Blogs - DrSplutterworth

Despite taking longer than anticipated, my Hiragana and Katakana game's alpha demo is now live!
I added 2 difficulty settings, so that beginners could ease into learning the kana and more experienced readers would still be able to find a challenge.

I also fixed a few bugs behind the scenes; mostly involving mundane issues like horizontal tile alignment.

My most interesting achievement is, in my opinion, the Kana Slicer minigame which plays similarly to Fruit Ninja.

My 10-level demo is now live on itch.io, and is playable in the browser.

My next objective is drawing up a plan for the 'Minimum Viable Product' version of the game; which will be version 1.0 of the full PC release on Itch.
The game's next iteration will feature more lessons in Hiragana and Katakana, smoother animations and a relaxing oriental soundtrack.

After another productive week, I am almost ready to put Let's Learn Japanese! out for alpha testing.

The game now has another play mode with which players can practice the Hiragana and Katakana alphabets. It's a simple multiple-choice quiz, which shows the right answer whether the player has got it or not. As the scored part of the programme, both the quiz and match-3 games now have score-bars and life bars, which go up and down depending on the player's right/wrong answers.

The Hiragana levels are now more numerous; now consisting of 12 levels to learn every group of Hiragana character. I also researched some trivia facts; like mentioning now-unused Hiragana characters.
All to make the experience as complete, engaging and informative as possible!
The Match-3 portion of the game also has some more enhancements. Now, players can click the Hint button if they are struggling. If there is really nothing the player can do, there is also a Shuffle button to reset the board.

My final goal accomplished this week was to make a level-win animation. I came up with something simple, but which I think is pretty fun nonetheless.

My main task for next week will be polishing what I have at the moment, in preparation to release the game's alpha demo.

If you're interested in playing the demo, join us on the Let's Learn Japanese! Hiragana and Katakana Discord group.

The game progresses!

Over the past 6 days, I have added 10 more levels to the game.
Now, players can learn 40 of the 46 basic Hiragana characters.
There are also a few practice levels so that they'll be able to reinforce knowledge as they learn more.

I got some great feedback via the game's Discord group about the colour scheme and UI, changing the font to make it more readable. The homepage also has a cute anime mascot, perfect to create that kawaii Japanese look!

Another very useful comment was about the audio.
Now, whenever we scroll over a Japanese character, we'll be able to hear it pronounced from an audio file.

After acting on this early feedback, I continued with my development plan.
I added a tile-flip game, where players will be able to practice matching Hiragana and roman-alphabet characters.
I also began experimenting with a Match-3 game involving the characters.
That's still in its early stage, but looks like it could be a beneficial and fun way to practice.

My next week of development will involve writing more 'levels' to learn more characters, adding extra sound and animation to boost the game's production value, and reaching out to those learning Japanese to build a community around the game before I begin beta testing.

If you're interested in getting involved with testing this game, join the Let's Learn Japanese! Discord group.

Having just returned from a wonderful year in Japan, I decided to try making a game to teach the Japanese language to others.
One of the scary things about the language is the huge array of characters to learn. With 2 sets of 46 characters in Hiragana and Katakana, Japanese can seem intimidating.

And so, Let's Learn Japanese! was conceived. With a simple UI and some cute anime characters, the game will teach the Japanese alphabet while getting players excited for all things Japan.

I first came up with a catchy image for the game's page on my developer website.
While it was only meant to be a placeholder, I found the simple colour scheme and typeface good enough to use in the game itself.

After a little experimentiation, I settled on the Phaser.io Javascript game engine. Having already used Javascript for a few mobile projects (see website), this game engine will give me audio and animation functionality while keeping my JS skills useful. I quickly put together a minimalist UI.

My next task was in deciding how to 'teach' the 92 characters. A logical choice was keeping the Hiragana and Katakana sections separate. I then separated the alphabets into different groups of characters, which will be learned by playing through various levels in each section.

At the end of this week, Let's Learn Japanese! has some basic screens which present the characters and explain a little about them. There is also a drag-and-drop game, where Japanese characters are matched with their Roman-alphabet ('Romaji') equivalent.

If you'd like to help shape the game, come and join me on the Let's Learn Japanese! Discord server.

Thanks for reading,

Dr. Cyril Splutterworth