おはよう / こんにちは / こんばんは !
I posted about our demo here about 10 months ago (I thought it was only 6 months ago… gosh did time go by fast). [Here’s a link to that post](https://www.reddit.com/r/LearnJapanese/comments/13w6ym8/the_demo_for_the_japanese_vocab_learning_game_ive/) if you’re curious. The game itself went through a name change (it used to be called “Tango Senshi”, now it’s “Kagami”)
It’s a retro top down RPG style game with turn based combat, similar to the original pokemon games or original Final Fantasy games. We get a lot of Stardew Valley comparisons in regards to art style and Undertale comparisons in regards to the writing, which I will say, we’re probably not at that level, but both are big inspirations.
There are some core things we didn’t change about the game from the initial post we made 10 months ago, specifically the multiple choice tests to “gain or lose advantage” in the turn based battles, BUT we made a lot of other changes thanks to the responses we got in our first post and the responses from the feedback forms of our demo/the game in Early Access.
This game was meant to be an introduction to vocab, and still is, but it evolved into having a Kanji Mode thanks to much of the feedback received, which changes all the vocab from Hiragana to Kanji in the tests before battles and in a flashcard game we have in the menu called “The Dojo” (which I will emphasize is optional and not required to play the game, but you do get rewarded with special tokens).
We also added Kanji to all the cards that “pop up” when you find them in the world, as well as in your collection that you can view in the menu. The collection also includes some extra information depending on the word.
We also just updated the game to have an optional new area that we’ve dubbed “Kanji Island” that players can access around the mid-game to learn 52 of the most used radicals and get a rundown on what they are, their positions, and their general meaning.
10 months ago when we initially posted here, we didn’t think we had the time to add Kanji because we had a whole world to build and we’re still kinda new at this “making games” thing. This whole project started because I didn’t want to put post-it notes all over my room to learn vocab, so we made a video game to put them in instead.
Over almost a year and a half, we’ve gotten ever so slightly better at doing stuff, and we were able to make some of the changes that we initially thought we would never be able to make and created a larger experience than I ever thought we would create, which includes a story (for better or worse), way too many silly items to mess with your stats, way too much animation, and almost 20 minigames throughout the world that go over Hiragana, Katakana, and different vocab to vary up the learning even more.
We know this is probably not everyone’s cup of tea when it comes to gameplay style, learning style, or level of knowledge, especially on this subreddit which is chock full of experienced learners that have no interest in the basics, and that’s OK! We just wanted to share it with you all because this community helped a lot in giving us both feedback and encouragement when we started on this journey, and pushed us to make our game better. We tried really hard to make the funnest, silliest, most interesting, fairly thoughtful, and most game-y learning game that teaches a decent introduction to Japanese instead of being just another phone app wearing a game skin. (no offense to those btw, just not our style)
Here’s the trailer if you want to see it without having to click on a link:
https://reddit.com/link/1c2jtl3/video/lku440d014uc1/player
[Here’s the link to the Steam Page](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2340320/Kagami_An_Odyssey_in_Japanese_Language_Learning/) if you’re interested.
We’re going to be leaving Early Access pretty soon because we need to start on our next project, but wanted to share it with this community before doing so to get any last minute feedback or perspectives. We also plan on porting to the Nintendo Switch once everything is said and done with the steam version.
Also also, we didn’t get flagged when we initially posted 10 months ago, but I’m not here to spam or anything like that and I will take this down if requested.
TLDR; Been working on a Japanese vocab game, now it’s almost done, has a kanji mode, an area to learn most common radicals, lots of minigames, and a story, all thanks to a lot of feedback from this community.
Links to the previous post and to the game’s Steam page are in the giant wall of text.
ありがとう ございます
Thank you!!!
:3
by IconoclastGames