Lamont, your videos are always a pleasure to watch! Your narrative is always spot on! I think Ikenna should get some slack for publishing his app despite his health complications, it's amazing how quickly Fluyo released, a lot of other leaders would have probably let the project die along the way, so big respects for that. As to the many bugs and user experience, I'm surprised they didn't have more internal testing rounds before rushing this out. A lot of times users would accept a delay for a better first experience. I'm actually building a language video game myself, we're going to drop a new demo real soon, if at any point you'd be interesting at taking a look at it, I'd be deeply honored! Or do any collaboration with you, I'm running a language RUclips channel myself :) As for Fluyo, let's hope the team is able to eradicate some of their bugs and improve the experience, I want there to be solid competition in the language learning gamified space :) Keep up the great work, best, Manu
Honestly I think the only concept of a game being used to learn a language that makes sense would be where the player gets lost in a country. Can make it RPG with typical quest and stuff but have them not know the language and have to go around and learn new stuff. Have the language be deeply integrated into it. Yes, it would still be less efficient than just studying, but for those who can’t seem to study it could get them honed in. There’s a very delicate balance these language learning games need to have but all fail to reach.
I think there's potential in using LLM stuff as a piece of a game (I think that's absolutely key - the core gameplay loop probably can't be just literally solving language puzzles thousands of times or answering vocab quizes, you need a base of something else going on) to help you learn a language while playing. Like, you have a traveling companion, you don't have a shared language, they talk to you simply and you have to respond in gameplay ways over time, or later on even have voice support. Maybe a game like Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley or other types of games where you can play for long periods of time around various NPCs, just add in a character who is almost always with you who talks to you a lot with gradually increasing vocabulary and complexity, they could even comment on what's going on or what you're doing, or what they're doing. Have them remember what you seem to not understand so they'll be sure to use those phrases/vocabulary and constructions again later, but do it invisibly so the player doesn't have to do any work and break immersion. There's already mods for games like Skyrim where you can speak to the NPCs and they respond naturally and remember what you've said to them, using LLM models. Just build something with that sort of tech from the ground up with the intention of the player gradually picking up a language.
@@karltorento3358 Yup part of the reason I mentioned that is because I think that game has a decent balance. It’s on mobile but supposed to drop on Steam soon so I’ve been holding off
Honestly this idea works great, like waking up in a lost country where nobody (except for a tutorial and the UI of the app) are in english/native language. Immersion without the expenses of moving countries or workers defaulting to english lol It's a shame I don't believe this exists considering just how many people say immersion is the best teacher
Remember: linguist ≠ teacher It's like a mechanical engineer ≠ a driving instructor. Yes, there are people who understand the nuts and bolts of a language that can also teach it, but they are fundamentally two different skills.
Yeah, I know... Like David Crystal is a linguist for the English language... but when you say you put together a team of this, that and linguistS (plural), then I'd think you're implying that someone who knew something about language acquisition was involved. Even Ikenna himself... I mean, I've never thought he was the be all and end all of polyglots... he's pretty obviously a "a few languages to A2" kind of guy... but even so, he has lived in Belgium long enough that I would have thought he knew that asking what the gender of "poisson" is makes no sense for learning.
Ikenna would not even be the mechical engineer in your analogy he does not speak any of the languages he claim to speak at a high level he more so dabbles in it hop on VR chat and repeat phrases .
So ironic when all you really have to do is just play not even a language learning game but a normal game, in the target language, which is arguably even better
I totally agree. I don't think it would be going to far to say that it's pointless having an app/game to teach you the whole language.@@dragonicbladex7574
@@dragonicbladex7574 I'm actually playing Pokémon Pearl in japanese on my DS right now and it's a pain. Mainly because of full hiragana writing, but also because I have to look up everything. It's very frustrating because I'm like N4 which is let's face it, pretty poor japanese proficiency, but at least I thought it would be enough to survive on a 3 year old game. Apparently, no. So I guess your advice is good, but only if you have already acquired some proficiency already.
Brave of you to do an honest review. Due to the health issues and all I became too afraid to be critical of Ikenna but I felt very critical of his channel and the app just seemed like a train wreck in slow motion to me. I unsubscribed years ago.
yea I also, I do like Ikenna, I even bought his E-book a couple years ago....but....he has always struck me as more of a salesman/businessman more than a true language enthusiast....I really do hope his health improves, his condition is really horrible and I empathize, but I don't think he is very genuine about his intentions unfortunately
Early adopters are encountering a lot of bugs. I chose French because after 50 years I’m a bit rusty. I have been rooting for him because of his health problems for years but this is major disappointment.Hope they get the bugs out but but I won’t be continuing
I got the subscription just because the ad was irritating. And after some time I discovered Anki exists:D Like, they tried to make a 10 in 1 app and honestly failed. I develop games and know how hard it is to actually develop a bug-free and smooth game which is fun, entertaining, and snappy. And on top of that lies the main function - language learning, that must be faster and more efficient than other apps to stand out, but oh well..
i had low expectations already because of the way ikenna was talking about it. every time i hear the word "gamify" i have little alarms going off in my head
I don't mind gamification.. the problem is, this isn't really a full game, because there's no story and you're just answering the same 7 questions over and over again.
gamifying learning, especially language learning (or maybe not "especially", it's just my personal focus), sounds like a neat idea in theory, but it always boils down to flashcards / a quiz I remember how I wanted to make my own version of Duolingo for my conlang, only to realize very quickly that I might as well release an Anki deck with words mixed with sentence flashcards and it'd be a thousand times better either it's just a stupid idea that can't be executed well OR we're approaching it from the stupidest side possible
@autumnblaze6267 I feel like there's potential for a language learning game that isn't just flashcards and quizzes. I'm thinking more like a normal game in your TL, but the dialogue is written based on vocabulary and structures in progressively higher levels, like a graded reader. Welp that's my pitch, I gotta start an app development team now. But then again this wouldn't work well for beginners slash language learning newcomers, which is the market that every app is targeting
Do u know what gamified language learning is? Simply just playing a "proper" video game in that language entirely! Aka how a good portion of us europeans learned english 😅For me, the fun part about learning a language is actually having the feeling that you learned something. I want it to be fast paced and rewarding! And I want the reward to be "Yay I just understood that sentence!" and not "Yay, I slayed an underwater monster and got 100 points" I just found duolingo so TERRIBLY frustrating because I'm wastin 50% of my time on "fun" animations, cut scenes, boosters and ads.
15:10 Despite knowing absolutely zero french, I could still recognize which sentence was correct. I don't get how anyone who's learned any french at all could possibly get that wrong
What you said in 12:25 rings so true. The app should have moved more agile, working closely with users to identify and rectify issues, inspire creative ideas, and push out minimal viable products in cycles. Testing frequently is so crucial. Seeing Ikenna talk about the Fluyo app sounded like he was trying to produce something perfect for launch. Most businesses fail because they wait on perfection rather than iterating their product on the go with customers.
I was waiting for your review on this since seeing your comment on Mike's video. You nailed it. I'd consider myself intermediate in French and I too decided to try it out for French. I chose beginner just to see what it had to offer. One of the first words the app taught me was "bonjour" (to be expected right?), it asked me to type in the answer so I typed "hello".... it told me "hello" was wrong and the correct answer was "good day". I decided it wasn't worth my while to use it after that.
"Salut" would be closer to "hi" IMO. "Bonjour" is hello... "Good day" - literally no one says that anymore, unless they're doing it ironically. I'm Australian, and the closest thing in modern English to Good day is "G'day", in which we barely pronounce the G, nevermind the "oo" bit. "Good day" is archaic, plain and simple. "Bonjour" is standard French for "hello". But EVEN IF it were not... How the heck is this coming up in INTERMEDIATE? Where are these levels coming from? What does that leave for Beginner? "Paris..." maybe? "France"...?
@@daysandwords i grew up speaking French as the first language in my family and my sister is a French citizen. We mostly only say “bonjour” in the morning. After 12pm it’s technically “bon après midi“ (it’s not very common) and “bonsoir” after 6pm. By 13 y o I spoke 5 languages and understood 6. I’m using Fluyo for German, and it’s just ok, à little too repetitivo for Someone who learns fast, but it’s a new app. I will have to try French to see what you’re talking about I’m studying UX/UI design as well and I see major things that could be changed, but having been exposed to startups due to UX research, specifically competitive audits and/or internships, though a bit behind in terms of color grading quality and the page interactions (like the way a loading screen slides up or we have to slide to pick the right answer which I think feels unnatural) this just looks like a regular star up app and it can and will get better. That’s what UX Designers are for 😉🙂.
I stopped following Ikenna a long time ago because he made all those clickbait videos about learning languages in a ridiculously short amount of time. I was unaware of any health issues.
I really do feel bad for the guy, I believe his health issues are real, and it's really a devastating condition, but...the guy is 100% a business-man rather than a language enthusiast...he learned like 3 languages to a B-1 level and then immediately began focusing on how to sell people the idea of quick and easy fluency, and that has always been what his channel and brand is about
And the thing is... it's completely OK to be a business man and NOT a language enthusiast. But then the product has to be good... like, Jeff Bezos didn't get super rich by being an online shopping enthusiast. He got there by making Amazon clearly the best option for so many things. Fluyo isn't the best option for anything except clowning on.
Thst health thing kinda seemed suspicious to me. Something about the whole vibe came across like the Magneto of the language learning community- plus he made the click bait videos, so somehow did not seem genuine to me. So I stopped following.
The problem with fluyo being marketed as a "better duolingo" is that the bar is already so low and they have less money. I knew the frenzy years ago would lead to this, but I didn't want to say it at the time because it would look bad.
Yeah, in a deleted part of the review, I was trying to set Raid Shadow Legends to another language... you can do it but I couldn't figure out how (tutorial I followed was saying a way that didn't work anymore)... but my point was that RSL isn't even a good game and is probably more better than Fluyo.
I don't care about someone's health status. Does their product fulfill its scope or solve a problem Better than existing offers? It is a yes or no question. No, then it's worth is zero.
In truth, everyone feels that way, but it will inevitably get brought up... you watch, SOMEONE in this comments section will be like "Well he's been bedridden, it's good for that..." but I actually don't think it is. What did all the other people do? Decide that "costly" had a gender?
The empathy generated through parasocial relationships is enough to prevent objectivity. If you’re on the spectrum that may simply come off as foolish but it’s human nature.
@@daysandwords Your not wrong, in both discords and this past few years many have made the question of is this support for the app or his recovery? Remember his last go fund me bombed heavily, after the health thing it broke kick starter records..again i sound like an A for this but something MANY in the discord Alpha channels have wondered
Ikenna is someone that is an avid learner of languages. The fact that he tested this and thought this was ok for release. I tested the korean on apple and it was meh at best. The speech was so slow and the snake path you learn the same 6 verbs through an entire journey. The games like the memory game is a bit ok. There are better apps than fluyo and duolingo when learning korean like Sejong apps or lingory. Fluyo has a long way to go
@@daysandwords his best languages, Japanese and French, seem to be around B1 at best....not saying I'm any better myself, but he doesn't seem fluent in any of the languages he's studied
This is harsh, but it seems entirely fair and accurate. Sometimes the truth is what it is. And as a French learner who struggles plenty with the language...yeah, it's absolutely one of the easiest languages to learn (for an English speaker), and very possibly the easiest. Even many idioms are direct translations, which is incredible to me.
Wow, I didn't expect it to be that bad🙈 I hope they take reviews seriously and make some improvements. Also, I think you addressed the issues respectfully and I agree that people need to be honest, regardless of who created the app.
