Hiragana Pixel Party

Originally I voted this game up but after progressing through half of it I have decided to change my review and downvote the game. The reason is quite simply that this game has too many bugs that become more and more frequent as the game progresses. Random pausing while playing. Achievements broken. Unplayed levels completing themselves. Sometimes the kana required isn't listed. Glitches, in game lag. Dakuten sometimes covered by other graphics. Seems to be abandoned by developers. 3/10 I wouldn't recommend buying this until it is resembles a finished product. ----------------------- Original review: Simply an awesome game. It leaves total beginners in desperation and pushes them to the limit until one day they realise that the game slows down and gets easier the more you play and the more you play the more you learn. It can't get any better than this. Is it perfect? No, it has a few tiny bugs and it would be awesome if every so often your score on a level would reset in order to encourage spaced repetition (I felt on occasion that 100% was achieved on some levels by luck). The music is awesome and it is also a big part of the learning/ gaming experience. I would recommend getting the extra tracks. Beware: this game is highly addictive and it gets under your skin. It annoys and irritates and provides complete satisfaction all at once. A great way to get initiated with the Japanese language. My vote: 9/10

At first, I was going to recommend it. However... After completing the first three levels, this got INSANELY hard. You need to have basic knowledge of Katakana and Hiragana. *THIS WORKS BETTER AS A STUDY GAME*

One of the harder "learn Japanese" game I've played. Pros: - Great chiptune music (if you're into that) - Hard game - Really tests your Hiragana and Katakana more than other educational games Cons: - Hard game - Slow progression between letters This rhythm game is aimed to test your hiragana/katana memory. Every section of the music, the game assigns selected Japanese letters to your direction buttons (WASD, Arrow keys, or as clickable buttons). You will listen to the japanese sounds and time the button to the beat (or just by timing it on when your character should jump on-screen). The game randomizes which buttons is assigned the letters so you won't memorize the combinations. Unfortunately, this changes the game from a memory test to a speed-reading test. When playing, I found these two strategies of playing: - remember the letters spoken, then look up at the prompts and read the letters. - or look at the prompts, listen to the letters and remember the button order. One complain I have is that the game has slow progression. It took me an hour to finish the K- Hiraganas. For someone who is familiar with Hiragana and was looking for a game to test my memory, it feels too slow. I hope the later part of the game will mix up the letters instead of batching them up. In conclusion: On one hand, the gameplay made the memory test harder than it should. On the other hand, I feel that I am becoming a fast reader of Hiragana/Katakana - which makes the game highly recommended.

I love the concept but it's way too hard. The letters/kana that appear in the bubbles above your character (that let you know what to press on your keyboard) change position throughout the level. This means you have a split second to mentally re-map the characters to the position of your fingers, over and over, turning the game into a frustrating quick time event. I noticed the developer is aware of the difficulty problem but they've been quiet for months. I really hope more work is done on this game because it has great potential. Until then, though, I can't recommend it.

Honestly This is a great tool for learning the hiragana alphabet but it has giant flaws. There is two massive flaws with it. The too early or too late system that punish you for the right answer. And the inability to speed up or slow down fast pace button presses. So what is the too fast / too slow system, well let me explain it. Well if you hit the button too soon or too slow it doesn’t count even when hitting the right button. Now this would even be okay if half the time it didn’t say it was too early or too late when you are on time. The fact is though this isn’t DDR or Guitar Hero, it is about learning the language not about hitting the buttons at exactly the right time. The fact that it is bugged when it come to hitting the buttons on time also takes away from it even being a positive experience once you get past the basic levels. The second issue is the fact that it is like DDR or Guitar Hero. The fact is the Hit this and that button can get hectic and when happens even if you know the right answer you may be button mashing to keep up and fat finger the wrong button trying to meet the time to hit the button. This again isn’t a skill game it is learning game so while in DDR or Guitar Hero it is important to not let the game slow down, this game it is important. You are learning and sometimes it throughs you in the depths and says hit button, button, button, button, button, button, you have 2 seconds enjoy. So in that time you have to make sure your hitting the right Hiragana letter and it is only compounded by the fact that the letters will change locations on the AWSD keys. I am sure the key switching is needed for later levels so that isn’t something I am going to complain about. I would refund this dumpster fire of a game, but I really want to learn Japanese and it and the two other games on steam are about all we have so for now it is a great tool, because of a lack of alternative game education tools. The graphics and sounds are decent for what it is, so if you like pixel art and chiptune music you will love it. While I really want to learn Japanese, I can't recommend this to other people unless they really really want to learn it.

I like it! Yes, it's pretty hard as far as the button switching goes, but I think seems pretty good at getting your character recognition as instantaneous as possible. That being said, I did in fact grab this as a changeup from the memorization I've already done. I already know both hiragana and katakana, but I think this helps me in my aim to read them less consciously. Also I'm not great at rythm games, but the challenge makes it fun. To the Dev: If you do patch the difficulty down, it would be cool if you put the original difficulty in as a hard mode or somesuch. Also it seems that the achievements aren't triggering properly.

