With all of the indie titles launched on Steam each week, it may be troublesome to make your recreation stand out. Italian developer Repair-a-Bug gave the 2D dungeon crawler an enormous enhance in pre-release recognition in Japan by by accident naming the sport in Japanese as “Shitty Dungeon.”
The sport’s English title is The Loopy Hyper-Dungeon Chronicles, however the Japanese Steam retailer web page exhibits the title as Kuso Danjon. Extra politely, this implies “fucking dungeon” or “fucking dungeon.”
in a latest interview recreation*spark found by automatondeveloper Paolo Nicoletti defined that the “fucking dungeon incident” occurred in August of this yr, when the crew was releasing a demo model of the sport and had not but gotten an expert Japanese translation.
After they realized their mistake, Nicoletti stated, “Everybody was making a fuss and, to be trustworthy, I had an excellent snigger about it too. It was fully unintentional.” However the mishap did not flush the roguelite dungeon crawler down the bathroom; as an alternative, “it ended up drawing lots of consideration to the sport and the variety of wishlists skyrocketed.” Nicoletti stated the identify change was “the very best advertising accident” the developer had hoped for.
In accordance with earlier experiences, Automaton Japanon August 8, the Japanese Steam web page for The Loopy Hyper-Dungeon Chronicles was named Shitty Dungeon. By August thirteenth, Japanese-speaking customers started discussing the subject on X and reporting it on the official Discord server.
It is not but clear why or how this mistranslation occurred, nevertheless it’s price noting that the sport’s pre-release Japanese demo had an ungainly machine translation when it was chosen as one in every of Tokyo Recreation Present’s “80 Chosen Indies” in September. The developer introduced that these points can be mounted within the full launch, however it seems that the “shit dungeon incident” occurred round this time.
This amusing mistake helped this indie recreation stand out from the ocean of ββnew Steam releases. It rapidly grew to become a scorching subject on Japanese social media. In accordance with Nicoletti, this contributed to a rise within the variety of wishlists for video games that weren’t but launched on the time. In spite of everything, a title that appears to proudly proclaim that it is a unhealthy factor could make individuals curious if it truly is.
However on the finish of the day, the standard of the sport is ok, and The Loopy Hyper-Dungeon Chronicles is presently ‘Principally optimistic.β Score on Steam. Reviewers reward its entertaining dialogue, satisfying gameplay loop, and total care that went into its growth.
communicate Japanese Commenter of X He additionally praised the demo and the sport as a complete, saying it was surprisingly higher than the Japanese title that was initially urged. “Humor that lives as much as its identify” and “amazingly detailed pixel artwork” are among the many praises given to this indie title. Japanese one assessment Steam says, “The title ‘Shitty Dungeon’ makes you suppose it is a joke, nevertheless it’s really very effectively carried out.” The reviewer stated that, having purchased it blindly, it was “not what I anticipated, however the fight system is fairly attention-grabbing.” Additionally they praised the sport’s stability between humorous dialogue and tense fight.
Whereas good localization can be fascinating, translation errors have produced some surprisingly memorable dialogue over time. With out the mistranslation, this line wouldn’t have grow to be as iconic because it did. Strains like Zero Wing’s “Each base is ours” and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night time’s “What’s it to be human? A depressing little pile of secrets and techniques” have survived past their unique video games and grow to be well-known memes.
Verity Townsend is a contract author based mostly in Japan and beforehand served as an editor, contributor, and translator for the gaming information web site Automaton West. She additionally writes about Japanese tradition and movie for varied publications.