I don’t get the choose the gender of a noun in English thing, in French it is the word that has a gender not the object itself so it doesn’t make sense to assign a gender without knowing the word. (Not to mention some words can have different meanings depending on the gender)
Exactly like in italian a courgette could be both femminine zucchina or masculine zucchino 2 words for the same thing habing two different genders, i couldnt find another example in french lol
Actually, a gender thing is what convinced me for good that natural acquisition is 100% real. Because I don't know the Swedish gender for "beer"... or at least, I thought I didn't. Until another high level Swedish speaker was like "Wait... is it "ett öl" or "en öl"...???" and I was like "It's... en öl... WAIT NO IT DEPENDS! You are talking about a particular brand and brew of beer, like "Nottingham Pale Ale"... so it's ETT in that case... but if you mean like "Let's grab a beer", it's "en"." And as I was saying all that I was like "I know this is right, but I have no recollection of ever learning this."
Can't believe I paid 480$ for the lifetime subscription, which is crazy because even if the app were good, it's over 12 years of the 39$ annual price tag 🤦♂
@@daysandwords I understand that creating a app must be crazy expensive, but now I wonder how Speakly and Lingodeer can be so cheap in comparison, and they use native audio unlike Fluyo (I haven't tested it yet but the French audio in your video was definitely AI) and they didn't raise so much money through Kickstarter.
I honestly think that Ikenna and the people he hired are that incompetent that they could use $3M to make an app that other people could have made for $100K, or $300K for the good ones that they DID make.
in the spanish selection fluyo's "advanced" section is lower intermediate at best. i deleted it when the app marked "to turn off" as the direct english translation of "apagar" wrong 🙃
What I like about this channel is you're always looking to get to the bottom of what actually works and what doesn't rather than running off with fruity ideas like a lot of people and not giving it any actual thought.
Oh boy, here we go. A lot to unpack here. So, I study multiple languages as well, and also ''a polyglot'' (whatever that means). For the past three years, I have been producing content in Portuguese about language learning. Having participated in the kickstarter and watched your video about Ikenna and Nathaniel 6-7 years ago, here's my 2 cents: First of all, the app sucks.And sucks bad. And that's sad because I liked the guy and was actually *waiting* for the app. I decided to hold-on on my boring ass anki-german journey because it would be _awesome_ to learn it with Fluyo. Man, I don't even know what to say. Don't know why no one mentioned it, but the German vocabulary in the app is just weird. A lot of ''communistisch'' things, and I'm not choosing sides here, just saying like... why is that in the app? And I could name like 30 words like that. Regimen. Partei. That sounds like grabbing a vocabulary list in German on the internet and throwing in the app, because since I actually studied german, I know that people there do talk about those things. But if a linguist actually worked on the game, he would quickly point out that this is deeply flawed. Vocabulary usage is HIGHLY subjective. (Btw, important to mention, I have a degree in Linguistics, and this is one of the most non L2 friendly apps ever) I was actually speedrunning the journey mode trying to find the endgame (non existent ofc) which is usually where the fun is in most games. And I played the alpha, beta, and the pr (alpha 2 apparently) In any case, I agree with everything on the video. 3 million on this just doesn't make any sense. There are PLENTY of amazing games that cost 1% of that. And I could just change their language in the menu, and it would be way better than Fluyo already. To be honest, again, I like the guy and wish him the best, but I'm going to be brutally honest here because I feel somewhat betrayed. To me, he just seemed like a dreamer man-child who actually had resources and convinced his younger audience to hop on his dream. His team are his hard-working underqualified friends who helped him in his narrative. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is, abosutely, an immature decision. I thought he took the decision and then would be professional but... summing his ebooks, courses, and everything really, I think that Ikenna doesn't know what he's doing most of the time. Which again man, is NOT a bad thing! But you NEED to be transparent on that. Go seek help, you know. Hire a team to hire a team. Don't take everything on the chest, that's a lot of responsibility. Also, I feel so bad saying this, but the girl in the game is basically his girlfriend. Which I get it, she stood with you in the darkest days, but business is business. That girl doesn't help in anything in the game. Animation is expansive, man, just remove her from the game and the game would be 30% better already just through resource management. Why invest so much in animation and mouth tracking, and to do that for EVERY language like bro WHAT YOU ONN lol there's red flags EVERYWHERE!! And if he decided to went on with it just because of his gf... I'm trying to not be too judgmental here, because I'll say again: I LIKE THE DUDE. But man, this app is just bad decision after bad decision. He could get a WAAAAY better result with way less money with an actually prepared team, with a leader that will actually make the right decisions for it. Maybe because of his health, but I think the summary of the situation is that Ikenna made a very bad entrepreneurship move. He was right on the narrative, after all, 3 millie raised is not a joke, but I guess that's about it... He needed someone to take the decisions right from the go. I remember he was looking for a COO (which I even applied for the job but never got a response btw, but I also think I do not have the experience nor knowledge to handle that, seeing where it lead), but when the COO joined, Fluyo was already 2 years in. The important decisions were already made, and they were mostly wrong. I bought the dream with him and his team, bought the shit, applied for jobs, followed everything but let's clean the room man, they're just unprofessionals. Potential, the concept yeah, the app no. The best overall approach for Ikenna from my perspective, is to take the punch in the mouth, admit your mistakes, clarify where t f these 3 million went, be humble and less ambitious, slowly progress the app through the years and in 15 years it could be something. That's the route most companys do either way. After all, if it ACTUALLY is the dream of his life and not some coping mechanism bc of his condition, he should be looking for a 15 year+ investment with a happy smile, for Fluyo to be anything near ''the revolution of language learning''. I was 21 when I first got to know Ikenna. I'm 28 now. I was a young boy, now a man, and if I could say anything to that kid who saved 3 months of savings to buy the KS, would be to not invest emotionally in the dreams of others. I know that's just me, but my point is his narrative persuades young people as I was at the time. And this is dangerous, you know... To conclude, would love to know if you would like to chat about Fluyo and L2 Apps @daysandwords, maybe we could collab, that would be cool. Anyway, thanks for the video. Was very therapeutic for me, as you can see lol Happy learning to all (including Ikenna, wish the guy all the best)... Edit: about the girl in the app, I get it that she teaches you the language, my point is that the same results could be achieved with less effort had not the emotional side of it been involved.
And so it was that the missing manuscript for "The Winds of Winter" was found, buried in the comments section of a video about a language learning app.
Anyway, in seriousness, now that I've had time to read your comment properly, yeah, I agree with everything. Even his latest video kind of confirms that he had the attitude of "Where there's a will, there's a way" - which is a great attitude for many things, but when it comes to actually publishing it... it should have been more like "Where there's a will, there's a way to fix all the flaws in the app." I also think that he attracts similar personalities; so the people who wrote to him to go work for him and whatever were similar. There are also numerous reports from people who were beta testers that they submitted all this feedback months ago... and the app is still like that now.
@@daysandwords yeah... he keeps saying "have patience with us, were a small team" and I'm like yeah.. that's the problem lol. I just hope this was a humbling experience for him tbh
Hey there. I build apps for a living and am an entrepreneur so I know exactly where Fluyo went wrong. It is as simple as that they launched too late. The best apps are made by launching early - continiously get users - continiously get brutal feedback from strangers - and iterating on everything. Fluyo can still become great - as Ikenna is saying, it is only the beginning. If the app keeps iterating and following user feedback it can become successfull - but it will take a lot of time and it will probably be hard for them to pivot certain features when they have spent so long on them. Don't feel betrayed by Ikenna - because this shit is hard as fuck to make and few people are able to succesfully do these kinds of stuff. It's super easy to look down at stuff that has been built - but insanely hard to actually build stuff
I know you weren't talking to me, but I don't feel betrayed because I had a feeling it would be bad. It doesn't surprise me. BUT, to counter a few of your points, there are already several signs that Fluyo won't improve significantly in the next few years. 1. It looked the same as this about 3 years ago, and certainly 2 years ago when they then raised over $1.5 million to spend on it. The money doesn't seem to have been spent wisely. I would wager that if they were to raise another $5 million today, then in 2 years, the app still wouldn't be good. It might be better, but there'd still be better options, and there WILL be better options by 2027. 2. (this is a big one) Ikenna was, is, and continues to talk as if Fluyo is a raging success. He was talking about his app 2 years ago as though it had already beaten things like Duolingo, Anki, and Memrise. This was an obvious strategy to get more donations for it. 2 years later, it has done none of the things it promised and I can't see it doing so for a while. Ikenna is saying things like "People tried it and loved it." A valid question in the comments section of that video was "WHO? WHO LOVED IT?" Ikenna is either putting on a front so that more people buy it and invest in it, or he is flat out in denial. There are 3 independent video reviews of Fluyo and none of them have very much positive to say. Many of the comments on his own videos are constructive criticism. I have found only TWO comments in my own comments section that disagree with my assessment... and in fact, they don't, they just say "It's new." - So they agree that it's bad. I'm not being a hater. I get that it's hard to build stuff. I want to make a film, and not an easy one either. One set in a very dark time in history, filmed in a foreign country, in about 6 or 7 different languages. I don't expect this to be easy, so I GET it. The thing is: I don't talk about this as though I've already done it. But if I were being mean to Ikenna, I'd state it as "He's been running his mouth for the last 4 years" about this. Now that the app is worse than I expected, it's hard to see all the stuff he was saying as anything other than just that: running his mouth. I can't see Fluyo improving quickly enough to not just run out of money. And I think that the generosity of his audience is about to run out, now that they see exactly what $3 million bought them.
what a shame… I used to watch Ikenna from way before he even announced fluyo & remembered being so excited… can't believe this is what resulted of everything.
I did the upper intermediate german course. Not only was the vocabulary easy it also had mistakes... like der Roman (novel) was written roman (lowercase) when you had to choose 1 out of 4 options and you ALWAYS write nouns with a first letter capitalized
Yeah there were a lot of errors I didn't get into here either. I should have addressed its weirdest sentence. It made grammatical sense but no logical sense.
I downloaded Fluyo as a total beginner in Korean, and I have to say that now I’ve gotten used to it, I do enjoy it. However I am using the app alongside other apps and tools, and my motivation to learn comes more from the fact that I’m learning Korean to surprise my friend from Korea, rather than the app being gamified. I think as a complete beginner I like the slower speed, and I often pause lessons to write things down and create my own practice sentences etc. It’s definitely janky, but I’m intrigued to see how it (hopefully) improves over time as my language skills grow with the app. I also just love my dolphin I can’t lie 😂
Same. Also, while I obviously support anyone learning a language in whatever ways are open to them, if someone has to use loads of other resources on top of Fluyo, then it's not fulfilling it's original mission.
I wrote this comment and then immediately got hit with the Fluyo paywall limit… I know I should have expected it, but the app lets you get quite far until it suddenly doesn’t let you access any more content. Idk, would have been nice for the free version to still let you actually continue learning the language, even if it’s limited. But it just stops 😭
I’m lower intermediate in Korean, and the app is absolutely miserable for me. There is no language support for anything above beginner Korean yet. Had to switch to beginner to try out the lessons, and they were disappointing. I requested a refund because the games are slow, and don’t shuffle the words or sentences properly… you pretty much repeat the same five sentences for all the levels I’ve tried so far.
Wait, you’re telling me the language guru influence with zero experience in education, pedagogy or game development failed at making a video game that teaches you to learn foreign languages? I am shocked. This has got to be the first time a language guru has sold a poorly designed unscientific method for learning language. /s
I’m only partway through the video but I will say it’s interesting that Fluyo used a different word for “now” in you French intermediate course because I’m a French beginner on Fluyo (have never spoken French) and one of the first words it taught me was “now” as “maintenant” instead of the one you saw - I wish it communicated the differentiation between the two for those in the intermediate stage.
not sure to the exact numbers but I figure it just went to supporting the developers living for 5 years. 5 years of salary paid to 4 people on the team each earning 75k per year (not unusual in the software dev world) comes out to 1.5m and almost certainly there were additional contracts, employees, and project costs involved. It's just a really expensive thing to make if you're not doing it completely on the side as a passion project
@@Quest-Givereven if it was 60k which is relatively common to low for even beginners in tech in most tech hubs, the difference could be easily explained by contractors as you mentioned. I'd definitely guess that's where it went. Unless something illegal happened, anyway.
