Back in August, PCG's Lincoln Carpenter reported on one of modern life's little issues, in this case double-checking that machine translation tools are accurate. Turin-based developer Paolo Nicoletti released a demo for his game The Crazy Hyper-Dungeon Chronicles on Japanese Steam after using machine tools to translate the text: and ended up listing the game as "Kuso Dungeon" which means "Shitty Dungeon" or "Crap Dungeon".
The game was released on Steam last week and, speaking to Game*Spark, Nicoletti says this was his most memorable moment in development. "Definitely the 'Shitty Dungeon Incident,'" laughs Nicoletti. "When we released the demo on Steam, it didn't have a professional Japanese translation yet. As a result, the title of this game was mistakenly localized as 'Shitty Dungeon.'"
Pictures of the game's Steam page and title quickly went viral on Japanese social media, before spreading even more widely.
"Everyone was laughing," says Nicoletti, "and honestly, I was laughing like crazy too! It was a completely unintentional incident, but it garnered a lot of attention for the game and caused a huge increase in wishlists. It was accidental marketing at its finest!
"The funny thing is that they were laughing at the name, not the game, which they actually appreciated and commented on positively."
Nicoletti, who appropriately enough works under the studio name Fix-a-Bug, did subsequently correct the name. The Crazy Hyper-Dungeon Chronicles is now available and sitting at "Mostly Positive" reviews on Steam, with its slightly wacky humour and old-school sensibilities landing with plenty of folks.
"Some people told me that it reminded them of the feeling of 'everything being a discovery' they had when they played older games," says Nicoletti. "But the most memorable messages came from players who told me that it made them laugh out loud. To me, there's no greater compliment than that."
The name will, unsurprisingly, not be changing back, even if it did lead to some minor viral success. After all, as Nicoletti says, some things are more important: "I can't tell my mom 'Hey Mom, the name of the game I made is Shitty Dungeon!'"
