I Was Credited in a Video Game

Published on May 26, 2025 by Fabian Stadler

Many times I hear people philosophizing about publishing video games. Yet, for most it remains a dream, unless you explicitly follow a career as a game developer. Then again, sometimes weird coincidences happen. So now I’m credited in the video game Dice’n Goblins as German translator and play tester.

How did it come to that, you might ask? Last year, two friends revealed to me they were working on a game they want to publish for real. Up till then, I had played some of their games that they had submitted to game jams on itch.io. However, I never would have thought they would go the indie route. But there we are, and since the start of April, you can now officially buy Dice’n Goblins on Steam.

About the Game

So, what is Dice'n Goblins even? Like its quasi-predecessors, it is a dungeon crawler game developed by Tsukumogami Software offering full 3D graphics, using the Godot Engine. Some readers might know classic RPGs like Wizardry: fairly basic elements, navigating through a cavern, encountering fierce enemies, dying lots. Similarly, but less difficult, in Dice'n Goblins you traverse a grid-based dungeon, encounter monsters, collect items and assemble powerful armor builds.

In Dice’n Goblins you fight with dice that you get for wearing certain armor and weapons.

The main character is Gobby, a young goblin adventurer that admires an old tale about the Goblin Phineas who should have flown to the moon. But instead of being able to live in peace, the goblins get attacked by the Builders and have to flee. In order to find a way against those, Gobby explores the ever-growing Dungeon which slowly devours the world.

As hinted in the premise, the story of the game is fairly entertaining without trying to be too complex. There are some major plot-twists in the late game, though. Throughout the story, the game also gets more challenging. But with its paperlike and anime-like drawing style, the game is a fit for a younger but also more experienced players.

A Funny Bug Hunt

The first time I got to play the game was when only the basic concept and the first few levels existed. The game was well-made and definitely an improvement to former titles by my friends. But it lacked a lot of elements that were only introduced recently. However, the real play testing started later when most of the game was done and the demo was to be published.

Of course, the game had lots of bugs of which I found quite a bunch. Play testing a game feels actually a bit like finding Easter eggs with the dilemma that my friend had to fix the bugs.

Like in this dialog with my favorite character Thief Mouse, there were often missing text references.

And you also want an enjoyable experience and not play for an hour only so that your game freezes when encountering the next boss enemy. Or being stuck three hours at a boss because a feature did not work you did not even know about. Which happened. But it also was an interesting challenge.

One of my funniest bug encounters was being stuck in a stone during a battle.

On the bright side, there were not too many critical bugs or ones that were too hard to fix. Therefore, I believe we could polish the game into a decent state before the determined publishing date.

Translating Is Hard But Fun

As for the translation, I wanted to help where I can, making the project a major success. Which was quite fun, trying to stay near the original but also thinking how you would say certain things in German. I started making a small glossary for certain common words. For example, I stuck with ‘Goblin’ instead of ‘Kobold’ because I felt the latter was more common to older tales and not newer installments. Similarly, I kept the word ‘dungeon’ because it became more common recently in the fantasy genre.

Often, I looked up how things were translated in tabletop game manuals. Especially hard to translate are wordplays. So here my creativity was also requested. I hear people talking about how AI is in high demand in the localization industry sometimes. But having tried this, which works only partially, if at all, there’s lots more you have to think about to deliver a good translation.

Try It Out Now

All in all, I’m proud to have been part of this project, although it cost me some evenings on regular working days. By playing the game it grew to me lots and I hope it also will to players that try it out. Here I’d like to thank my friends Seto & ColdEmber for doing the major work and giving me the chance to be part of it. It might have been a long and tedious run, but you finally made it!

For anyone who’s interested, look at the Steam page, wishlist the game and try it out of course. Especially if you like combining different effects and trying to find new strategies to advance. The cozy atmosphere and adorable characters will provide you with a good time.

If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to write me a mail or reach out to me on any of my social media channels.