Do you play any Japanese learning games? Do you find them enjoyable and/or helpful in your learning?

9 comments

1. I just play regular games in Japanese. I think it’s very helpful to interact with the language in such a way.

2. just play regular games that interest you in japanese and look up words you dont know rather than playing some rubbish “gamified” stuff made by dekinai gaijin for other dekinai gaijin. voiced visual novels and any games with furigana that interest you should be a good starting point once u have a thousand odd words and basic grammar under ur belt

3. Like the others have said, games for natives are absolutely fantastic. Games contrived to teach a non-native, however, usually aren’t particularly great, especially if it’s some app that tries to teach anything else other than Japanese specifically.

4. I’ve heard good things about Slime Forest which you can find [here](https://lrnj.com/) and play the demo of to see if you like it. [Renshuu](https://renshuu.org), an SRS based site for Japanese, also has gamification options such as an optional EXP system for a mascot-like thing and games including Shiritori and a handwriting game.

5. If you’re talking about strictly educational games, you have DS Bimoji Training and DS Kageyama Method Tadashii Kanji Kakitori Kun, which can help you with getting stroke counts, stroke orders, proportions of kanji, etc. right. The former focuses on the intricacies of pretty handwriting as the name implies, while the latter focuses more on learning kanji and has quiz exercises, with a focus kanken.

   Also a lot of Kanken games exist for DS and 3DS, but those are obviously focused on the kanken test, rather than acquiring the language. Aside from timed mock exams, they have free practice with untimed exercises, guess the radical exercises, write the reading, write the kanji+okurigana, yojijukugo exercises, and some minigames.

   If you ask me, I wouldn’t really recommend going out of your way to get any of those for learning the language though.

6. Any native Japanese languge game that doesn’t have auto-advancing text, plus a dictionary. It’s my favourite way of studying since I started.

7. I’m patiently waiting for shashingo ( [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1632490/Shashingo_Learn_Japanese_with_Photography/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1632490/Shashingo_Learn_Japanese_with_Photography/))It will probably play a lot like influent. They both just teach vocab. Probably not that efficient, but if it works for you, go for it.

   Also waiting on Koe which looks a bit more in depth. (It got really delayed due to covid)
   https://store.steampowered.com/app/672430/Koe/

   Other than that, working on just playing through stuff for Japanese (Dragonquest 11, Ninokuni, stuff recommended by game gengo and japanese quest on youtube)

8. Does anyone know of any VNs that are IN Japanese? I can’t seem to find any for the life of me at all. Just English BS

9. Honestly I found Duolingo a pretty good gamified way to learn. I like its focus on sentences, they’re sometimes strange, but it helps you recognize words being used even in strange contexts.

   My favorite, though, was iKnow. But to me, it’s not worth the price.

   Otherwise I was fond of My Japanese Coach, an old DS game… Memrise is pretty close to what that was.

   Duo is the most gamified and pleasing to me though. Definitely compile some other resources to supplement it with. Like grammar guides and whatnot.

   I’d wait until about intermediate, or until apps in general are too easy for you, before you jump in to actual Japanese games.

   And when you do, bear in mind that you’ll be looking up every other word for a minute. That’s part of the process. 🙂