For our final project of the Website Localization class, we chose a Javascript game to localize, and the name of the game is 2048. 

Why 2048?

So why do we choose this game? Well, there are several reasons. First of all, 2048 was an immensely popular game a few years ago. It is simple, yet fun to play. Second, there are more than one versions of 2048 (probably more than a dozen out there). So it is highly customizable. We also intended to do some customization of our own, in addition to localization, to make our project truly unique.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The most common 2048 game you may have seen looks like the image on the left. There are a sequence of numbers — 2, 4, 8, 16, and so on. You can add the numbers up until you get a 2048. But the source version of our 2048 game is quite creative, it is using a number of cupcakes instead of the numbers. So it looks kind of tasty.

Our Initial Thoughts

As we were localizing into Chinese, we want the localized version to be really China-specific. So when starting to work on our project, we intended to do the following:

• • We wanted to introduce some Chinese elements into the localized game, and one of the most distinguishable elements of Chinese culture is the Chinese Zodiac, which is a repeating cycle of 12 years, with each year being represented by an animal and its reputed attributes. In order, the 12 animals are: Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, Pig. One of the benefits of doing so is not just that it better appeals to the Chinese game players, but also that the 12 zodiacal animals have a sequence that cupcakes don’t have.
  • We wanted to embed Chinese Red, which represents joy, passion, and enthusiasm, in the background image. And as the Chinese new year of the Pig is around the corner, we chose this background image with the pig at the center.

• We wanted to insert a music player into the html page so that when a user opens the page and plays the game, there will always be music played at the background. And if the user does not like the music or think the volume is too high, he/she will be given the option to turn it off or turn the volume down.

What We Did to Make It Happen?

• We implemented 24 Ways to localized the strings of the game. As it is a simple game, we did not find a lot of strings (4 actually), and some of the texts are in the HTML. So it is not a hard work to get all the texts translated.
• We were lucky to have found a set of cute Chinese zodiac animals’ images. We put them in the img folder where the cupcakes’ images are placed, and we created a separate CSS file for the language we were going to localize into, which is Chinese. Then in the new CSS file we replaced the URLs that were linked to the cupcakes to those linked to the zodiac animals’ images. 
• We set the above-mentioned picture as the background image of our localized game in the CSS file, and embedded some background music code in the Chinese HTML file.
• We added a language switcher to enable switch between the two versions of the 2048 game.

The Outcome

We call our localized game “2048 Chinese Zodiac”, or in Chinese “十二生肖版2048”. Next, with the following video, I would like to walk you through the localized and customized version of our game.

Link to our localized game: http://static.tlmdev.com/2048-Cupcakes-master/index.html.