Played this with a friend. He got jumpscared by the intro cinematic and didn't get a good look at it. The intro cinematic never played for him again. I only realized it *was* an intro cinematic when I downloaded the game myself to investigate. As a consequence, we kinda just completely missed *half* of the game's story without realizing it, because the story takes a complete backseat during the hiragana lessons. It'd be better for the intro sequence to just be a part of the lesson structure like how the ending cutscene is, so you just experience it normally and can replay it.
I was also honestly expecting the basketball framing device to work a bit differently- I was imagining more "Move the basketball around the screen to demonstrate stroke orders"- like the basketball is a cursor. I will admit, though, I think the actual gameplay is a fairly effective drilling method. Make a high score mode and expand it to all of the characters and I think it'd do wonders for getting people to memorize hiragana. I'm also not sure I would have personally explained Tome, Hane, and Harai right at the start- in my high school Japanese class, we started covering that towards the *end* of the intro to calligraphy unit. Like, a few days into the part about learning how to write hiragana. And honestly, that placement makes more sense to me. Getting into Tome, Hane, and Harai immediately just feels kinda overwhelming. Then again, if you wait, you risk the student developing bad calligraphy habits... but I think those sorts of bad handwriting habits are pretty easy to overcome if you just drill yourself a bit, regardless of the language. And my friend certainly seemed *distracted* by the Tome, Hane, and Harai stuff.
Aside from these minor-but-fairly-specific issues, this game was a blast. I was mildly afraid going into it that the joke might get laid on a little thick- that the game's sense of humor would rely entirely on stale basketball memes, or just try way too hard to be funny to the point of being annoying- but thankfully, my fears weren't met. The game honestly spends most of its run taking the subject matter seriously, which makes it funnier when it does bust out a joke; and rather than stale basketball memes, the humor of the main story really relied more on the comedic premise of "Imagine if REIMU HAKUREI was an ecoterrorist fighting fascism" and how humorously jarring the contrast of that is. The flip-flopping vulgarity was also really funny to us- how one second it'd go "What the hecking heck" as if it's trying as hard as possible to be sanitized and clean, only to immediately follow it up with "What the actual fuck".
Very cool project, love how it actually teaches about the writing system instead of just describing it, goes deep compared to most other learning materials that aim to be entertaining.
Plot is stupid, which is totally fine considering it's not in any way the focus of the game, but for the love of god please consider making the intro easier to swallow. Main issue right now with the setting is Reimu not actually being Reimu at all, just acting like a rude asshat with some Wikipedia pages memorized. It seems like the Touhou stuff was just added to bring the nerds in instead of it being an integral part of the project.
Art is simple, charming, and fits the game perfectly, but the main character looks like (and probably is) a placeholder.
About the game itself, it would be cool if each lesson in the selection screen had a little description of what each teaches, it'd make it less of a pain if you want to review stuff. I can't really say much about the minigame itself since it's the very first one and is supposed to be simple, but I'm expecting the next levels to be more interesting, maybe have some balls bouncing and some effects or whatever.
Overall a fun idea with some interesting approaches, I'm looking forward to the next updates. Tone it down with the swearing Jesus FUCK.
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Played this with a friend. He got jumpscared by the intro cinematic and didn't get a good look at it. The intro cinematic never played for him again. I only realized it *was* an intro cinematic when I downloaded the game myself to investigate. As a consequence, we kinda just completely missed *half* of the game's story without realizing it, because the story takes a complete backseat during the hiragana lessons. It'd be better for the intro sequence to just be a part of the lesson structure like how the ending cutscene is, so you just experience it normally and can replay it.
I was also honestly expecting the basketball framing device to work a bit differently- I was imagining more "Move the basketball around the screen to demonstrate stroke orders"- like the basketball is a cursor. I will admit, though, I think the actual gameplay is a fairly effective drilling method. Make a high score mode and expand it to all of the characters and I think it'd do wonders for getting people to memorize hiragana. I'm also not sure I would have personally explained Tome, Hane, and Harai right at the start- in my high school Japanese class, we started covering that towards the *end* of the intro to calligraphy unit. Like, a few days into the part about learning how to write hiragana. And honestly, that placement makes more sense to me. Getting into Tome, Hane, and Harai immediately just feels kinda overwhelming. Then again, if you wait, you risk the student developing bad calligraphy habits... but I think those sorts of bad handwriting habits are pretty easy to overcome if you just drill yourself a bit, regardless of the language. And my friend certainly seemed *distracted* by the Tome, Hane, and Harai stuff.
Aside from these minor-but-fairly-specific issues, this game was a blast. I was mildly afraid going into it that the joke might get laid on a little thick- that the game's sense of humor would rely entirely on stale basketball memes, or just try way too hard to be funny to the point of being annoying- but thankfully, my fears weren't met. The game honestly spends most of its run taking the subject matter seriously, which makes it funnier when it does bust out a joke; and rather than stale basketball memes, the humor of the main story really relied more on the comedic premise of "Imagine if REIMU HAKUREI was an ecoterrorist fighting fascism" and how humorously jarring the contrast of that is. The flip-flopping vulgarity was also really funny to us- how one second it'd go "What the hecking heck" as if it's trying as hard as possible to be sanitized and clean, only to immediately follow it up with "What the actual fuck".
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The Example of the Japanese Writing System is a bit ludicrous it goes like this 「俺はセックスだよ。」
The only unusual thing in this game is that she have a male voice when she tries to pronounce the vowels.
Did her voice got replaced by some anomaly?
霊夢… 愛しい霊夢、大丈夫ですか？
I want to drink Reimu's sweat
9.9/10 very helpful but not enough swears
Very cool project, love how it actually teaches about the writing system instead of just describing it, goes deep compared to most other learning materials that aim to be entertaining.
Plot is stupid, which is totally fine considering it's not in any way the focus of the game, but for the love of god please consider making the intro easier to swallow. Main issue right now with the setting is Reimu not actually being Reimu at all, just acting like a rude asshat with some Wikipedia pages memorized. It seems like the Touhou stuff was just added to bring the nerds in instead of it being an integral part of the project.
Art is simple, charming, and fits the game perfectly, but the main character looks like (and probably is) a placeholder.
About the game itself, it would be cool if each lesson in the selection screen had a little description of what each teaches, it'd make it less of a pain if you want to review stuff. I can't really say much about the minigame itself since it's the very first one and is supposed to be simple, but I'm expecting the next levels to be more interesting, maybe have some balls bouncing and some effects or whatever.
Overall a fun idea with some interesting approaches, I'm looking forward to the next updates. Tone it down with the swearing Jesus FUCK.