Sad as it may be, yet another Ice-Pick Lodge game seems to suffer from poor localisation. The polish version of the game, published by Techland, seems completely untested.

The first problem I encountered was as early as... the intro. Specifically, the opening poem is sut off mid-sentence.

Having taken a look at the game's archives, I have found that the movies for Tension are stored in separate files for audio and video. What seems to have happened here, is that the localisation team recorded the translated version of the audio file, without accounting for the video's length.

Thus, the video ends quicker than the spoken poem, and cuts to the menu with pretty much a quarter of the poem left out.

I'd be willing to let this one error slide, as the poem appears in printed form in the bonus materials, but alas...

The second problem appeared right after the tutorial: when I gave colour to the Sister's willow, she scorns me: "You were supposed to colour the glyph of alms (note: my own translation, anyway it's the one that looks like the greek alpha). Now, the colours just went away..."

This doesn't make sense, since I know I did it correctly - the tree lit up beautifully with the colour I used (just like in the trailers), and moreover I immediately got another comment from the Sister, telling me I did well. When I exited the Sister's "chamber" and proceeded to a garden, I got the offending quote each time I coloured a tree.

By then, I've had enough of it. Really - colouring the willow is the first thing you do in the game, and colouring gardens looks to be a major part of the gameplay. There's no way the localisation was tested.

Yesterday morning, I wrote about the problem on the official polish board - there's been no response yet, even though I know the community manager from Techland visited the forum.

I'm really disappointed, since Tension seems like a great game...

The Glyth you mention is called Donor, and I can tell it is a bit moody most times, so be careful when you draw it.

There is no bug there, it is a game mechanic.

If you draw donor wrongly it will still light up the tree, just not with the ammont of colour you gave it. Example: you draw donor spending 50 lympha, but if you draw it wrongly it will only supply the tree with 20, wasting the other 30 into nothingness.

If you try to draw donor in the ground, you will noticed that effect if you draw it wrongly.

My advice is just use a new game to perfect your donor glyth drawing by using it on the ground. After you get more used to it, start a new real game.

So, don't blame the localization team

Im coming back from poland tomorrow, giving tension a try. It cost only 20$ and seemed like the best idea at the time, botched translation or not. Weird stuff though, the game is so poetic that I cannot understand the archaic words! One, kuloczatka (a glyph) even my grandparents didnt understand! Seems like something derriving from ball or sphere, though. Hopefully the language of tension is more than mere words.

I'd just download the Russian version and use my English subs...
Honestly. Also, we don't get anything from these sold copies, unfortunatelly.
Oh, I have a better idea. If you don't like it, could you send it to us? And we'll send something cool in exchange.

Wouldn't it be better for him to put the English subs on the polish version? Perhaps de desync glitch from the eng sub on the russian version is gone.

I actually thought of a way to fix that bug. Can you help me test them? I'll send em tomorrow.

Of course, Tension is still installed on my machine and will be for a long time

Lxr, you mean if I don't like the game? The translation? It can't be that bad, can it? Is it the censorship you're thinking about? The subs won't help against that, will it?

Still waiting

The fix didn't work.
Well, Its OK to try, I guess. I was worrying about the quality of translation.

Now that you talk about it, I remember another bug with the translation.

The poems of the capthers, cept the 1st one, all go off screen (1440x900 here) mostly due to huge sentences that take up more space than the length of screen.

From my point of view, simply adding a few line breaks (\n) in the middle of the longer sentences should solve that problem, although I'm not sure what possible repercussions that might have.

Will fix!

http://technopolis.polityka.pl/2008/ten ... cenzja-gry - can anyone tell in a few words, is this review good or not? Score says "6/6 !!!" so I kind of guess what the general mood is.

What that review states is the game is a great piece of art that isn't for those that like crazy action games. but for those who enjoy artistic games and like their games deeper than normal. He also stated the game is fantastic overall.

Yup, that seems right on the spot with Tension

Thank you. I kind of suspected that, but wanted to make sure.
Welcome to the forum!

I can't find a very good online translator, but here are a few words that Poltran picked out of the last paragraphs:

ingeniously... Rembrandt... enormous... hypnotic and fascinating... strange... beautiful

Thanks for the warm welcome

That review sure does use some sophisticated wording, even for me that was a challenge to read.