Press Pack

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Idiot Spanish Waiter Inspires Game.

Comic book artist unveils Big Bad Spanish; a new way to learn Spanish by immersion.
Valletta, Malta: After years of force feeding himself Spanish, Irish born comic book artist Bob Byrne made a shocking discovery after a chance encounter with a rude waiter in Spain.

“I messed up, I asked him for a fork instead of a spoon for my soup,¨ explains Bob, ¨his reaction was to laugh and ridicule me for the entire meal. It then hit me that this is where every language system fails: you don’t encounter morons like him.¨

Byrne immediately got working on a new type of learning game. Big Bad Spanish teaches through humiliating trial and error, brute force and immersion. This is no safe classroom environment; this is the Big Bad World.

• Social combat: Battle against hostile Spanish speakers with distinct personalities and accents.
• Branching scenarios: what you choose to say changes the course of the conversation.
• Unlock 40+ characters with side missions and achievements.

You play as Benji, a guy with absolutely no Spanish skills. As you fight your way through the entire Spanish speaking world you will meet mumbling Columbians, scuzzy taxi-drivers and all manner of rude and unhelpful characters.

You learn by jumping in, getting knocked down, dusting yourself and trying again. It´s a frustrating but enjoyable way to cement words and phrases into your brain forever.

The game will be available first on iOS and then Android and PC but you can play the Demo online. http://www.bigbadspanish.com/old-demo

¨Will I ever go back and tell the waiter?¨, laughs Bob ¨Probably not but I did leave him a huge tip on the day of the fork incident. He earned it. He inspired the whole thing!¨

Bob Byrne is an Irish comic book writer and artist based in Malta. He is also the creator of DrMoku.com a foolproof system for learning to read Japanese in just one hour.

The Press kit includes press releases, advance release information, screenshots and the provisional icon design.

Audience: Age 16-35. BBS is ideal for complete beginners or those with basic Spanish looking to build their confidence.

The first Demo version was released in late December 2013. It´s a little rough around the edges but its playable.

In Big Bad Spanish not everybody wants to help you, some people actively try to trip you up.

Its frustrating but you will forever remember the words and phrases you hear.

You learn by getting knocked down, brushing yourself off and trying again.

Get out of your comfort zone and jump into the deep end. With BBS you will learn Spanish FAST.

The game uses branching conversations: the course of the conversation changes depending on what you say.

You will meet people from all over the Spanish speaking world and after battling through this Big Bad World you will be able to understand several different accents and speak enough Spanish to survive just about every situation.

There are four types of answers: Correct, Goofs, Clangers and Curveballs.

Each level has side missions and an end of level boss who you must defeat using your commando Spanish skills.

The game starts in a familiar situation: you have just arrived in Spain on vacation and have gotten lost while trying to find an ATM machine. Now you must find your way back to your hotel while avoiding muggers and dealing with cranky bar owners and hostile people who really don’t care if you survive or not.

Defeating a character unlocks other characters and you can choose to battle all or take the shortest route to the End of Level Boss.

Subsequent levels include:

• Traveling to Latin America where you need to untangle a bureaucratic mess.
• Meeting a girl and trying to impress her before having to talk your way out of sticky situation…
• An epic quest to try buy several items in a huge hectic flea market.
• Spanish Hell: You get trapped in an awful situation and must face everything annoying about Spanish and Latin pop culture.

The very first demo version was released in late December 2013.

It was created in Flash in order to rapidly prototype and test out the idea. Now we are rebuilding it all using a cross platform technology which will allow us to develop the game for mobile devices.

The plan is to gradually update the Demo version to test out new features and teaching techniques before the crowd funding project begins.

The Story Behind the Game

The game is based on my own real life struggle to conquer Spanish.

The companion website BigBadSpanish.com features Spanish grammar & vocabularly lessons, cultural notes and covers the entire game production process. After meeting a Spanish girl I suddenly found myself having to learn Spanish at gunpoint: it wasn’t something I wanted to do…I HAD to learn it.

I plodded along learning Spanish the traditional way and made good but slow progress…

The idea for the game came to me after a run in with a ´less than helpful´ waiter.

I realised that if I started learning Spanish with this idiot in mind I could have shaved four years off my learning time. I needed a game like Big Bad Spanish.

So now I´m making it.