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[homeDrone]

It still needs a lot of work, but I'd like to hear some feedback on it now anyway.

I hope some of you want to learn some Japanese Kanji..
I've finished maps up to Level 19 I think.



It's part Gauntlet, part typing game, part Kanji learning game.

Play it here: http://homedrone.110mb.com/kanji.html(Now V0.3)

[Inanimate]

Would be nice if there was an option between pure English and pure Kanji; It shows the Kanji AND the English, and you type it in.

[biomechanic]

It's pretty cool, even though it made me feel bad about my Japanese reading skills.

One thing that annoyed me was the need to switch and use the special to pick up keys and use them. I would rather it be automatic, and the special be reserved for hard-hitting attacks, spells and suchlike.

[homeDrone]

Thanks for the comments guys 
 
@ Inanimate
I'm not 100% sure what you mean. Do you mean you want it to show the kanji and the way it is written with the alphabet, so that you can just copy if off the scren?  Or do you mean you want to be able to type the Japanese reading of the Kanji or the english meaning of the kanji? EG: type "ki" or "tree"..

@ biomechanic
Sorry to make you feel bad , but did you feel like you were learning as well? So far, only I have seriously played the game, so I really want to get some feedback on whether people think they are learning from it or not.

It was a conscious decision to make picking things up an action. The movement and basic attacks are meant for practice, and the special action is meant for learning new Kanji. Some levels have fewer monsters and more traps and treasure. I wanted those levels to be just as useful for learning new Kanji as levels with lots of monsters. I knew it would be a bit of a hassle, but since the primary function of the game (for me) was to learn Kanji, I did it that way. Knowing that, do you still wish it was automatic? 

[Inanimate]

@ Inanimate
I'm not 100% sure what you mean. Do you mean you want it to show the kanji and the way it is written with the alphabet, so that you can just copy if off the scren?  Or do you mean you want to be able to type the Japanese reading of the Kanji or the english meaning of the kanji? EG: type "ki" or "tree"..

Yeah, I wanted it to show both kanji and way it is written with the alphabet, so I could actually learn it from your game! 

[homeDrone]

@ Inanimate
I'm not 100% sure what you mean. Do you mean you want it to show the kanji and the way it is written with the alphabet, so that you can just copy if off the scren?  Or do you mean you want to be able to type the Japanese reading of the Kanji or the english meaning of the kanji? EG: type "ki" or "tree"..

Yeah, I wanted it to show both kanji and way it is written with the alphabet, so I could actually learn it from your game!  

Ahh. When you start a new hero, you can set it to begin with everything in just the alphabet. As you play, it will teach you new Kanji. It will show you the Kanji and the way to read it. But you have to remember it.  New Kanji are revealed as you use the Special Action, and they will only show up in that action. When a new Kanji is learned an old one moves to the movement and attack boxes for practice. If you forget how to read a Kanji, you can get the answers in the pause menu for a cost of health.

If you feel like trying it again, choose the "a i u e o" option when you create your hero, and then use the special action several times until you learn a new Kanji to see what I mean.

I find if I give myself the answers in the alphabet at the same time, I just read those, and ignore the kanji, which defeats the intent of my game.

[supershigi]

This is a cute idea for a game... the main character sprite is really cute, and I like the colors you've chosen for the backgrounds.  The music is pleasant and fits well.  I have a few pieces of feedback for you about the actual gameplay and UI:

• The interface for using special moves is incredibly tedious.  Having to shift through my options in order to "pick-up" an item or "open a door" and then having to type the romaji for that special move in order to perform these actions seems a bit excessive.  I've been playing for a while now, and picking up items has only become increasingly tedious.
• You should insert a back option into the main menu (for example, when I went to choose my hero I decided I wanted to change the level, but I couldn't go back so I had to refresh the webpage in order to change my selection).
• I found the monster tiles to be a bit unforgiving (the ones where you step on them and have to move quickly otherwise you'll get shot with an arrow)... I feel as though I typed the romaji instantly after landing there and I still managed to get hit most of the time.
• I noticed that you refer to any Japanese as Kanji in the instructions section (including letters from the alphabet such as て)... in Japanese, Kanji means the characters that come from the Chinese system.  Just to let you know, we don't refer to Hiragana or Katakana as Kanji, they are all separate things that make up our writing system.