Thanks for running those numbers... I couldn't be bothered, I just know it's not something I'm in a rush to do haha. But the thing is, they definitely didn't have 5 years of full time salary. He didn't hire anyone for at least 1 year, and that was only one person. I don't think it was ALL spent on the app, to be honest... and that's not me accusing Ikenna of fraud, I just mean, he admitted to a decent chunk coming from his video course... well, that's his money then, and if he wants to spend it on the app, he can. I think there would have been a lot of legal stuff to pay, plus all the narrators (someone said it was TTS, which it definitely wasn't in French)... But yeah, it is a little bit... well, it's a lot of money haha.
I tried it, and I was not a big fan. I won't go into the bad, but I do like that people are trying to make a language learning game. If I could get a solid game, and the game is really fun, and I can learn a language at the same time, that would be groundbreaking for language learning. Closest we have to that right now is getting semi good at a language then changing the language in a game to that target language, which is a shame. If there was a solid, addictive game that closed that beginner to intermediate gap, that would be awesome. Fluyo does try and I am hoping that they improve it to a level that it will be good! I think it can happen.
That was a bad idea to combine a game and a learning app and I wrote that on the early stage of the app. If I want to learn a language by playing a game I would choose some great RPG title and set the language to the one I want to learn. Learning app can have some "game" mechanisms in it, but trying to make it both fun game and learning app seems impossible to me. Even if the game is fun for some people, it will be fun for a moment and then it will start being annoying distraction from learning.
Good review thanks for your positive criticism, I'm one of Fluyo's kickstarter backers. Did you try out the minigames? I 100% agree with you about the battle system, the Fluyo team is currently working on revamping it to make it more fun.
So in the future when they work with the feedback improving the app and removing bugs could you see your self coming back to review it again and make an update video?
This was way better than my video lol i just got too frustrated that i couldn't get the girl to let me continue. I tested it on my phone and it seems to work now but this just makes me more curious on how what the Japanese course looks like in the higher levels.
Thanks Mike. It's funny how all these comments on your video were like "Wow I didn't know you did this channel" and I was like "This is the first time I've ever seen you... but I can tell that this isn't your main channel." Can you tell me the name of one of your bigger channels so I can watch other videos?
@@daysandwords my main channel is @bijuumike but its just gaming content. Totally the opposite of what im gonna do with my new channel so i understand if its not something that interests you. Thank for the shoutout btw!
also you are way more knowledgeable when it comes to speaking about language. Im dumb at the end of the day but i do love leaning Japanese so i wanted to make some lighthearted content about my journey and hopefully inspire someone
My son has probably seen your main channel, or would be interested to see it. And yeah don't worry, I get the whole totally different genres across channels thing... I kind of want to start a photography, or music channel... all the channels.
I like the idea so much but yeah I think to *really* flesh it out would take a huge budget. If you want to gamify, it’s better to get to an intermediate level in your TL and then play an actual game in that language. For the big languages, you can find so many games that support your TL. Heck, I’ve found a good amount of games in that are in Finnish or have a large Finnish player base I can communicate with.
I like how Amrakonto did it for teaching Esperanto. It was a game/visual novel that actually goes through using the language in situations (in the game, the character ends up in a weird world where they speak Esperanto and she has to figure out the language through context mostly). There's a story and it's engaging. Way better than this type of stuff
Many apps and even textbooks calling themselves advanced are really maybe A2 level. That French was ridiculously easy. I had no problems with it and have only dabbled a teensy bit in French. Among language learning games, I kind of like Lingo Legend. It asks you a few questions to judge your level. It’s still basically translations and vocabulary, but it makes the reviews gradually harder. It starts with true/false questions and multiple choice and then moves on to making you spell things out. And you get to fight monsters and run a farm. There is still a bit too much English in the story line, but if you’re looking for something fun to do between bouts of serious learning and aren’t advanced enough to just play regular games in your target language, it’s kind of nice.
I thought I'd still try the free version out for the heck of it but omg, the amount of data that can be sold to other companies alone is mind boggling.
We all knew this was gonna be bad though, right? Ikenna doesn’t know how to learn languages so why would I expect him to know how to make a language learning app
I spent way too much money on the Kickstarter for this app for it to turn out THIS bad. Like how do you fail at being the two things you promised, a language learning tool AND a game?
18:33 if you want to skip *to* the Surf Shark segment. It made me laugh after a rather depressing video. Bugs can be fixed, but the underlying concepts seems to be an even bigger problem.
Never heard of it - that's why I'm watching this video. Also because your reviews are usually interesting in that they're mostly your frustration and confusion. Seems we've started off well in this one too.
Thanks for the honest review, haven't tried it yet. I might try it out for Japanese, maybe for a super beginner it's somehow helpful. But I was expecting it to be "a real game", cause I love playing games and language learning too of course. But if the game is lame and there is not much learning happening, what's the point? 😕
I'm very late to this video and your comment so you may have already tried it... but I would very much not recommend it for a total beginner if that means you don't know kana yet. Those are the only lessons I've done so far and the way it encourages you to remember most of the kana just confused me... and I have known kana since 2009ish lol. I just went "HUH" hearing how they were explained and started skipping through the lessons.
The typos and grammar errors took me out of it. I gave it a chance, but when these errors kept coming, I gave up. They should have hired some proofreaders to playtest. And they should have hired playtesters as well. I'm so disappointed.
I read comments in Reddit from a couple years ago where people predicted from the screenshots that it’s just another vocab app. In and of itself, that’s fine for those who like it. What gets me is that someone who’s claimed to be a polyglot put words OUT OF CONTEXT in the game. Putting words in context-especially in an SRS-is a very basic learner concept. In hoping it gets better. I like Ikenna and his personality and tenacity. Thanks for putting this together for us, Lamont.
I backed the kickstarter for Fluyo, and it's... not the worst thing I've backed, but that's just because it exists. That said, I tried to use it to study Japanese and it's just bad in every way, which is extremely disappointing - I had really hoped there would be something here. The questions are always extremely obvious or actually impossible - I lost count of how many times it asked me what "word" (it meant which kana) was missing in a word that had no missing character and therefore no right answer. Extra frustrating when this leads to losing a battle and having to spend upwards of six minutes loading the battle to try again. Also, it is just wrong on some very basic things? During one of the many monologues from the strange underwater lady, she says that "Car" is カー, which is the loan word for the English word car. The real word for car in Japanese is 車 (or 自動車 if you're old-fashioned - or the Busuu app). I think I've sunk way too much time into trying to make the app work, both because I feel bad for Ikenna and because of the old sunk-cost fallacy, but Fluyo really ain't it.
I agree with everything you said except for the gameplay, I actually enjoy doing the lessons and collect loot. And the wayfinder lessons have is enjoyable and memorable while it might not be the most efficient way to teach a language 😅 The wayfinder lessons is supposed to gradually use more and more target language so if that happens I think they will be good
I’m seriously hoping they’re able to improve! I love the concept but I do have to admit everything feels a bit off… The 3D characters feel a bit out of place and I feel it lacks a lot of aesthetic (There’s barely any animations or satisfying sound effects), this without mentioning the actual language learning. I still bought the yearly premium because I believe in the app, but it seriously will require a lot of updates.
Yeah the hype Ikenna built around it and his illness seemed to have made people not be honest with their criticisms at least made them not as harsh. I've been following this app development since he announced it and seeing the finished product makes me feel betrayed like this was all a big scam. Kind of opened my eyes to Ikenna not being an honest trustworthy guy, and so I unsubscribed from him.
He released a pdf called fluency made easy or something it was a pdf filled with fluff. Made me realize he is dishonest of his language levels tbh. Def a "RUclips polyglot"
@@CrimsonSun-n3ireally..? i’ve always loved this guy. how come everybody i like on youtube is somehow a “bad” person? i think the app is great for beginners and vocabulary. maybe i’ve been blinded by pity for his situation.. or my parasocial relationship with the guy. i don’t wanna think the game sucks because i understand having a passion project you’re really proud of. and for ppl to hate it sucks. idk what to think.
@ You do not have to believe what I believe and please do your own research into my claims. If you are new to youtube language channels or maybe have not looked too much into them many youtube polyglot channels built on sensational content like "I learn x language is 3 months" are usually dishonest. They are not fluent in that language and most likely can not hold a REAL conversation if tested. Real as in an off the cuff conversation with a native thats not their friends or made for a video. I recommend to not have a parasocial relationship with anyone especially if they are asking you for money. Ikenna is going through alot with his health and i pray for his recovery in that regards. other than that this project was poorly handled for so many reasons. If this were not Ikenna this app would have been labelled a scam
^ Parasocial relationships are not ideal, especially when a RUclipsr is soliciting funds for a project. While I would not categorize Ikenna as a "bad guy," it is important to note the scale of his project coupled with his limited experience. He overpromised and underdelivered, and in any other context, this would likely be considered a scam. I visited your channel and observed that you are also working on a project, which I find commendable. What sets you apart is that you are creating a book, allowing people to subscribe to your Patreon to monitor the progress. You appear to be transparent about your artistic and storytelling journey. Conversely, if you were to ask your audience to donate money for what you claim to be the "best comic book to end all comic books" and then release an incomplete story, that would indeed be problematic. This is essentially what Ikenna did.
Thank you for not mincing your words. I respect it. I get that it's tempting to sugarcoat things given the situation but at the end of the day, we're still talking about people's hard-earned money and their free time. It's wrong to sugarcoat. If I'm being honest, I had a strong feeling that it was going to turn out exactly the way it did solely based on the screenshots I saw years ago. Just a boring Luodingo-esque game tacked onto a 2000s MMO. Trash TTS, no context for the words, useless multiple choice exercises. Also, the thing with "now"/"maintenant" makes me think they just fed word lists through Google Translate or something. lol I laughed so hard at the repeated clips of you typing out "initiative" as an answer for "initiative".
Actually one thing that I forgot to mention was that it's NOT TTS... the audio was actually quite good. Some people have had probablems with it trimming the start and end of single words (again, single words are dumb anyway), so that they couldn't hear the words properly, but on the full sentences, the audio is most certainly not TTS and is much better than Duolingo for that reason. I know... "initiative... consequence... situation... perserverance..." I think they scraped blocks of text for it, which is how they get that "désormais" means "now" and such stuff.
I couldn't while I was trying to create my own but if I just used a gmail account to sign me in, it worked... until it stopped working for some other reason, of course.
With all the toil and turmoil that Ikenna went through to finally get it out, it's hard to give it a "meh" review but so far that's the best I can do. I know they're gonna be scrambling to improve things but I didn't have any performance issues with the app running, so that's not a criticism from me. I just couldn't get into the game or get any sense that I was going to learn much from the app in a way that makes me want to keep going.
the game is too buggy, you get the ad popup everytime you get back to the "main page" or completing a lesson (which can take 10 min if you have the non talking bug) The app was too rushed and should be cooked for a longer time! They should've wait till summer until release ngl
Don't worry, after you pick a language they force you to keep learning the same language. /s I chose Korean (beginner / no knowledge) because it was one of the "fully-supported" languages, and now I can't switch to any other language. (menu buttons don't work besides home and story mode)
@dragoon0anime that's interesting. I chose intermediate French and was able to later select Japanese, and can now toggle between the two. probably one of many bugs
I was able to select Japanese but for the first day or so it crashed every time I tried to open it... I think it's because one part of the app was telling the device I needed to see the Japanese home screen while another was saying I needed to see the French one... or something. This is why I wouldn't develop an app.
