You can learn Korean with video games, but you have to choose carefully. Plenty of games let you read in Korean, far fewer let you hear it, and a text-only game is mostly reading practice. Below are games with Korean text or voices, what each one is like for a learner, and what none of them can do for you.
Why games, and why it’s harder in Korean
A game gives you hours of Korean with a reason to follow it. You want to know what the character just said because the next quest depends on it, and that keeps you reading long after a textbook would have lost you.
The catch is supply. When Game Developer looked at the Korean console market in 2010, consoles made up only 15% of Korea’s game market, and only 22 of 80 PS3 titles and 12 of 53 Xbox 360 titles had been released there with Korean localization. Nintendo was the exception, translating everything as company policy. Things have improved since, and all five games below let you read in Korean. Korean voice acting is still something to check game by game. On a Steam store page, languages with full audio are marked with an asterisk, so that’s the first place to look.
Five games in Korean, rated for learners
We haven’t found a reliable published breakdown of which speech levels each game’s Korean script uses, so we haven’t guessed. As you play, notice who ends sentences with the formal -습니다, who uses the everyday polite -요, and who drops to the bare endings friends use with each other, which Korean calls 반말. Wikipedia’s page on Korean speech levels is a clear introduction. The level ratings below are our judgment from each game’s features, not a test.
Stardew Valley. You farm, fish and get to know a small town. Korean became an official language in patch 1.3.36 in March 2019, and the Steam page lists Korean text but no full audio in any language, so this is reading only. The daily rhythm helps. You’re meant to talk to villagers once a day, and their lines become friendlier as the friendship grows. Level: upper beginner (around A2) with a dictionary open, because you keep meeting the same people and hearing from them in small daily doses.
Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. You can play both games in Korean. There’s no voice acting, even in the big story scenes. Level: A2 to B1. Battles repeat the same menu words until they stick, but you get no listening practice at all.
Dave the Diver. It’s the first game from Mintrocket, a South Korean studio owned by Nexon. You dive by day and run a sushi restaurant by night. Steam lists Korean text and no full audio, and the store page promises “a story full of in-jokes, spoofs, and other humorous scenes.” Level: B1. The daily loop is easy to follow, but jokes and parodies are hard to get in a second language.
Genshin Impact. An open-world fantasy RPG with Korean among its four voice-over languages. You set text and voice separately, so you can hear Korean while reading Korean, or hear Korean while reading your own language. Since version 4.8 a Dialogue Review button lets you reread a story segment and replay the voice lines. Of the games here, it’s the only one where we found a documented dialogue log. Level: B1 and up, lower if you lean on the text in your own language at first.
Stellar Blade. This one comes from Shift Up, a Korean studio, and Steam marks Korean with full audio. It’s a fast action game, so a lot of your listening happens mid-fight. Level: B2. You’ll hear natural Korean, but it won’t slow down or wait for you.
What a normal game can’t do for you
Every one of these was made for people who already speak Korean, or for players who’ll read it in their own language. The script isn’t pitched to your level, and nothing in the game notices when you’re lost. The text-only games give you no listening, and the voiced ones don’t slow down.
They also can’t ask you anything. You read and you listen, but you never have to answer a Korean speaker, so you can finish a whole game without once forming a sentence.
The biggest gap for Korean is speech levels. A game shows you a character using 반말 with a friend and polite speech with a stranger, but it won’t tell you why, and it won’t catch you when you get it wrong, because you never speak. Which level you use with whom depends on age, relationship and setting, and in a game you only ever watch other people make that choice.
How a game built for learners handles this
At mossyrune we make games for people learning a language, and Korean is one of the languages you can play in. The idea behind them is what we call comprehensible gaming: speech pitched a little above your level, and a world where understanding changes what happens.
Take the dungeon. You’re stuck with an old prisoner, a nervous merchant, a dramatic ghost and a bored guard, and they speak to you only in Korean. You get out by bribing the guard or working out a three-number combination, and both depend on what they tell you. The characters gesture, hold up props and change expression, so the scene carries some of the meaning before you’ve caught every word.
You talk back, by voice or by typing. Each character has their own personality and way of speaking, so you hear different registers from different people in context. When you flatter the ghost, the situation asks you for a respectful register. If you want help, the interpreter can show translations, grammar notes, pragmatic tips and reply suggestions, and you can switch any of it on or off during a scene. On beginner, a character who hears a clumsy sentence says it back correctly and carries on, with no correction list and no score. The game judges what you meant rather than your exact wording.
If speaking Korean is too much at first, you can reply in a language you already know. That’s on by default on beginner and intermediate and off on advanced, where you can switch it on. You can slow any line to 0.5×, replay any turn, and save words to your notes mid-scene. Every playthrough is saved to your notes automatically, including the translations you peeked at and the hints you used.
It won’t give you a complete rulebook for speech levels, and we don’t claim it does. What it gives you is practice answering Korean speakers, with help on hand when you need it.
Use both
Commercial games give you volume. Genshin and Stellar Blade give you hours of real Korean voices, and Stardew and Pokémon give you daily reading. A game built for learners gives you the part those can’t, which is having to understand and answer.
The games on mossyrune run in the browser, including on phones. A free account comes with 20 credits, enough for one full game, and after that you can pick a monthly plan or a credit pack that doesn’t expire. See how the games work.