer
And yes, that sounds familiar: Jean Renard / John Fox is also a character in the game!

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Cheung Ngo Chau

Character Designer
Returning from the first WonderLang adventure.

ArtStation

Visca M

Location Designer
Helping shape the places you will explore in Beyond.

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Native-speaker freelancers will review text and pronunciation across our target languages, while language teachers help shape the curriculum. We want the language you spend time with to be natural, and the practice to support your next steps.

We’ll devote as much of the budget as possible to commissioned artwork. Reaching €70,000 will let us commission all in-game artwork from artists. Higher stretch goals will fund an original soundtrack and native-speaking voice actors.

As the budget allows, we’ll hire more freelance artists to help bring the world of WonderLang Beyond to life.

Stretch goals

Our base funding goal is €25,000. Beyond that, each milestone below adds something new to the adventure. These are our current stretch-goal plans; each extra depends on reaching its funding level.

What’s new?

Already played the original WonderLang? Beyond builds on that foundation with a different way to explore, a livelier world, and new ways to practice your language. Here is what changes for your next adventure.

A different way to explore

• A less linear world. The adventure will no longer follow a sequence of large villages. Explore a network of smaller areas and villages that you progressively unlock, with different leads to follow.
• Knowledge opens new paths. Uncover secrets through conversations, quests, observation, and investigation. Connect what you learn to unlock new areas and move the story forward.
• Small dungeons, battles, and enigmas. Discover compact, dungeon-like areas where moving forward means both beating foes and solving riddles and puzzles.

A livelier world

• Maps in motion. Vegetation will sway in the wind, with more environmental animations bringing movement and life to the places you explore.
• More people to meet. More NPCs will be spread across the world. Some have major quests to offer; others share a short conversation, making each place feel more alive.

More ways to practice

• Better speech recognition. Improved speech-to-text recognition for most learning languages will make spoken responses more reliable.
• Draw kanji and hanzi in combat. Japanese and Mandarin Chinese learners will be able to draw kanji or hanzi in new combat challenges to deal more damage.
• New mini-games. New mini-games will join returning favorites, giving you fresh ways to practice between conversations, exploration, and battles.

Release plans & what comes next

A conversation worth following. A puzzle worth thinking through. A mystery that makes you want to understand one more sentence. That’s the experience we want to build: more hours with your target language, with learning and practice throughout.

If you’re ready to go beyond the basics, join us in bringing WonderLang Beyond to life. Your support helps us create a new way to keep learning through adventure.

Planned Release Schedule

We are targeting the end of July 2027 for the release of WonderLang Beyond on PC, Mac, Android, and iOS.

Backing the campaign means joining the WonderLang community as we build the next adventure. We’ll share regular development updates, behind-the-scenes looks, and milestones, with opportunities for backers to offer feedback and help shape the game.