The Language Transfer -> Dreaming Spanish for comprehensible input (+ Clovemaster for vocab on the side) pipeline has worked absolute wonders. I'd be shocked if anything other than interacting with natives irl tops this approach.
I'd skip the Language Transfer bit, but also, I think that interacting with natives irl would actually LOSE to just a tonne of Dreaming Spanish... At least, per time unit put in.
@daysandwords That's curious, what are your criticisms of Language Transfer? I thought it gave me a wonderful structural foundation of grammar which has certainly helped me know what's going on in Dreaming Spanish conversations.
When I tried it, it is just a copy of Michel Thomas but without nearly the charisma that Michel has and with significantly more fluff. I swear I listened to the German one for 10 minutes before hearing a word of German. I also think that any language that this method works with (i.e. anglosemblant languages like German and Spanish), is so similar that you can just jump straight in to super beginner content that is entirely in the language, e.g. Dreaming Spanish. I never studied any Spanish verbs or "rules" and I got by fine in Mexico after 4-5 months.
I may sound like a POS, but with how poorly the levels are actually ranked it kind of makes me question if Ikenna even actually speaks any of the languages he claims to. He might, but he also might speak just enough to make it seems like he does. Like, he just does the entire pimsleur course and learns nothing more.
Oh I've never really thought that Ikenna had a working subconscious knowledge of any of them except French, since he lives in Belgium... but I'm sure that they got the results in French that they did by equalising and automating the Asian languages with the European languages, so that if you can hear the difference between one sentence and another in Japanese, you must also be at that level in French.
@@daysandwords Which is wild when English and Japanese barely have cognates while just about the entire higher register of French and English is Romance, and in English in good part via French. Nobody will ever fail at knowing what automobile means but _kuruma_ they sure will.
I saw his video speaking French and oh my, there are cuts in the video to every sentences he spoke. Seems like his other languages he spoke are better if not awesome though
I've been waiting for your review - tho I knew you would say things like these. I absolutely agree - but to me it would be hard to stay that kind towards Ikenna. This product combined with all the false advertisements is a borderline scam, to be honest. I'm a game developer and I know how hard it is to create something like that - so my expectations were super low - but this app is just a disgrace in so many ways. :(
I haven't and I can't because they don't have a target language of mine. But just be careful to read the very fine print with the sprint. When I was considering it years ago, they used to do the 90 day one where you could get 100% of your money back by doing all 90 lessons in 90 days, and fair enough, that is a great offer BUT, they were SUPER strict. You could not miss a day and then do 2 lessons on one day. You couldn't do a lesson an hour after the close of day, you couldn't book a lesson but not take it and there were a few other things as well. I don't think they have that offer anymore, but yeah, even the half refund or whatever it is is very strict.
It IS the game's problem because I tried this multple times in the first 5 days the game existed...I'm SURE many people were playing it and trying to find matches... I think the game lacks the sophisticated programming required to actually pair two players. EVEN IF IT COULD... there's no way it's fast enough to actual have real time battles against other people. It'd be like playing CS2 when one player was on dial-up internet or something. And if it really is that there simply isn't anyone else to play with, that's still the game's problem. A game with this much hype would have people playing it if it were any good.
Is it possible for a Kickstarter backer to get a refund? I feel like I've seriously been ripped off and the app failed to deliver on its promises. How can I go about getting a refund? Someone help me 😭😭😭
No we don't, i've in fact asked but this was LONG ago like last year after the massive delay and AGAIN people are going to flame me but his health was wildly out of control and he was traveling the world for test that didn't exisit so i was thinking i put in about 6k (life time memberr ships for family members) to opt out of some of it and keep 2 accounts for my nephews Anyways, story time over Kickstarter stated that once a campaign meets a goal + ending date + 72 hours after all "Sales" are finalized If you are a backer like me, its been like 3 years, i was told no back like 8 or 9 months after the KS closed, but now..nope
@@EndlessTravels I'm so sorry you invested so much and couldn't get any of it back. I noticed that he has done a lot of traveling for his health and I can't help but think that's where a lot of the money from the Kickstarter went. Because it certainly seems that didn't go into the app. It's such a shame
(Learning Spanish) Unfortunately, the words they teach are often awkward. Also the bugs make it infuriating, not a single wayfinder lesson has worked. Really wanted to like it too, but it just isn't a complete product. :(
I think there’s great potential for a game that teaches a language but I have idea how to do it properly. Something like an old gameboy adventure style where you get quests and have to solve puzzles or something could work but I think the only way to do it is basically make a simple game and then find out how to incorporate language learning into it without ruining the fun of the game. It seems most apps start with trying to teach you the language and then try to turn it into fun exercises that just aren’t fun, way too repetitive and usually way too easy to the point where you’re playing a boring game that doesn’t actually teach you much.
Another thing that's started to annoy me is the shameless theft of ideas from other existing apps; the creature index has been lifted straight out of Pokemon. Though, the most egregious example is the super passive aggressive notifications from your dolphin à la Duolingo - that's my least favourite feature of the owl app, why on earth would I want it here??!
There isn't an issue with it taking inspiration. Using animals to battle like Yu gi oh, digimon, yokai watch, dragon quest is not the issue (mind you all of these things took inspo off one another) The problem is how bad the implementation of the concept was.
Hey, idk if everyone else has this problem or I’m blind, but I can’t find where the “lesson” tab is. I picked the intermediate Japanese course because I am not that great at Japanese, but I can’t find the area where I can take the “lessons.” If there is a tab that I am missing than I would suppose there should’ve been a tutorial on how to navigate or a better UI.
I think ikenna’s idea was too ambitious. I remember him saying “this app is going to be as addictive as playing a video game you love”. For someone that never made a language learning app or a game, this is too much. Maybe he should’ve started with something more simple, like an app with basic courses for a few languages, or a vocabulary app
I really don't get it thou. He literally knows that the best way to learn is natural aquisition. So why did he not actually imply ANY ways of doing so? He also knows the method that Ankinis using and how even with paper flashcards you end up repeating the words you don't know well yet more often than thise xou already kinda know. Yet the flashcards will show me 2 words that are not cognants vs 8 that are basically the same word in both languages! How on earth am I supposed to actually learn those 2 new words at this rate?
"He literally knows that the best way to learn is natural aquisition." Do you know where he said that? As some others in the comments section have pointed out, he's not really very fluent in any other language (at least, not by my definition of fluent).
@@daysandwords He wrote an e-book a while back called Fluency Made Easy where he outlined his language learning philosophy. He basically recommended a few programs to start, Pimsleur and Assimil, and then iTalki lessons and comprehensible input. It’s actually a pretty good roadmap to fluency for some people, and it’s largely the path I followed. I don’t think his prescription will work for all types of learners, but I think he basically gets how languages are learned. That’s why it was so disappointing to find that Fluyo was just an unwieldy vocab app
They play advertisement/marketing songs when you take off and land, and one of the Thai Airways songs is literally the worst song I have ever heard. Like, ever.
@daysandwords Ohhh! 😂 I had that on Air China so I know what you mean! Thanks for the response, I've watched your content on and off for some years. Glad to see you're still at it and making great progress
💯 Only positive: “The music is not the worst” 😂 What gets me about Ikenna is how he slated other established learning apps to convince people that he was building something to floor them all, and, bugs aside, Fluyo is the worst learning experience I’ve had hands down.
Fluyo is great ! It has really helped me with the fluency of my Russian swear words… and that is just from the login page ! I feel I can cus like a native now. However, I have developed this weird visceral hate of dolphins 🐬.
To me it's expecially frustrating how ikenna is very negative over the way Duolingo teaching languages and said he would make a better app, when apart of like a different UI it feels almost like the same experience imo.
Go to surfshark.com/lamont for 4 extra months of Surfshark!
Lamont, your videos are always a pleasure to watch! Your narrative is always spot on! I think Ikenna should get some slack for publishing his app despite his health complications, it's amazing how quickly Fluyo released, a lot of other leaders would have probably let the project die along the way, so big respects for that. As to the many bugs and user experience, I'm surprised they didn't have more internal testing rounds before rushing this out. A lot of times users would accept a delay for a better first experience.
I'm actually building a language video game myself, we're going to drop a new demo real soon, if at any point you'd be interesting at taking a look at it, I'd be deeply honored! Or do any collaboration with you, I'm running a language RUclips channel myself :)
As for Fluyo, let's hope the team is able to eradicate some of their bugs and improve the experience, I want there to be solid competition in the language learning gamified space :)
Keep up the great work, best,
Manu
Honestly I think the only concept of a game being used to learn a language that makes sense would be where the player gets lost in a country. Can make it RPG with typical quest and stuff but have them not know the language and have to go around and learn new stuff. Have the language be deeply integrated into it.
Yes, it would still be less efficient than just studying, but for those who can’t seem to study it could get them honed in. There’s a very delicate balance these language learning games need to have but all fail to reach.
I think there's potential in using LLM stuff as a piece of a game (I think that's absolutely key - the core gameplay loop probably can't be just literally solving language puzzles thousands of times or answering vocab quizes, you need a base of something else going on) to help you learn a language while playing. Like, you have a traveling companion, you don't have a shared language, they talk to you simply and you have to respond in gameplay ways over time, or later on even have voice support. Maybe a game like Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley or other types of games where you can play for long periods of time around various NPCs, just add in a character who is almost always with you who talks to you a lot with gradually increasing vocabulary and complexity, they could even comment on what's going on or what you're doing, or what they're doing.
Have them remember what you seem to not understand so they'll be sure to use those phrases/vocabulary and constructions again later, but do it invisibly so the player doesn't have to do any work and break immersion.
There's already mods for games like Skyrim where you can speak to the NPCs and they respond naturally and remember what you've said to them, using LLM models. Just build something with that sort of tech from the ground up with the intention of the player gradually picking up a language.
Try Wagotabi. It’s literally a game about what you just described. It’s for Japanese only though.
@@karltorento3358 Yup part of the reason I mentioned that is because I think that game has a decent balance. It’s on mobile but supposed to drop on Steam soon so I’ve been holding off
Amrilato for Esperanto as a visual novel is excellent dor that
Honestly this idea works great, like waking up in a lost country where nobody (except for a tutorial and the UI of the app) are in english/native language. Immersion without the expenses of moving countries or workers defaulting to english lol
It's a shame I don't believe this exists considering just how many people say immersion is the best teacher
Remember: linguist ≠ teacher
It's like a mechanical engineer ≠ a driving instructor. Yes, there are people who understand the nuts and bolts of a language that can also teach it, but they are fundamentally two different skills.
Yeah, I know... Like David Crystal is a linguist for the English language... but when you say you put together a team of this, that and linguistS (plural), then I'd think you're implying that someone who knew something about language acquisition was involved.
Even Ikenna himself... I mean, I've never thought he was the be all and end all of polyglots... he's pretty obviously a "a few languages to A2" kind of guy... but even so, he has lived in Belgium long enough that I would have thought he knew that asking what the gender of "poisson" is makes no sense for learning.
Yes but any linguist would be able to tell you that adjectives don't have an inherent gender in French.
Ikenna would not even be the mechical engineer in your analogy he does not speak any of the languages he claim to speak at a high level he more so dabbles in it hop on VR chat and repeat phrases .
Yep I'm sticking with comprehensible input + Anki
My personal method is incomprehensible output
@@notaname8140😂😂😂😂
😂@@notaname8140
@@notaname8140😂
Same.
Babe wake up new "bro this will totally be the game that makes you learn a language" game has dropped
So ironic when all you really have to do is just play not even a language learning game but a normal game, in the target language, which is arguably even better
@@dragonicbladex7574 "Mom! What's a flamethrower?"