People are complaining that the game is difficult, and it is, but I view that as a good thing in this case. It means I have to play each level several times over to get a perfect score, and that only further cements the quick memorization of each symbol. I would recommend having a basic knowledge of hiragana before buying.

This Game tricks you into lerning without you noticing it ;) But don't think you can play thour it in one sitting. You can't only do a few levels, before you concentration gives in. If you stock, wait a few hours you try it again tomorrow, you will see it's way easyer after a good nigth sleep.

Great in theory but bland, boring and unfair in execution. Requiring you to check the mapping for each prompt as it changes each time but also need to remember the prompts at the same time is frustrating and can feel unfair. There are levels where there is simply not enough time to do this, which is ridiculous. The game ends up being very unfun and is not a great tool to let you learn the characters either.

Played the first 10 lvls. It's too hard for beeing a language learning game. The chioce to have a black character on adark background hopping black crates does not help...

its fun and i get to learn japanese characters..yay! well...the memory mission kinda hard and sometimes the song is too fast to find,push the button.. overall. i like this game...recommended for those who want to learn.to read jap characters in a fun way~

I saw this game prior to its release and couldn't wait till it was released and the wait was worth it in my opinion. The game was indeed a bit frustrating at first with the various Hiragana and Katakana switching keys every now and again but that was actually an interesting way to implement learning instead of simply memorization. I came into the game knowing little to nothing about either or and I'm surprised at how quickly I'm picking up Hiragana and Katakana. Overall, If you like rhythm based games with a bit more difficulty then normal and would like to learn Hiragana and/or Katagana then give this one game a try.

Updated Reiew: I've changed my review from a thumbs down to a thumbs up. I still think that there are a lot of things that could improve the game itself and believe that the game isn't for everyone, as the game is more like flashcard memorisation with music than a game which will teach you the Japanese alphabets. There is nothing wrong with this if you want to use it to supplement learning the language in school or your own self studies but it's not really geared towards everyone. As someone who already knows both Hiragana and Katakana here are my thoughts on the gameplay itself: Pro: [list] [*]Simplistic play style [*]Great for learning to memorise characters once you have learned what they are [*]Developer fixing issues/updating the game [*]Game runs perfectly with no crashing or errors [/list] Con: [list] [*]Gives Japanese characters but seems to forget to tell you what the English letter equivalent for it is. You can get the sounds if you click on the characters in the pre-mission screen but would be better to see the written letters. Also been reported an issue if you are using a controller that you can't get the sounds, you must have a mouse currently to do this. [*]Too much emphasis on memorising patterns of characters instead of teaching the characters themselves [*]Soundtrack is OK but the SFX are not great, feeling like they will get on your nerves after a couple of hours play. Thankfully you can turn the sound completely off if you feel this way. [*][strike]Not enough notice given on which characters go to which keys (it randomly changes with each pattern) making the game unnecessarily difficult[/strike] [*][strike]Katakana tutorial is the exact same as the Hiragana one (didn't even bother to change characters to Katakana)[/strike] [/list] [strike]If you had more notice on which keys were for which characters, slower tempo for earlier levels to give people who are new to the language more time to adjust to the characters and less emphasis on what the pattern is after it's been flashed to you then the game might be ok but as it is now, it's not great.[/strike]

I have to completely disagree with the other review, I've been wanting to learn the 3 Japanese writing systems for quite a long time and before this game I had almost knowledge of Japanese, I had no problem at all (even befoire the patch). I'd just like to say: KEEP UP THE GREAT WORK! :)

Some songs are easier to catch the timing. Other songs... hit it on the beat and get "too early" or "too late". It's *incredibly* frustrating to be punished for doing it right. On those levels it's easier to just play with the sound off.

Not perfect, but not terrible. It's got enjoyable enough gameplay to make it not boring, and somewhat decent music if you like chiptunes (I do). Which is pretty much what you need to do a repetitive task like commiting something to memory. I dislike all of the levels that require you to remember multiple characters and their order for a while and then play them out. The difficulty curve on this game swings wildly because of seemingly random combinations of variables on how the levels play. It's even worse when on the one level I played it just flashed the hirigana characters before the blocks, and expected you to identify them (as the romaji letters were shown on the keys), AND remember them (because there was nothing printed on the boxes to jump over), made worse because some of them were only shown for a fraction of a second before it flashed the next. I get that it's good to force you to try to identify them faster, but memory isn't my strongest point and remembering whole words is different to remembering multiple single characters. Maybe it does serve a roll, but I can't see how and I just find them frustrating. I've not come accoss a section that I haven't been able to get past though so it's not a big deal, and I still like the rest of the game for what it does. I just wish the boxes always had something printed on them (preferably the romaji characters if the hirigana characters are shown on the keys, or the hirigana characters if the romanji are on the keys)

I am using this game to memorize Hiragna and Katakana charaters. It is good and I am glad I purchased this game.

It does not give very much time to know what character goes with what button. It switchs everytime. It is pretty much a rage game. I do not reccomend to someone trying to learn japanese.

Why the keys for the same letter change all the time? Annoying and not fun at all.

Recommended for memorizing kana!

Nice and educative!

Nice little game.