English patch for Father World
A downloadable mod
Father World is a 1994 South Korean cinematic platformer released for MS-DOS with a strong emphasis on narrative. It's often described as being like Prince of Persia or Flashback, but also having it's own unique aspects that differentiate it from those earlier games. From the translator's perspective, it is a lost gem of the 1990s with an imaginative story, sharp writing, and pixel art.
Dive into the readme.txt to get the epic backstory, but you play as 17 year old Yang Min who is in search of his father after an otherworldly event has led to his disappearance in Yeouido. What does "Father World" mean you ask? Well, to learn this, you must play through to the end of the game and beat the final boss to find out.
At launch, the developers had hopes of being enough of a hit to bring forth a sequel but it's believed that sales were insufficient in the domestic market, and so the company (TWiM - The World is Mine) moved on to other projects. Run FWTEAM.BAT to see a photo of the dev team.
Notes on translation - this is not a localization:
The translation has intentionally focused on preserving idioms and references as best as possible as this is a South Korean game taking place in South Korea. Even in the first encounter, one will see an implied reference to honorifics by title, which appear a few times over the course of the game -- including a reference to a South Korean social class Baekjong by way of a boss encounter. By contrast, localization of media often includes replacing the expressions, idioms and even the objects referred to in the original -- which was not done here.
Machine translation from a variety of sources was used, with manual verification of possible intended meanings by researching comparative use of words and phrasing in other South Korean texts and blog posts available via the internet.
Latest version: 20231106 (Nov 6th, 2023)
Download either the ENGPATCH.EXE or ENGPATCH.ZIP (the latter contains the former).
Requires a copy of the game. Put ENGPATCH.EXE in the main folder next to FW.EXE and run ENGPATCH.EXE under DOSBox/DOS. Then read through readme.txt for the backstory and notes. You can use "more readme.txt" and hit space to page through it.
Note: The game does reward exploration to find who you need to meet and where to go, through reading dialogue.
P.S. About the save game slots. Save names use Korean characters for letters but not numbers. I may patch that later. For now use numbers instead of letters, e.g. just keep incrementing the number for your save game 1,2,3..21,22,23...33..50,51,52....
Translation + patcher: gamedevjeff
Original game crash fixes: sonneveld
Vertical cursive Hangul (Library book scene) transcription: Alpalpaca
Play testing (including all endings): pixel_turkey
MT-32 OST:
SC-88 Pro OST:
Download
Install instructions
Requires a copy of the game. Put ENGPATCH.EXE in the main folder next to FW.EXE and run ENGPATCH.EXE under DOSBox/DOS. Then read through readme.txt use "more.exe readme.txt" for the backstory and notes.
If you need hints, there are 5 hint files to avoid spoiling too much:
HINT1.TXT, HINT2.TXT, HINT3.TXT, HINT4.TXT, HINT5.TXT
If you've never played the game before run FWSETUP.EXE to choose your soundcard (Sound Blaster) and if you have MT-32/SCC (midi) setup choose that option. If you select no midi, the game will default to Adlib music which has its own charm.