I totally agree. I don't think it would be going to far to say that it's pointless having an app/game to teach you the whole language.@@dragonicbladex7574
@@dragonicbladex7574if only steam let you sort your library by language to help narrow down options
@@dragonicbladex7574 I'm actually playing Pokémon Pearl in japanese on my DS right now and it's a pain. Mainly because of full hiragana writing, but also because I have to look up everything. It's very frustrating because I'm like N4 which is let's face it, pretty poor japanese proficiency, but at least I thought it would be enough to survive on a 3 year old game. Apparently, no. So I guess your advice is good, but only if you have already acquired some proficiency already.
Brave of you to do an honest review. Due to the health issues and all I became too afraid to be critical of Ikenna but I felt very critical of his channel and the app just seemed like a train wreck in slow motion to me. I unsubscribed years ago.
yea I also, I do like Ikenna, I even bought his E-book a couple years ago....but....he has always struck me as more of a salesman/businessman more than a true language enthusiast....I really do hope his health improves, his condition is really horrible and I empathize, but I don't think he is very genuine about his intentions unfortunately
Imo no ill will against sick ppl and alll. But he literally used it to sell the whole thing in the 1st place
@@xButterflyx kind of :/
Speaking generally, sick people are still people. Being sick doesn't automatically make one a pure angel with good intentions.
@@n8brez603 I thought Ikenna effectively scammed.
Sick or not.
Early adopters are encountering a lot of bugs. I chose French because after 50 years I’m a bit rusty. I have been rooting for him because of his health problems for years but this is major disappointment.Hope they get the bugs out but but I won’t be continuing
I was playing and was just floored by how boring it was to play.
EXACTLY!!! That was the first thing I noticed. I didn't wanna do the battles, and then when I learned "new words" they were usually cognates......
I got the subscription just because the ad was irritating. And after some time I discovered Anki exists:D
Like, they tried to make a 10 in 1 app and honestly failed.
I develop games and know how hard it is to actually develop a bug-free and smooth game which is fun, entertaining, and snappy.
And on top of that lies the main function - language learning, that must be faster and more efficient than other apps to stand out, but oh well..
I found the battles confusing and boring which made them frustrating to play.
i had low expectations already because of the way ikenna was talking about it. every time i hear the word "gamify" i have little alarms going off in my head
I don't mind gamification.. the problem is, this isn't really a full game, because there's no story and you're just answering the same 7 questions over and over again.
For me it's the dependence on translation. When Lamont showed the game quizzing the genders USING THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION I'm like nope I'm out
gamifying learning, especially language learning (or maybe not "especially", it's just my personal focus), sounds like a neat idea in theory, but it always boils down to flashcards / a quiz
I remember how I wanted to make my own version of Duolingo for my conlang, only to realize very quickly that I might as well release an Anki deck with words mixed with sentence flashcards and it'd be a thousand times better
either it's just a stupid idea that can't be executed well OR we're approaching it from the stupidest side possible
@autumnblaze6267 I feel like there's potential for a language learning game that isn't just flashcards and quizzes. I'm thinking more like a normal game in your TL, but the dialogue is written based on vocabulary and structures in progressively higher levels, like a graded reader.
Welp that's my pitch, I gotta start an app development team now.
But then again this wouldn't work well for beginners slash language learning newcomers, which is the market that every app is targeting
Do u know what gamified language learning is? Simply just playing a "proper" video game in that language entirely! Aka how a good portion of us europeans learned english 😅For me, the fun part about learning a language is actually having the feeling that you learned something. I want it to be fast paced and rewarding! And I want the reward to be "Yay I just understood that sentence!" and not "Yay, I slayed an underwater monster and got 100 points" I just found duolingo so TERRIBLY frustrating because I'm wastin 50% of my time on "fun" animations, cut scenes, boosters and ads.
15:10 Despite knowing absolutely zero french, I could still recognize which sentence was correct. I don't get how anyone who's learned any french at all could possibly get that wrong
My 13 year old was able to do all of it (except the stupid gender questions) and he's never learned any and he's not interested in language stuff.
What you said in 12:25 rings so true. The app should have moved more agile, working closely with users to identify and rectify issues, inspire creative ideas, and push out minimal viable products in cycles. Testing frequently is so crucial. Seeing Ikenna talk about the Fluyo app sounded like he was trying to produce something perfect for launch. Most businesses fail because they wait on perfection rather than iterating their product on the go with customers.
I was waiting for your review on this since seeing your comment on Mike's video. You nailed it. I'd consider myself intermediate in French and I too decided to try it out for French. I chose beginner just to see what it had to offer. One of the first words the app taught me was "bonjour" (to be expected right?), it asked me to type in the answer so I typed "hello".... it told me "hello" was wrong and the correct answer was "good day". I decided it wasn't worth my while to use it after that.
🤣
Technically it’s not fully wrong. Salut is more of the “hello”
"Salut" would be closer to "hi" IMO.
"Bonjour" is hello... "Good day" - literally no one says that anymore, unless they're doing it ironically. I'm Australian, and the closest thing in modern English to Good day is "G'day", in which we barely pronounce the G, nevermind the "oo" bit. "Good day" is archaic, plain and simple. "Bonjour" is standard French for "hello".
But EVEN IF it were not... How the heck is this coming up in INTERMEDIATE? Where are these levels coming from? What does that leave for Beginner? "Paris..." maybe? "France"...?
@@daysandwords i grew up speaking French as the first language in my family and my sister is a French citizen. We mostly only say “bonjour” in the morning. After 12pm it’s technically “bon après midi“ (it’s not very common) and “bonsoir” after 6pm.
By 13 y o I spoke 5 languages and understood 6. I’m using Fluyo for German, and it’s just ok, à little too repetitivo for Someone who learns fast, but it’s a new app. I will have to try French to see what you’re talking about
I’m studying UX/UI design as well and I see major things that could be changed, but having been exposed to startups due to UX research, specifically competitive audits and/or internships, though a bit behind in terms of color grading quality and the page interactions (like the way a loading screen slides up or we have to slide to pick the right answer which I think feels unnatural) this just looks like a regular star up app and it can and will get better. That’s what UX Designers are for 😉🙂.
I stopped following Ikenna a long time ago because he made all those clickbait videos about learning languages in a ridiculously short amount of time. I was unaware of any health issues.
I really do feel bad for the guy, I believe his health issues are real, and it's really a devastating condition, but...the guy is 100% a business-man rather than a language enthusiast...he learned like 3 languages to a B-1 level and then immediately began focusing on how to sell people the idea of quick and easy fluency, and that has always been what his channel and brand is about
And the thing is... it's completely OK to be a business man and NOT a language enthusiast.
But then the product has to be good... like, Jeff Bezos didn't get super rich by being an online shopping enthusiast. He got there by making Amazon clearly the best option for so many things. Fluyo isn't the best option for anything except clowning on.
Thst health thing kinda seemed suspicious to me. Something about the whole vibe came across like the Magneto of the language learning community- plus he made the click bait videos, so somehow did not seem genuine to me. So I stopped following.
Yeah, he always struck me as a modern day snake oil salesman. I had a suspicion this app thing would turn out as bad as it has.
"They hired a linguist. Did that linguist do anything?" xD
App reviews are one of my favourite types of videos from you
We need a Lamont Japanese 0-100% fluency Fluyo journey video on the channel stat. I mean he's basically an advanced learner already /s
Also keep track of how much of that journey was loading screens, app crashed and bugs
He's so modest about how he's actually D2 in dozens of languages.
The problem with fluyo being marketed as a "better duolingo" is that the bar is already so low and they have less money. I knew the frenzy years ago would lead to this, but I didn't want to say it at the time because it would look bad.
Yeah I never had high hopes for it but I thought it would at least appear to work.
Comprehensible input remains undefeated. Nothing ever happens.
A good app is a stepping stone into CI, like Speakly.
From day 1, it's got you listening to 4 minute passages with tonnes of new vocab.
@@daysandwords I wanted to use Speakly but it doesn't teach Japanese, Korean or Chinese which are the only languages I want to learn
Can vouch for this! Speakly was really good. Moved on to Clozemaster afterwards just to have frequency lists to work on every day.
That’s the way
Not Breaking News: Comprehensible is STILL the best way to learn languages.
I always appreciate your honesty with your reviews. Always honest but fair.
Your every new video is like music to my ears. I've rewatched all the old ones so many times by now they're becoming scarce
I know one goal of Fluyo was the "gamification of language learning" but I would rather just play actual video games in my target language instead.
Yeah, in a deleted part of the review, I was trying to set Raid Shadow Legends to another language... you can do it but I couldn't figure out how (tutorial I followed was saying a way that didn't work anymore)... but my point was that RSL isn't even a good game and is probably more better than Fluyo.
@@daysandwords "more better"
- linguist youtuber
@@FakeXyxy Yes, native speakers make grammatical mistakes, even linguists, and no he isn't a linguist.
I can’t believe I never thought about that. That’s so smart.
I don't care about someone's health status. Does their product fulfill its scope or solve a problem Better than existing offers? It is a yes or no question. No, then it's worth is zero.
In truth, everyone feels that way, but it will inevitably get brought up... you watch, SOMEONE in this comments section will be like "Well he's been bedridden, it's good for that..."
but I actually don't think it is. What did all the other people do? Decide that "costly" had a gender?
like i can wish you the best and still not enjoy your product. it's not a slight against the person, i just don't like it.
The empathy generated through parasocial relationships is enough to prevent objectivity. If you’re on the spectrum that may simply come off as foolish but it’s human nature.
@@daysandwords Your not wrong, in both discords and this past few years many have made the question of is this support for the app or his recovery?
Remember his last go fund me bombed heavily, after the health thing it broke kick starter records..again i sound like an A for this but something MANY in the discord Alpha channels have wondered
YOU USED MY REVIEW IN THE VIDEO! VERY NICE! :0
For a second I was confused... your comment review haha.
Yeah it was a good comment!
@@daysandwords Haha yeah should have been more specific xD
Ikenna is someone that is an avid learner of languages. The fact that he tested this and thought this was ok for release. I tested the korean on apple and it was meh at best. The speech was so slow and the snake path you learn the same 6 verbs through an entire journey. The games like the memory game is a bit ok. There are better apps than fluyo and duolingo when learning korean like Sejong apps or lingory. Fluyo has a long way to go
I don't really think he is that avid a learner of languages. I think he just likes saying he's a polyglot.
@@daysandwords his best languages, Japanese and French, seem to be around B1 at best....not saying I'm any better myself, but he doesn't seem fluent in any of the languages he's studied
This is harsh, but it seems entirely fair and accurate. Sometimes the truth is what it is.
And as a French learner who struggles plenty with the language...yeah, it's absolutely one of the easiest languages to learn (for an English speaker), and very possibly the easiest. Even many idioms are direct translations, which is incredible to me.
Wow, I didn't expect it to be that bad🙈 I hope they take reviews seriously and make some improvements. Also, I think you addressed the issues respectfully and I agree that people need to be honest, regardless of who created the app.
I don’t get the choose the gender of a noun in English thing, in French it is the word that has a gender not the object itself so it doesn’t make sense to assign a gender without knowing the word. (Not to mention some words can have different meanings depending on the gender)
The whole thing was completely ridiculous.
Having me guess which gender the English word "large" is had me mad confused. English is my native language, too.
Exactly like in italian a courgette could be both femminine zucchina or masculine zucchino 2 words for the same thing habing two different genders, i couldnt find another example in french lol
Actually, a gender thing is what convinced me for good that natural acquisition is 100% real.
Because I don't know the Swedish gender for "beer"... or at least, I thought I didn't. Until another high level Swedish speaker was like "Wait... is it "ett öl" or "en öl"...???"
and I was like "It's... en öl... WAIT NO IT DEPENDS! You are talking about a particular brand and brew of beer, like "Nottingham Pale Ale"... so it's ETT in that case... but if you mean like "Let's grab a beer", it's "en"."