Overall, I think this is a cute idea and I hope that you continue to develop it... but there are defintiely some UI and gameplay issues that could benefit from more attention.  I think the biggest overarching issue for me is the speed at which I can move freely through the dungeon... every time I pick up an item, everytime I want to open a door, I have to perform several separate actions which feels frustrating and tedious.  Each step requires typing romaji.  Just to move through a locked door, I have to go through the process of scrolling through the special menu and typing the subsequent romaji, and then type another romaji to move.  One of the most fun things about dungeon crawlers is that you feel like you're moving through this unexplored world; but when you place movement restrictions on each step, and each action requires so much effort, you feel quite restrained which takes a lot of the fun out of the dungeon crawl aspect of this game.

Anyways, I hope this was helpful!  I'll definitely keep an eye on this project ^_^

[jakten]

Yeah, I think this should be called Kana Dungeon. I was almost scared away from playing your game since I only know Kana and well... Kanji are scary right now.

I agree a lot with what Supershigi said. I think to choose the special attack you should click them or have them change depending on where you are, so if your on an item it automatically switches to pick it up or to open a door when you are in front of it.

I might be stretching it but I think it would be really cool if there was an option for a voice to read the kana I typed. It would help with understanding pronunciation and will help me remember better since I remember better from audio than text.

I really enjoy this though and I'll be very happy if you eventually add Kanji. I've surprised myself with the kana I've remembered and think this has really helped to keep some other from being forgotten.

[homeDrone]

@ supershigi
Thanks for the solid feedback  .

I understand the difference between Hirigan and Kanji, but I thought it would be confusing to refer to them separately all the time. My understanding was that I could call them all "ji", but I figured people would be more familiar with the word Kanji. Do you think what I've done is dis-educational in that sense? That would be bad.

I share your problems with the UI, but I haven't thought of a solution that satisfies me yet. Ultimately, it is supposed to be a game for learning Kanji. That's why I decided to have pick-ups and doors require inputs. It's like flash cards, but there is a dungeon crawling carrot in the background. Also, doors need to be optional. Closing them can be a useful strategy. I will make a version where the pickups are automatic, and see how it goes. If people see it as a dungeon crawler with an odd interface, they could be disappointed. If they see it as a study tool for Kanji with a fun reward, then I hope they could be entertained. Maybe it's possible to have both somehow.

Some of the "monster tiles" are fast. For example, you need to be close to the walls to avoid the arrow trap on the first level. But the damage is not so significant, so I felt it was a good learning situation. The fireball trap on the second stage is kind of nasty, but it's there to get people to figure out their shield and dodge actions. In general, I like hard games, so I tend to design them that way. For me there is a good level of frustration. Did I overdo it? Maybe the difficulty needs to ramp up slower.

@ jakten
"Kana Dungeon" is a good suggestion. My goal is to have the player learn 300 to 500 Kanji by the end. That might be impossible simply because of length. Maybe 200 to 300 is more reasonable. That's still 4 or 5 times more kanji in the game than kana.. so that was why I chose "Kanji Dungeon". I've put all the hirigana and about 50 kanji in for testing so far.

Your suggestion of clicking the actions is also good, but I would find it awkward to take my hand off the keyboard to use the mouse every time. Hitting shift a couple times seemed easier. 

The voice is a great plan. If I make the scope bigger, it would include that for sure.

[jotapeh]

ahh finally an alternative to the oppression of that kanji slime game!

if only this had been out I wouldn't have failed Japanese in Uni!

edit: more helpful response..

- music is great! I love lighthearted medieval style music. simply ace
- movement as already noted needs to be less restricted. i'm cool with entering kanji for opening doors, picking up items, and fighting monsters. moving each step this way, not so much
- sound effects also great :D
- the flashing 'electrified' floor didn't make any sense to me (I thought it was a glitch.) When I got zapped on it I got it right away... but it should be recognizable as a hazard before that, I think
- graphics are good and set the mood well, too.

Overall I really like it so far I hope you carry this through to completion, I would love to (re)-learn my hiragana and katakana and play a fun little dungeon crawler too.

[homeDrone]

@ jotapeh
Unfortunately, the only credit for the music I can take is that I also like it. It's "Overture to the Sun" by Sunforest. A late 60's group.

You said you would not be so interested in playing the game with the current movement system, but would you be interested in studying Kanji if it were also a bit of dungeon crawler as well? That's how I see it. The repetition is necessary. The #1 goal of this game was for me to learn and then practice Kanji. I need LOTS of practice, since you have to move lots, this fit really well. Also, since there are times when speed of movement is important, I think it might improve response time. Did I sell it?

I could put a warning about the electric floors in the instructions, but my guess is people don't read those first anyway. If they didn't get it at first, they would learn fast like you did. Would a zapping sound effect when it went off help? It's already pretty close to how Gauntlet did it. How bout if they flashed shades of blue and not just white? What do you think?

