Untranslated indie gems — playing narrative games that never got localized

Narrative games made by individuals or small studios — indie ADVs, text adventures, narrative puzzles — are one of the cases where screen OCR plus a translation tool fits best.

The reason is simple: good games exist that don’t have an official translation.

Why indies don’t get localized

Commercial localization isn’t cheap. Translating into Japanese, Chinese, or Korean each typically costs anywhere from a few thousand to tens of thousands of dollars per language. For an indie studio’s budget, sometimes everything beyond English just doesn’t fit.

Some titles get fan translation patches, but those depend on community goodwill, so they don’t reach every game. There are quite a lot of indie games on Steam that you might hear are great but can’t actually read in your language.

That’s where a translation tool earns its place.

Why translation tools work well in this genre

Indie narrative games tend to share a few traits: text is the experience (reading is the main thing you’re doing), the screen pauses (the game advances when you advance the text, presentation tends to be slow), and the UI is clean (readability over decorative fonts and busy layouts). Most of the conditions OCR likes line up.

Across this category, the bulk of indie ADVs read in Playto without much effort. Standard typefaces and click-to-advance pacing both help.

Where to look

A few rules of thumb for finding untranslated indie titles.

Steam reviews. Games with high ratings but very few reviews in your language are likely to be untranslated. The review-language ratios on the store page make this easy to spot.

itch.io. Many indie devs ship there before (or instead of) Steam. Worth checking if a game has a Steam version before buying.

Steam tags. Filters like “short” and “text-heavy” surface the kind of narrative-leaning titles where this approach works.

Subtypes within the genre

“Indie narrative” is a broad term. Text adventures are an excellent fit — static screens with lots of text are the best case. Walking sims are a good fit — environmental text is in fixed positions, though voiced ones tend to have longer lines. Narrative puzzles are also a good fit — reading puzzle clues and NPC conversations through a translation tool works well. Narrative-leaning indie roguelikes are mixed — the play tempo can outrun OCR during combat.

Going in with the right expectations

Playing a “good but untranslated” game with a translation tool is more enjoyable without expecting perfect output.

AI translation can’t fully grasp context, so poetic prose or stories with intricate setups have moments where the translated text alone doesn’t carry the meaning. Reading the original alongside the translation, and using the dictionary popup to verify a tricky word, is the practical way to do this without losing what’s good about the work.

Reaching games that didn’t get localized is where translation tools provide the most cultural value.