And as I was saying all that I was like "I know this is right, but I have no recollection of ever learning this."
Can't believe I paid 480$ for the lifetime subscription, which is crazy because even if the app were good, it's over 12 years of the 39$ annual price tag 🤦♂
That's so dodgy. The general rule on lifetime subscriptions is 2-3x the yearly price. 3x is at the upper end.
@@daysandwords I understand that creating a app must be crazy expensive, but now I wonder how Speakly and Lingodeer can be so cheap in comparison, and they use native audio unlike Fluyo (I haven't tested it yet but the French audio in your video was definitely AI) and they didn't raise so much money through Kickstarter.
I honestly think that Ikenna and the people he hired are that incompetent that they could use $3M to make an app that other people could have made for $100K, or $300K for the good ones that they DID make.
@@daysandwordsthat means... The other surplus of money is used for their own...
You paid half a grand for this? Blimming hell
Fair review and glad to see you go through it. Been hoping to see how this App turned out.
in the spanish selection fluyo's "advanced" section is lower intermediate at best. i deleted it when the app marked "to turn off" as the direct english translation of "apagar" wrong 🙃
What I like about this channel is you're always looking to get to the bottom of what actually works and what doesn't rather than running off with fruity ideas like a lot of people and not giving it any actual thought.
Oh boy, here we go. A lot to unpack here.
So, I study multiple languages as well, and also ''a polyglot'' (whatever that means). For the past three years, I have been producing content in Portuguese about language learning. Having participated in the kickstarter and watched your video about Ikenna and Nathaniel 6-7 years ago, here's my 2 cents:
First of all, the app sucks.And sucks bad. And that's sad because I liked the guy and was actually *waiting* for the app. I decided to hold-on on my boring ass anki-german journey because it would be _awesome_ to learn it with Fluyo. Man, I don't even know what to say.
Don't know why no one mentioned it, but the German vocabulary in the app is just weird. A lot of ''communistisch'' things, and I'm not choosing sides here, just saying like... why is that in the app? And I could name like 30 words like that. Regimen. Partei. That sounds like grabbing a vocabulary list in German on the internet and throwing in the app, because since I actually studied german, I know that people there do talk about those things. But if a linguist actually worked on the game, he would quickly point out that this is deeply flawed. Vocabulary usage is HIGHLY subjective. (Btw, important to mention, I have a degree in Linguistics, and this is one of the most non L2 friendly apps ever)
I was actually speedrunning the journey mode trying to find the endgame (non existent ofc) which is usually where the fun is in most games. And I played the alpha, beta, and the pr (alpha 2 apparently)
In any case, I agree with everything on the video. 3 million on this just doesn't make any sense. There are PLENTY of amazing games that cost 1% of that. And I could just change their language in the menu, and it would be way better than Fluyo already.
To be honest, again, I like the guy and wish him the best, but I'm going to be brutally honest here because I feel somewhat betrayed.
To me, he just seemed like a dreamer man-child who actually had resources and convinced his younger audience to hop on his dream. His team are his hard-working underqualified friends who helped him in his narrative.
Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is, abosutely, an immature decision. I thought he took the decision and then would be professional but... summing his ebooks, courses, and everything really, I think that Ikenna doesn't know what he's doing most of the time. Which again man, is NOT a bad thing! But you NEED to be transparent on that. Go seek help, you know. Hire a team to hire a team. Don't take everything on the chest, that's a lot of responsibility.
Also, I feel so bad saying this, but the girl in the game is basically his girlfriend. Which I get it, she stood with you in the darkest days, but business is business. That girl doesn't help in anything in the game. Animation is expansive, man, just remove her from the game and the game would be 30% better already just through resource management. Why invest so much in animation and mouth tracking, and to do that for EVERY language like bro WHAT YOU ONN lol there's red flags EVERYWHERE!! And if he decided to went on with it just because of his gf... I'm trying to not be too judgmental here, because I'll say again: I LIKE THE DUDE. But man, this app is just bad decision after bad decision. He could get a WAAAAY better result with way less money with an actually prepared team, with a leader that will actually make the right decisions for it.
Maybe because of his health, but I think the summary of the situation is that Ikenna made a very bad entrepreneurship move. He was right on the narrative, after all, 3 millie raised is not a joke, but I guess that's about it... He needed someone to take the decisions right from the go. I remember he was looking for a COO (which I even applied for the job but never got a response btw, but I also think I do not have the experience nor knowledge to handle that, seeing where it lead), but when the COO joined, Fluyo was already 2 years in. The important decisions were already made, and they were mostly wrong.
I bought the dream with him and his team, bought the shit, applied for jobs, followed everything but let's clean the room man, they're just unprofessionals. Potential, the concept yeah, the app no.
The best overall approach for Ikenna from my perspective, is to take the punch in the mouth, admit your mistakes, clarify where t f these 3 million went, be humble and less ambitious, slowly progress the app through the years and in 15 years it could be something. That's the route most companys do either way.
After all, if it ACTUALLY is the dream of his life and not some coping mechanism bc of his condition, he should be looking for a 15 year+ investment with a happy smile, for Fluyo to be anything near ''the revolution of language learning''. I was 21 when I first got to know Ikenna. I'm 28 now. I was a young boy, now a man, and if I could say anything to that kid who saved 3 months of savings to buy the KS, would be to not invest emotionally in the dreams of others. I know that's just me, but my point is his narrative persuades young people as I was at the time. And this is dangerous, you know...
To conclude, would love to know if you would like to chat about Fluyo and L2 Apps @daysandwords, maybe we could collab, that would be cool. Anyway, thanks for the video. Was very therapeutic for me, as you can see lol
Happy learning to all (including Ikenna, wish the guy all the best)...
Edit: about the girl in the app, I get it that she teaches you the language, my point is that the same results could be achieved with less effort had not the emotional side of it been involved.
And so it was that the missing manuscript for "The Winds of Winter" was found, buried in the comments section of a video about a language learning app.
Anyway, in seriousness, now that I've had time to read your comment properly, yeah, I agree with everything.
Even his latest video kind of confirms that he had the attitude of "Where there's a will, there's a way" - which is a great attitude for many things, but when it comes to actually publishing it... it should have been more like "Where there's a will, there's a way to fix all the flaws in the app."
I also think that he attracts similar personalities; so the people who wrote to him to go work for him and whatever were similar. There are also numerous reports from people who were beta testers that they submitted all this feedback months ago... and the app is still like that now.
@@daysandwords yeah... he keeps saying "have patience with us, were a small team" and I'm like yeah.. that's the problem lol. I just hope this was a humbling experience for him tbh
Hey there. I build apps for a living and am an entrepreneur so I know exactly where Fluyo went wrong. It is as simple as that they launched too late. The best apps are made by launching early - continiously get users - continiously get brutal feedback from strangers - and iterating on everything.
Fluyo can still become great - as Ikenna is saying, it is only the beginning. If the app keeps iterating and following user feedback it can become successfull - but it will take a lot of time and it will probably be hard for them to pivot certain features when they have spent so long on them.
Don't feel betrayed by Ikenna - because this shit is hard as fuck to make and few people are able to succesfully do these kinds of stuff. It's super easy to look down at stuff that has been built - but insanely hard to actually build stuff
I know you weren't talking to me, but I don't feel betrayed because I had a feeling it would be bad. It doesn't surprise me.
BUT, to counter a few of your points, there are already several signs that Fluyo won't improve significantly in the next few years.
1. It looked the same as this about 3 years ago, and certainly 2 years ago when they then raised over $1.5 million to spend on it. The money doesn't seem to have been spent wisely. I would wager that if they were to raise another $5 million today, then in 2 years, the app still wouldn't be good. It might be better, but there'd still be better options, and there WILL be better options by 2027.
2. (this is a big one) Ikenna was, is, and continues to talk as if Fluyo is a raging success. He was talking about his app 2 years ago as though it had already beaten things like Duolingo, Anki, and Memrise. This was an obvious strategy to get more donations for it.
2 years later, it has done none of the things it promised and I can't see it doing so for a while. Ikenna is saying things like "People tried it and loved it."
A valid question in the comments section of that video was "WHO? WHO LOVED IT?"
Ikenna is either putting on a front so that more people buy it and invest in it, or he is flat out in denial. There are 3 independent video reviews of Fluyo and none of them have very much positive to say. Many of the comments on his own videos are constructive criticism. I have found only TWO comments in my own comments section that disagree with my assessment... and in fact, they don't, they just say "It's new." - So they agree that it's bad.
I'm not being a hater. I get that it's hard to build stuff. I want to make a film, and not an easy one either. One set in a very dark time in history, filmed in a foreign country, in about 6 or 7 different languages. I don't expect this to be easy, so I GET it. The thing is: I don't talk about this as though I've already done it.
But if I were being mean to Ikenna, I'd state it as "He's been running his mouth for the last 4 years" about this. Now that the app is worse than I expected, it's hard to see all the stuff he was saying as anything other than just that: running his mouth.
I can't see Fluyo improving quickly enough to not just run out of money. And I think that the generosity of his audience is about to run out, now that they see exactly what $3 million bought them.
what a shame… I used to watch Ikenna from way before he even announced fluyo & remembered being so excited… can't believe this is what resulted of everything.
I'm glad someone put my thoughts and feelings into a video 😅 Thank you for your unbiased review
If french context messes you up, trying to learn korean would be a living hell. (Those who dont know, korean is really dependant on the context)
I did the upper intermediate german course. Not only was the vocabulary easy it also had mistakes... like der Roman (novel) was written roman (lowercase) when you had to choose 1 out of 4 options and you ALWAYS write nouns with a first letter capitalized
Yeah there were a lot of errors I didn't get into here either. I should have addressed its weirdest sentence. It made grammatical sense but no logical sense.
I downloaded Fluyo as a total beginner in Korean, and I have to say that now I’ve gotten used to it, I do enjoy it. However I am using the app alongside other apps and tools, and my motivation to learn comes more from the fact that I’m learning Korean to surprise my friend from Korea, rather than the app being gamified. I think as a complete beginner I like the slower speed, and I often pause lessons to write things down and create my own practice sentences etc. It’s definitely janky, but I’m intrigued to see how it (hopefully) improves over time as my language skills grow with the app. I also just love my dolphin I can’t lie 😂
dunno. the entire foundational concept seems to be pretty unrecoverable to me.
Same.
Also, while I obviously support anyone learning a language in whatever ways are open to them, if someone has to use loads of other resources on top of Fluyo, then it's not fulfilling it's original mission.
I wrote this comment and then immediately got hit with the Fluyo paywall limit… I know I should have expected it, but the app lets you get quite far until it suddenly doesn’t let you access any more content. Idk, would have been nice for the free version to still let you actually continue learning the language, even if it’s limited. But it just stops 😭
@@daysandwordsThis is so true. And disappointing, when we’ve (or I have) been looking forward to this app for ages!
I’m lower intermediate in Korean, and the app is absolutely miserable for me. There is no language support for anything above beginner Korean yet. Had to switch to beginner to try out the lessons, and they were disappointing. I requested a refund because the games are slow, and don’t shuffle the words or sentences properly… you pretty much repeat the same five sentences for all the levels I’ve tried so far.
Wait, you’re telling me the language guru influence with zero experience in education, pedagogy or game development failed at making a video game that teaches you to learn foreign languages?
I am shocked. This has got to be the first time a language guru has sold a poorly designed unscientific method for learning language. /s
I’m only partway through the video but I will say it’s interesting that Fluyo used a different word for “now” in you French intermediate course because I’m a French beginner on Fluyo (have never spoken French) and one of the first words it taught me was “now” as “maintenant” instead of the one you saw - I wish it communicated the differentiation between the two for those in the intermediate stage.