Good old Slime Forest, I like to think we can coexist . As far as I remember, you type in the english translations for kanji in that game. Different niche.

Thanks again to everyone who has checked it out.

[agj]

Only played it for a little while, but my initial impressions are these:

- It shows that you put a lot of work and care into it, and for that I commend you. You're on the right track.
- It's WAY TOO slow. I suggest you make the movement based on a much more generous grid, say, 3 x 3 tiles. Maybe take inspiration in

(the RPG).
- The kana/kanji display obstructs too much of the action. Not sure how to fix this.
- I do feel that you're not doing the student a service by failing to distinguish between hiragana, katanaka and kanji. They're (ideally) learning the language, not just isolated characters, so these distinctions are important in reading/writing.
- Kanji have several readings, so it's confusing how you want me to write them.
- I think that you're focusing too much on the memory part of learning the characters, while leaving aside the very important step of actually teaching them to the player at some point. Maybe, the first few times a character appears, they have their reading written under them?

If people see it as a dungeon crawler with an odd interface, they could be disappointed. If they see it as a study tool for Kanji with a fun reward, then I hope they could be entertained. Maybe it's possible to have both somehow.

Indeed, don't turn the fact that you're making an educational game into an excuse for making a poor game. This is what happens all the time, but for it to be successful at its goal, it needs to be both good at teaching and at being a game.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I noticed that you refer to any Japanese as Kanji in the instructions section (including letters from the alphabet such as て)... in Japanese, Kanji means the characters that come from the Chinese system.  Just to let you know, we don't refer to Hiragana or Katakana as Kanji, they are all separate things that make up our writing system.

i was gonna mention that but you beat me to it

anyway, nice to see more educational games like this. there was also a pair of game maker games about learning the japanese writing system too, by bballer, an eo member; they're pretty great also

http://eocommunity.co.uk/appsprofile.php?id=2
http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=184597

they helped me quite a bit when i was memorizing them

[supershigi]

Thanks for the solid feedback

No problem!  I think it's a really cool idea. 

I understand the difference between Hirigan and Kanji, but I thought it would be confusing to refer to them separately all the time. My understanding was that I could call them all "ji", but I figured people would be more familiar with the word Kanji. Do you think what I've done is dis-educational in that sense? That would be bad.

I think it's fine to call the game "Kanji Dungeon" because eventually the player will ramp up to learning Kanji... but you might want to fix those instances where the game refers to Hiragana/Katakana letters as Kanji (like in the instructions) since you don't want to be misinforming the player in an educational game.

As for the gameplay, a good balance might be to allow the player to move around freely on the map, but utilize Hiragana or Kanji input in order to do things like unlock doors, fight monsters, pick up treasure, etc.  The screen could be void of the Kanji-directional pad, and then when you approach a door that needs to be opened, a series of Hiragana could appear and you'd have to type them in order to pass.  This would eliminate the tedious and claustrophobic feeling that comes with typing in order to move each step.  I think it's really important to let the player walk freely around because the current movement system is very off-putting... if I weren't testing for the purpose of offering feedback I would have quit within the first few minutes because the walking process was so tedious. 

As for fighting bosses, you might get some ideas from Bookworm Adventures.  It's like Boggle, where you make words out of various random letters... each time you type a word you can do an attack.  Perhaps you could do something like that... maybe instead of typing a random sequence of Hiragana, you could sometimes have them type words in order to open doors or fight monsters... "ringo" would be easy because it's 3 letters... where as "arigatou gozaimasu" would be longer and therefore could be used for tougher situations.  You might even do a series of words, and allow the player to collect words.

Sorry for the random brainstorming... I'm just in one of those brainstormy moods so I thought perhaps something I type out might be of use to you ^_^

@Paul: Thank-you for those links; I'm always looking for ways to brush up on my writing... it's all too easy to forget Kanji if you aren't using it regularly.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

unfortunately the kanji one only had 150 kanji, and the easiest ones which i mostly already knew -- i'd like to see it updated with more, but since it's old (2005 or so) i doubt he'll update it. still, good for those 150.

[droqen]

I have attempted to learn kana, and succeeded, but I failed when it came to learning actual kanji.

