Today, November 7, 2026, is one of the most important days in the history of Basajaun Games. There are three big reasons why, and this is the second among them.
For the first time in history if I’m not mistaken, a classic-style RPG has been officially localized into Basque. And said RPG is none other than Looking Inward, the incredible and introspective adventure developed by Crooked Beaker. (And, in case anyone was wondering, yes, we’ve localized it into Spanish as well.)
Looking Inward is a turn-based role-playing game inspired by cult classics like Earthbound or the Shin Megami Tensei series, as well as by modern gems like Undertale. Travel a world made up by your own psyche while you try to find out what’s causing everything to collapse, and you might just find more about yourself along the way.
Violet’s commitment
The person behind the pseudonym Crooked Beaker is Violet, an American programmer and artist. When I reached out to her with the idea of translating her game into Spanish and Basque, her immediate reaction was one of utter enthusiasm. Localizing Looking Inward may be a tempting idea in and of itself, but the most surprising part was how thrilled she was when I told her all about Basque. In just a matter of minutes, she went from not having ever heard about that language—which isn’t unexpected either—to being oh-so-pumped to make her humble game the first ever RPG to have been officially localized into Basque. The idea of taking a project that already meant so much to her and making it special in a brand new way made her feel very proud. And, without further ado, we jumped right into it.
But there was a tiny inconvenience: she had never thought about translating her game and the project was in no way ready to accommodate different languages.
The process was long and unexpectedly difficult for a myriad of reasons. Many people would’ve thrown in the towel when faced with the second or third problem, thinking that the effort wasn’t worth it, but Violet never faltered. Instead, she took every hurdle in the way as a new challenge. She remade the entire text system so the game could run in multiple languages. She redrew the text fonts to create all the special characters that Spanish and Basque needed. In order to make sure the quality of the translation wouldn’t suffer, she manually modified tens of scenes to give me more room to write. Even the user interface was altered, redesigned and resized SEVERAL TIMES throughout the translation and testing process to make sure everything worked perfectly in every language.
Honestly, Looking Inward has become one of my favourite projects so far, and it’s mostly thanks to how incredibly hard Violet has worked to make it happen. Working with her has been delightful and I can’t wait for everyone to be able to play it too. If everything goes well, the localized demo should be available on itch later today.
More than just a translation
But translations aren’t the only thing we’re bringing to the table! Since this was clearly not enough, Violet has doubled down on her efforts to expand the demo EVEN FURTHER.
The difficulty of the demo has been completely rebalanced in order to make this first chapter of the story more cohesive with the following ones.
On top of that, the soundtrack has been expanded and retouched. And, even though you won’t hear anything from her in this first chapter, my dearly beloved Crescendo, who made Ciao Nonna, in now part of the music team and has composed a few bangers that you’ll be able to listen to in the future. (And yes, I introduced them to each other, because I’ll never lose a chance to give work to my friends and Cre deserves it.)
For more info about all of this, you can check out this post written by Violet.
Jokoteknia IX
Being able to announce Looking Inward at Jokoteknia’s 9th edition was the result of a chain of beautiful coincidences. By the way, if you’re reading this as soon as it was published, the event is happening right now!
This year, the good peeps from Game Erauntsia (et al.) have elevated the event to new heights by giving us Basque developers a space where we can showcase our projects. Unveiling this secret today wasn’t my original plan, but Violet and I decided a while ago that we would introduce the new translations of Looking Inward at the same time as Basajaun Games’ first original project, called KIROL: The Influence of the Hell King. It just so happens both are RPGs, both are available in Basque, and both Violet and I work on both of them (she’s the main programmer of KIROL!), so it felt like it made sense.
Our original plan was to announce both projects last September, but we weren’t able to have KIROL ready in time. Therefore, it was worth waiting until November 7 to make the announcement so we could showcase a bunch of new stuff at Jokoteknia, all at the same time.
Thanks to all of this (and more), what could’ve been just a collection of rehashed projects has turned into something truly special. It’s also made my stress levels skyrocket due to everything I’ve had to prepare and due to the fear of failing miserably, but I think the sacrifice was worth it. 😆
More news
As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, there are three reasons why November 7 has turned out to be so special. If you want to find out what the other two are, take a look at the other two articles that have been published today: the first one is about PANIK, the first Spanish game I’ve had a chance to localize into Basque since Basajaun Games was created (blog post only available in Spanish and Basque), while the second one is about our aforementioned first original project: KIROL.