I saw your comment on Mr Salas's video so I was looking forward to this video. My question is where the development money (Three MILLION USD?) went?
not sure to the exact numbers but I figure it just went to supporting the developers living for 5 years. 5 years of salary paid to 4 people on the team each earning 75k per year (not unusual in the software dev world) comes out to 1.5m
and almost certainly there were additional contracts, employees, and project costs involved. It's just a really expensive thing to make if you're not doing it completely on the side as a passion project
Well, definitely to the wrong things... but I can see how you would burn through that.
@@Quest-Givereven if it was 60k which is relatively common to low for even beginners in tech in most tech hubs, the difference could be easily explained by contractors as you mentioned. I'd definitely guess that's where it went. Unless something illegal happened, anyway.
Thanks for running those numbers... I couldn't be bothered, I just know it's not something I'm in a rush to do haha.
But the thing is, they definitely didn't have 5 years of full time salary. He didn't hire anyone for at least 1 year, and that was only one person.
I don't think it was ALL spent on the app, to be honest... and that's not me accusing Ikenna of fraud, I just mean, he admitted to a decent chunk coming from his video course... well, that's his money then, and if he wants to spend it on the app, he can.
I think there would have been a lot of legal stuff to pay, plus all the narrators (someone said it was TTS, which it definitely wasn't in French)...
But yeah, it is a little bit... well, it's a lot of money haha.
@@Quest-Giverat one point I think he said there’s a team of like a 100 developers working on the app.
I tried it, and I was not a big fan.
I won't go into the bad, but I do like that people are trying to make a language learning game. If I could get a solid game, and the game is really fun, and I can learn a language at the same time, that would be groundbreaking for language learning. Closest we have to that right now is getting semi good at a language then changing the language in a game to that target language, which is a shame. If there was a solid, addictive game that closed that beginner to intermediate gap, that would be awesome. Fluyo does try and I am hoping that they improve it to a level that it will be good! I think it can happen.
That was a bad idea to combine a game and a learning app and I wrote that on the early stage of the app. If I want to learn a language by playing a game I would choose some great RPG title and set the language to the one I want to learn. Learning app can have some "game" mechanisms in it, but trying to make it both fun game and learning app seems impossible to me. Even if the game is fun for some people, it will be fun for a moment and then it will start being annoying distraction from learning.
I just tried it yesterday. The games are not interesting at all.
One of our students told us this app was a nightmare :( That's so sad!
Good review thanks for your positive criticism, I'm one of Fluyo's kickstarter backers. Did you try out the minigames? I 100% agree with you about the battle system, the Fluyo team is currently working on revamping it to make it more fun.
I tried out what I was able to in the time that I had... I couldn't for every bug to stop being buggy or I'd still be testing it now.
So in the future when they work with the feedback improving the app and removing bugs could you see your self coming back to review it again and make an update video?
They'd have to work out the LINGUISTIC PEDAGOGY bugs, which is much harder to do.
This was way better than my video lol i just got too frustrated that i couldn't get the girl to let me continue. I tested it on my phone and it seems to work now but this just makes me more curious on how what the Japanese course looks like in the higher levels.
Thanks Mike.
It's funny how all these comments on your video were like "Wow I didn't know you did this channel" and I was like "This is the first time I've ever seen you... but I can tell that this isn't your main channel."
Can you tell me the name of one of your bigger channels so I can watch other videos?
@@daysandwords my main channel is @bijuumike but its just gaming content. Totally the opposite of what im gonna do with my new channel so i understand if its not something that interests you. Thank for the shoutout btw!
also you are way more knowledgeable when it comes to speaking about language. Im dumb at the end of the day but i do love leaning Japanese so i wanted to make some lighthearted content about my journey and hopefully inspire someone
My son has probably seen your main channel, or would be interested to see it.
And yeah don't worry, I get the whole totally different genres across channels thing... I kind of want to start a photography, or music channel... all the channels.
I dunno about that... learning Japanese is probably about 3x as much work as learning Swedish so...
I like the idea so much but yeah I think to *really* flesh it out would take a huge budget.
If you want to gamify, it’s better to get to an intermediate level in your TL and then play an actual game in that language. For the big languages, you can find so many games that support your TL.
Heck, I’ve found a good amount of games in that are in Finnish or have a large Finnish player base I can communicate with.
I like how Amrakonto did it for teaching Esperanto. It was a game/visual novel that actually goes through using the language in situations (in the game, the character ends up in a weird world where they speak Esperanto and she has to figure out the language through context mostly). There's a story and it's engaging. Way better than this type of stuff
Many apps and even textbooks calling themselves advanced are really maybe A2 level. That French was ridiculously easy. I had no problems with it and have only dabbled a teensy bit in French.
Among language learning games, I kind of like Lingo Legend. It asks you a few questions to judge your level. It’s still basically translations and vocabulary, but it makes the reviews gradually harder. It starts with true/false questions and multiple choice and then moves on to making you spell things out. And you get to fight monsters and run a farm. There is still a bit too much English in the story line, but if you’re looking for something fun to do between bouts of serious learning and aren’t advanced enough to just play regular games in your target language, it’s kind of nice.
I thought I'd still try the free version out for the heck of it but omg, the amount of data that can be sold to other companies alone is mind boggling.
I'd love a in depth review of languatalk, too! Thanks for your thoughts.
We all knew this was gonna be bad though, right? Ikenna doesn’t know how to learn languages so why would I expect him to know how to make a language learning app
I figured it would not be very good but this is worse than I thought.
I spent way too much money on the Kickstarter for this app for it to turn out THIS bad. Like how do you fail at being the two things you promised, a language learning tool AND a game?
Thank you for this video friend. I didn't know about all this till now and now I know because of you are your handsome shark. ❤
18:33 if you want to skip *to* the Surf Shark segment. It made me laugh after a rather depressing video.
Bugs can be fixed, but the underlying concepts seems to be an even bigger problem.
Never heard of it - that's why I'm watching this video. Also because your reviews are usually interesting in that they're mostly your frustration and confusion. Seems we've started off well in this one too.
Thanks for the honest review, haven't tried it yet. I might try it out for Japanese, maybe for a super beginner it's somehow helpful. But I was expecting it to be "a real game", cause I love playing games and language learning too of course. But if the game is lame and there is not much learning happening, what's the point? 😕
I'm very late to this video and your comment so you may have already tried it... but I would very much not recommend it for a total beginner if that means you don't know kana yet. Those are the only lessons I've done so far and the way it encourages you to remember most of the kana just confused me... and I have known kana since 2009ish lol. I just went "HUH" hearing how they were explained and started skipping through the lessons.
The typos and grammar errors took me out of it. I gave it a chance, but when these errors kept coming, I gave up. They should have hired some proofreaders to playtest. And they should have hired playtesters as well. I'm so disappointed.
You have the best surfshark segments of all youtube.
Thanks Sonya!
Been YEARS since I spoke French, "maintenent" is where my mind went. Lol
I read comments in Reddit from a couple years ago where people predicted from the screenshots that it’s just another vocab app.
In and of itself, that’s fine for those who like it. What gets me is that someone who’s claimed to be a polyglot put words OUT OF CONTEXT in the game. Putting words in context-especially in an SRS-is a very basic learner concept.
In hoping it gets better. I like Ikenna and his personality and tenacity.
Thanks for putting this together for us, Lamont.
that's not even a prediction, isn't that what the first release was advertised as?
I backed the kickstarter for Fluyo, and it's... not the worst thing I've backed, but that's just because it exists. That said, I tried to use it to study Japanese and it's just bad in every way, which is extremely disappointing - I had really hoped there would be something here.
The questions are always extremely obvious or actually impossible - I lost count of how many times it asked me what "word" (it meant which kana) was missing in a word that had no missing character and therefore no right answer. Extra frustrating when this leads to losing a battle and having to spend upwards of six minutes loading the battle to try again.
Also, it is just wrong on some very basic things? During one of the many monologues from the strange underwater lady, she says that "Car" is カー, which is the loan word for the English word car. The real word for car in Japanese is 車 (or 自動車 if you're old-fashioned - or the Busuu app).
I think I've sunk way too much time into trying to make the app work, both because I feel bad for Ikenna and because of the old sunk-cost fallacy, but Fluyo really ain't it.
I agree with everything you said except for the gameplay, I actually enjoy doing the lessons and collect loot. And the wayfinder lessons have is enjoyable and memorable while it might not be the most efficient way to teach a language 😅
The wayfinder lessons is supposed to gradually use more and more target language so if that happens I think they will be good
Well then it would be good if I'd been able to DO the wayfinder lessons... "Full support"...
I’m seriously hoping they’re able to improve! I love the concept but I do have to admit everything feels a bit off… The 3D characters feel a bit out of place and I feel it lacks a lot of aesthetic (There’s barely any animations or satisfying sound effects), this without mentioning the actual language learning. I still bought the yearly premium because I believe in the app, but it seriously will require a lot of updates.
Thank you for the honest review.
Yeah the hype Ikenna built around it and his illness seemed to have made people not be honest with their criticisms at least made them not as harsh. I've been following this app development since he announced it and seeing the finished product makes me feel betrayed like this was all a big scam. Kind of opened my eyes to Ikenna not being an honest trustworthy guy, and so I unsubscribed from him.
He released a pdf called fluency made easy or something it was a pdf filled with fluff. Made me realize he is dishonest of his language levels tbh. Def a "RUclips polyglot"
@@CrimsonSun-n3ireally..? i’ve always loved this guy. how come everybody i like on youtube is somehow a “bad” person? i think the app is great for beginners and vocabulary. maybe i’ve been blinded by pity for his situation.. or my parasocial relationship with the guy. i don’t wanna think the game sucks because i understand having a passion project you’re really proud of. and for ppl to hate it sucks. idk what to think.
@ You do not have to believe what I believe and please do your own research into my claims. If you are new to youtube language channels or maybe have not looked too much into them many youtube polyglot channels built on sensational content like "I learn x language is 3 months" are usually dishonest. They are not fluent in that language and most likely can not hold a REAL conversation if tested. Real as in an off the cuff conversation with a native thats not their friends or made for a video. I recommend to not have a parasocial relationship with anyone especially if they are asking you for money. Ikenna is going through alot with his health and i pray for his recovery in that regards. other than that this project was poorly handled for so many reasons. If this were not Ikenna this app would have been labelled a scam
^ Parasocial relationships are not ideal, especially when a RUclipsr is soliciting funds for a project. While I would not categorize Ikenna as a "bad guy," it is important to note the scale of his project coupled with his limited experience. He overpromised and underdelivered, and in any other context, this would likely be considered a scam.
I visited your channel and observed that you are also working on a project, which I find commendable. What sets you apart is that you are creating a book, allowing people to subscribe to your Patreon to monitor the progress. You appear to be transparent about your artistic and storytelling journey. Conversely, if you were to ask your audience to donate money for what you claim to be the "best comic book to end all comic books" and then release an incomplete story, that would indeed be problematic. This is essentially what Ikenna did.
Thank you for not mincing your words. I respect it.
I get that it's tempting to sugarcoat things given the situation but at the end of the day, we're still talking about people's hard-earned money and their free time. It's wrong to sugarcoat.
If I'm being honest, I had a strong feeling that it was going to turn out exactly the way it did solely based on the screenshots I saw years ago.
Just a boring Luodingo-esque game tacked onto a 2000s MMO. Trash TTS, no context for the words, useless multiple choice exercises. Also, the thing with "now"/"maintenant" makes me think they just fed word lists through Google Translate or something. lol
I laughed so hard at the repeated clips of you typing out "initiative" as an answer for "initiative".
Actually one thing that I forgot to mention was that it's NOT TTS... the audio was actually quite good.