I will also keep an eye on this, even though I have not yet played it -- once I have played it I will also tell you how it went for me D:


edit : I feel like the game is too hard ;_; and once you're losing enough, there's really nothing you can do but start all over again ]: (it is fun though)

[jotapeh]

[You said you would not be so interested in playing the game with the current movement system, but would you be interested in studying Kanji if it were also a bit of dungeon crawler as well? That's how I see it. The repetition is necessary. The #1 goal of this game was for me to learn and then practice Kanji. I need LOTS of practice, since you have to move lots, this fit really well. Also, since there are times when speed of movement is important, I think it might improve response time. Did I sell it?

I see your point - in part because I thought of that very thing myself. After quite a bit of thought here's why it doesn't really work in my mind:

- Rewards encourage learning. Movement of one square is a pretty crappy reward. This feels more like punishment... and I am atoning by typing for each single step.
- You will lose players due to frustration with this mechanic. Frustration = less learning = game misses the objective
- If I die, or restart after closing the game, I have to walk back to where I was before. And type millions of letters. More frustration...

You've got 19 levels so far ... let me explore them! How about this - for squares where speed of movement is necessary to avoid damage, trigger the kanji entry for movement. Otherwise, let me walk freely.

Alright, enough of my thoughts on that

I could put a warning about the electric floors in the instructions, but my guess is people don't read those first anyway. If they didn't get it at first, they would learn fast like you did. Would a zapping sound effect when it went off help? It's already pretty close to how Gauntlet did it. How bout if they flashed shades of blue and not just white? What do you think?

Potentially - something that makes it look less 'glitchy' and more like a real effect. If you could even get a small sprite of broken wires that spark, or similar...

I know Gauntlet was a classic, and good on you for modelling after it - but these days people do expect clearer visual cues. Especially when the rest of the game feels so nice and consistent, that flashing square really looks odd in its current incarnation.

Good old Slime Forest, I like to think we can coexist . As far as I remember, you type in the english translations for kanji in that game. Different niche.

There are different versions, I played the basic one to learn simple hiragana and katakana, but that's neither here nor there I think your game stands well on its own and is actually much nicer than Slime Forest.

[droqen]

- Rewards encourage learning. Movement of one square is a pretty crappy reward. This feels more like punishment... and I am atoning by typing for each single step.

You've got 19 levels so far ... let me explore them! How about this - for squares where speed of movement is necessary to avoid damage, trigger the kanji entry for movement. Otherwise, let me walk freely.

I don't like this! No no no :[
Really, the point of this is to make you learn things;
Without needing to type something for every step (as tough as it can be in dangerous situations), there would be far less learning going on.
Also, a system that only required kanji entry sometimes would be rather annoying, I think, and would really ruin the sense of unity the control system of this game has.

---

I'm a big supporter of randomly-generated content and... for this it's no different. I feel like this game would be suited to it, building up your vocabulary even every time you die for good and start over. Because right now, once you hit a level you can't beat any more, you're stuck. And if you start over, you have to start from scratch (I think).

Oh okay you can just restart quest. Yay! The way it is now seems fairly fine, then ^^

---

Back to type-for-movement: I think it's important.

It might be a little less frustrating if some of the areas were more densely populated or just smaller, but... I don't think it needs it that badly. I came for practice, and the game is giving it to me! :]

EDIT :: Voice recognition would be kind of awesome, since what I really came to learn is japanese -- not typing -- but that's probably not very possible and it would suck and I'm a good enough typist to handle this anyway ^^

---

EDIT AGAIN.

What if you made the kana/kanji display even while you're moving?

The one you just typed might move to the middle, in a different colour, but it would really help if I could see how to make my next move without having to wait for the current one to finish (even if it doesn't allow me to type until my action is complete)

---

It seems I am editing too much. After getting just a little better, things seem much more possible now. I feel like I am really fortifying my learning of the kana I already sort of knew but not well, though the kanji now seem introduced very very slowly. This game is a lot of fun >_> and I still thing typing to move is important. When you're just moving around, it's a calm break between combat -- but it shouldn't be a break in the learning. That's what I think, anyway. Great job on the game :3

[jakten]

Haha sorry, as I progressed through the game I noticed there actually was Kanji in there, I'd thought it was only kana. That makes it even better! I think Kanji dungeon is a good name now that I've seen that there is Kanji in it.

This game is really exciting though I can't wait to see it completed 

[droqen]

I'm afraid of playing this too much because I don't want to be screwed if I lose my progress D:

Do you think you might add some way to customize your starting state, or what to include? (I understand it's still a work in progress!) Some people might have a basic grasp of, say, 20 different kanji and playing this game enough to unlock past those first 20 might just be painful for them. On the same note, someone losing their progress for whatever reason will be rather displeased.