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,