Some people have had probablems with it trimming the start and end of single words (again, single words are dumb anyway), so that they couldn't hear the words properly, but on the full sentences, the audio is most certainly not TTS and is much better than Duolingo for that reason.
I know... "initiative... consequence... situation... perserverance..."
I think they scraped blocks of text for it, which is how they get that "désormais" means "now" and such stuff.
I cant get through the account creation so I kinda need a video explaining what it is lmao
I couldn't while I was trying to create my own but if I just used a gmail account to sign me in, it worked... until it stopped working for some other reason, of course.
@@daysandwordsI used gmail. The 2 lesson limit came as a surprise to me.
At least that's what it appeared to be saying... I dunno if they lifted that after the first day?
In any case I kind of had to buy premium anyway.
Lamont thank you for doing and honest review it will saved a lot of peope time and money. That is being the opposite of a jerk
Aaaaah I was waiting on how this app will pan out. I was hoping to finally find an app to push someone from the B1/2 plateau to fluent in a gamey way.
With all the toil and turmoil that Ikenna went through to finally get it out, it's hard to give it a "meh" review but so far that's the best I can do. I know they're gonna be scrambling to improve things but I didn't have any performance issues with the app running, so that's not a criticism from me. I just couldn't get into the game or get any sense that I was going to learn much from the app in a way that makes me want to keep going.
Glad I didn’t bother testing it… Great review!
the game is too buggy, you get the ad popup everytime you get back to the "main page" or completing a lesson (which can take 10 min if you have the non talking bug) The app was too rushed and should be cooked for a longer time! They should've wait till summer until release ngl
It’s also hard to do an app for several different languages
Don't worry, after you pick a language they force you to keep learning the same language. /s
I chose Korean (beginner / no knowledge) because it was one of the "fully-supported" languages,
and now I can't switch to any other language. (menu buttons don't work besides home and story mode)
yeah better Anki lol
@dragoon0anime that's interesting. I chose intermediate French and was able to later select Japanese, and can now toggle between the two. probably one of many bugs
I was able to select Japanese but for the first day or so it crashed every time I tried to open it... I think it's because one part of the app was telling the device I needed to see the Japanese home screen while another was saying I needed to see the French one... or something.
This is why I wouldn't develop an app.
im getting a bug where it doesn't show the sentence with a missing word, only the options
The Language Transfer -> Dreaming Spanish for comprehensible input (+ Clovemaster for vocab on the side) pipeline has worked absolute wonders. I'd be shocked if anything other than interacting with natives irl tops this approach.
I'd skip the Language Transfer bit, but also, I think that interacting with natives irl would actually LOSE to just a tonne of Dreaming Spanish... At least, per time unit put in.
@daysandwords That's curious, what are your criticisms of Language Transfer? I thought it gave me a wonderful structural foundation of grammar which has certainly helped me know what's going on in Dreaming Spanish conversations.
When I tried it, it is just a copy of Michel Thomas but without nearly the charisma that Michel has and with significantly more fluff.
I swear I listened to the German one for 10 minutes before hearing a word of German.
I also think that any language that this method works with (i.e. anglosemblant languages like German and Spanish), is so similar that you can just jump straight in to super beginner content that is entirely in the language, e.g. Dreaming Spanish.
I never studied any Spanish verbs or "rules" and I got by fine in Mexico after 4-5 months.
I may sound like a POS, but with how poorly the levels are actually ranked it kind of makes me question if Ikenna even actually speaks any of the languages he claims to. He might, but he also might speak just enough to make it seems like he does. Like, he just does the entire pimsleur course and learns nothing more.
Oh I've never really thought that Ikenna had a working subconscious knowledge of any of them except French, since he lives in Belgium...
but I'm sure that they got the results in French that they did by equalising and automating the Asian languages with the European languages, so that if you can hear the difference between one sentence and another in Japanese, you must also be at that level in French.
@@daysandwords Which is wild when English and Japanese barely have cognates while just about the entire higher register of French and English is Romance, and in English in good part via French. Nobody will ever fail at knowing what automobile means but _kuruma_ they sure will.
I saw his video speaking French and oh my, there are cuts in the video to every sentences he spoke. Seems like his other languages he spoke are better if not awesome though
I've been waiting for your review - tho I knew you would say things like these. I absolutely agree - but to me it would be hard to stay that kind towards Ikenna. This product combined with all the false advertisements is a borderline scam, to be honest. I'm a game developer and I know how hard it is to create something like that - so my expectations were super low - but this app is just a disgrace in so many ways. :(
Ive never seen a fun sponsor advertising before
the surfshark ad segment is always so funny
Thanks for the review!
Maybe the real fluyo was the friends we made along the way?
Have you reviewed "Lingoda" yet? I'm thinking of doing their Sprint.
I haven't and I can't because they don't have a target language of mine.
But just be careful to read the very fine print with the sprint. When I was considering it years ago, they used to do the 90 day one where you could get 100% of your money back by doing all 90 lessons in 90 days, and fair enough, that is a great offer BUT, they were SUPER strict. You could not miss a day and then do 2 lessons on one day. You couldn't do a lesson an hour after the close of day, you couldn't book a lesson but not take it and there were a few other things as well.
I don't think they have that offer anymore, but yeah, even the half refund or whatever it is is very strict.
I've found the custom decks option pretty useful for flashcards, but it takes aaages for a single card to be added to the deck
Yeah and it begs the question "why not just create an anki deck"
@CrimsonSun-n3i I downloaded anki yesterday haha
I feel like the minigames is what can separate Fluyo from the other apps as of now. Problem is that it is impossible to match with anyone.
that’s not the games problem..
It IS the game's problem because I tried this multple times in the first 5 days the game existed...I'm SURE many people were playing it and trying to find matches... I think the game lacks the sophisticated programming required to actually pair two players.
EVEN IF IT COULD... there's no way it's fast enough to actual have real time battles against other people. It'd be like playing CS2 when one player was on dial-up internet or something.
And if it really is that there simply isn't anyone else to play with, that's still the game's problem. A game with this much hype would have people playing it if it were any good.
Thank you for the brutally honest review.
Is it possible for a Kickstarter backer to get a refund? I feel like I've seriously been ripped off and the app failed to deliver on its promises. How can I go about getting a refund? Someone help me 😭😭😭
I don't think that's how Kickstarter works but I don't really know.
Sorry to hear it's been so disappointing.
That's the risk you take with a Kickstarter.
How much did you invest
No we don't, i've in fact asked but this was LONG ago like last year after the massive delay and AGAIN people are going to flame me but his health was wildly out of control and he was traveling the world for test that didn't exisit so i was thinking i put in about 6k (life time memberr ships for family members) to opt out of some of it and keep 2 accounts for my nephews
Anyways, story time over
Kickstarter stated that once a campaign meets a goal + ending date + 72 hours after all "Sales" are finalized
If you are a backer like me, its been like 3 years, i was told no back like 8 or 9 months after the KS closed, but now..nope
@@EndlessTravels I'm so sorry you invested so much and couldn't get any of it back. I noticed that he has done a lot of traveling for his health and I can't help but think that's where a lot of the money from the Kickstarter went. Because it certainly seems that didn't go into the app. It's such a shame
the dude always mocked duolingo, ends up replicating the shit and charging big bucks. lmfao
Duolingo is shit because of translation. 50% time wasted on english. ikenna 'the great polyglot' completely missed on fundamentals
Including slow load times etc., I'd say 95% of time on Fluyo is wasted to SOMETHING, and that would be a conservative estimate.
(Learning Spanish) Unfortunately, the words they teach are often awkward. Also the bugs make it infuriating, not a single wayfinder lesson has worked. Really wanted to like it too, but it just isn't a complete product. :(
where did 3 million go
I think there’s great potential for a game that teaches a language but I have idea how to do it properly. Something like an old gameboy adventure style where you get quests and have to solve puzzles or something could work but I think the only way to do it is basically make a simple game and then find out how to incorporate language learning into it without ruining the fun of the game. It seems most apps start with trying to teach you the language and then try to turn it into fun exercises that just aren’t fun, way too repetitive and usually way too easy to the point where you’re playing a boring game that doesn’t actually teach you much.
Another thing that's started to annoy me is the shameless theft of ideas from other existing apps; the creature index has been lifted straight out of Pokemon. Though, the most egregious example is the super passive aggressive notifications from your dolphin à la Duolingo - that's my least favourite feature of the owl app, why on earth would I want it here??!
There isn't an issue with it taking inspiration. Using animals to battle like Yu gi oh, digimon, yokai watch, dragon quest is not the issue (mind you all of these things took inspo off one another) The problem is how bad the implementation of the concept was.
Hey, idk if everyone else has this problem or I’m blind, but I can’t find where the “lesson” tab is. I picked the intermediate Japanese course because I am not that great at Japanese, but I can’t find the area where I can take the “lessons.” If there is a tab that I am missing than I would suppose there should’ve been a tutorial on how to navigate or a better UI.
I think ikenna’s idea was too ambitious. I remember him saying “this app is going to be as addictive as playing a video game you love”. For someone that never made a language learning app or a game, this is too much. Maybe he should’ve started with something more simple, like an app with basic courses for a few languages, or a vocabulary app
I really don't get it thou. He literally knows that the best way to learn is natural aquisition. So why did he not actually imply ANY ways of doing so? He also knows the method that Ankinis using and how even with paper flashcards you end up repeating the words you don't know well yet more often than thise xou already kinda know. Yet the flashcards will show me 2 words that are not cognants vs 8 that are basically the same word in both languages! How on earth am I supposed to actually learn those 2 new words at this rate?
"He literally knows that the best way to learn is natural aquisition."
Do you know where he said that? As some others in the comments section have pointed out, he's not really very fluent in any other language (at least, not by my definition of fluent).
@@daysandwords He wrote an e-book a while back called Fluency Made Easy where he outlined his language learning philosophy. He basically recommended a few programs to start, Pimsleur and Assimil, and then iTalki lessons and comprehensible input. It’s actually a pretty good roadmap to fluency for some people, and it’s largely the path I followed. I don’t think his prescription will work for all types of learners, but I think he basically gets how languages are learned. That’s why it was so disappointing to find that Fluyo was just an unwieldy vocab app
Oh, all the reviews I read of that book said it was a quick moneygrab with nothing useful at all.
@@daysandwords And now he’s released his long money grab with a few…. kinda useful things?
14:02 Music on an airline? Im so confused
They play advertisement/marketing songs when you take off and land, and one of the Thai Airways songs is literally the worst song I have ever heard. Like, ever.
@daysandwords Ohhh! 😂 I had that on Air China so I know what you mean! Thanks for the response, I've watched your content on and off for some years. Glad to see you're still at it and making great progress
💯
Only positive: “The music is not the worst” 😂
What gets me about Ikenna is how he slated other established learning apps to convince people that he was building something to floor them all, and, bugs aside, Fluyo is the worst learning experience I’ve had hands down.
Nah I did say that the multiple choice audio was good too, even if it was still too easy.
I was desperately hoping it would be an alternative to Anki, because I absolutely hate how bad Anki feels to use, but it seems that’s not to be…
Anki is literally perfect
What language is this for, Yggdras?
@@daysandwords Japanese! I use Wanikani for kanji, but Anki’s UI just feels really bad when I’ve tried to use it before.
@@feelingevaporated2912 Anki is about learning words without context
Fluyo is great ! It has really helped me with the fluency of my Russian swear words… and that is just from the login page ! I feel I can cus like a native now. However, I have developed this weird visceral hate of dolphins 🐬.
To me it's expecially frustrating how ikenna is very negative over the way Duolingo teaching languages and said he would make a better app, when apart of like a different UI it feels almost like the same experience imo.
Duolingo is much much better at the moment.