Hi guys,
I'm looking to hire a text-adventure writer/game-maker to create an educational fantasy-themed adventure for me to sell on my website (currently under construction). It can use the simple "gamebook" theme of the Quest engine. The thing is, the game has to teach the player a language somehow. There are several ways the game can accomplish it.

1. The game will be written in a foreign language that and will be using "very simple" language and short sentences. The choices will also be simple; something a beginner or at most intermediate student could understand. (maybe with references/translations to difficult words in brackets)

2. The game will be in English but can introduce a character that speaks a foreign language and the player will need to understand what that character is saying in order to survive.

These are just two examples, but if you have other ideas we can discuss them. :)

I currently accept 4 languages: Spanish, French, German and Russian.

That game has to work as a app. I'm not entirely sure if textadventure is compatible with smartphones or do you need the dev team's help -- can anyone answer that?

Anywho, Images are completely optional, and only if you desire and you have the copyrights to use them. However, as far as sound, It's preferable you don't add any so I can later add voice acting to all the foreign language text. As far as length. the game shouldn't be long. Ideally it can be finished in one sitting.

For more details such as payment, contact me at languagequesters (at) gmail dot com (or make your offer, I'm sure we can reason it out :) ... budget is not big, somewhere between 50-250 euros/dollars...payment via paypal)

Thank you very much,
-Lerik Volkov

I speak French, although not perfectly.

I don't want to sound pessimistic, but I really don't see anyone (with the required skills) being willing to develop a professional looking product for 250 euros. Not only are you asking them to 'code' the game, from the looks of things you're asking them to actually come up with the story and format. Given your intention is to sell the resulting game, it's going to have to be pretty good and that will take some serious time.

I'm actually in the process of launching an educational product that uses Squiffy as its base, but I have spent months developing the product and rewriting some of the engine to make it act as I want. This has taken hundreds of hours of my time, and now I'm running a beta test with a small group of clients which will no doubt result in further modifications.

Had I been doing this for someone else as a paid gig, I'd be expecting significantly more than 250.

If you're serious about your product, I'd recommend hiring a quality developer.

Also, regarding your app question, one of the great things about Squiffy is that with a few small modifications it can run very nicely in any mobile Web browser. For me, not requiring users to download a separate application is a big plus. You could use something like PhoneGap to convert it to a standalone app, but if I was you I'd focus on getting it running well through the browser. Sound is likely to be your biggest problem as different devices have different restrictions, but it is possible.

The latter also allows you more control over licensing and sharing. For my product I've actually developed a backend written in php that allows me to licence the software to organisations, and prevent those without a valid licence from using it (even when they have the direct link). Happy to provide more details of this distribution model.