Seoulvivor: Speak Korean

You're being overcharged. The driver is waiting. Say something. Out loud. In Korean.

Seoulvivor is a survival roleplay game for speaking Korean when it actually matters. You talk — out loud, into the microphone — to an AI playing someone in Seoul who wants something from you. A convenience store clerk at 2am. An immigration officer. A landlord. A professor you need a favour from. Every quest is a short, real situation with a complication you weren't told about, and the only way out is to keep talking.

This is not a flashcard app. There are already very good ones, and this doesn't try to replace them. It handles the part they can't: the moment you know the words and still can't say them, because someone is looking at you and waiting.

WHAT A QUEST LOOKS LIKE

— You get a briefing: who you're talking to, what you need, and a couple of phrases a competent person would reach for. — You speak. The AI answers in Korean, in the register that character would actually use — a professor doesn't talk to you the way a market vendor does. — Something goes wrong. The meter has been running since before you got in. The form needs a document nobody mentioned. You have to handle it. — You get out of it, or you don't.

THE RECEIPT

Afterwards the app prints a graded receipt. Three scores, 0–100:

LISTENING — did you understand what was actually said, or did you nod along? SPEAKING — was the Korean correct, and was it the right level of polite for that person? NUNCHI (눈치) — did you read the room?

Nunchi is the one no other app grades, and it's the one that gets foreigners in trouble. Perfect grammar at the wrong register is still a mistake, and Korean has more ways to make it than most languages. The receipt tells you when you were rude, when you were stiff, and when you were fine.

You also get: the native-speaker version of everything you fumbled, your own audio played back against it, and a shareable clip of the run.

THE PASSPORT

Progress is a passport collecting visa stamps.

C-3 TOURIST — getting overcharged, ordering, kiosks, asking directions, getting into places D-2 STUDENT — alien registration, the professor's office, an MT drinking game, group projects E-7 WORKER — the company dinner you want to leave, bad news you have to deliver, the office coffee run F-4 RESIDENT — landlords, deposits, the bank, tax, relatives who ask why you aren't married yet

Chapters unlock on competence, not on grinding: clear the core quests of one chapter and the next opens. Retrying can never lower a grade you already earned — your best is kept, always.

SIX KINDS OF DIFFICULT

Transaction. Comprehension. Official procedure. Social. Asking a favour. And conflict — objecting, refusing, holding your ground. Most learners are good at one and hopeless at another, and don't find out which until it is happening. The core path forces all six, so you can't advance by ordering coffee sixty times.

FREE AND PREMIUM

Free: 3 quests a day, resetting at midnight Korea time. The tutorial, the tourist chapter's core quests, and a taste of student life. No account required to start.

Premium ($19.99/month): the full catalogue across all four visa tiers, 10 quests a day, and every future chapter as it ships.

Cancel any time in your Apple ID settings.

BEFORE YOU BUY

— iPhone only, iOS 18.6 or later. A microphone and an internet connection are required. — You'll need enough Korean to form a sentence. This is speaking practice, not a first lesson. — Some scenarios involve drinking culture — an MT drinking game, a company dinner — because declining a drink politely is a real skill in Korea. — Your recording is uploaded so a server can transcribe and grade it, then deleted once processed. Google Gemini does the transcribing and grading. Recordings are never used to train models, and what's kept afterwards is your score and grade, not a transcript.

Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/ Questions: jamie@grapplelabs.dev