Hiragana Pixel Party

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)

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 ♥♥♥ characters in a fun way~

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.

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! :)

TLDR: overdelivers (includes Katakana), lots of fun, would gladly buy DLC if they did it for other writing systems. This is the first time I've liked a game enough click on the 'Would you recommend this game to others?' bar. It's a real shame the developer hasn't made an equivalent game for Kanji, Hanzi or any alphabets as the game is simple enough to be easily adaptable to that - even by having Kanji etc as DLC. They could also probably adapt it to anything people want to learn e.g. flags, capitals: the video on the store page doesn't do a good job of exemplifying this but some of the screenshots at https://steamcommunity.com/app/417310/screenshots/ do. Essentially you get shown a Hiragana kana, then click one of four buttons (WASD, arrow buttons) to choose it again a few seconds later. There's varying degrees of diffiiculty and varying ways of being tested, while sticking to the timed multiple choice format e.g. you hear the sound of the kana then choose the corresponding symbol, see string in English e.g. 'hi' and choose the corresponding symbol (ひ in this case) or vice versa. In addition, you can choose to go through the levels on Katakana instead - I don't know why the game doesn't promote this as it means it's twice as good as it claims to be. The timed aspect makes it a lot of fun. The only drawbacks are the fact that for the occasional level (of which there are 192 for both Hiragana and Katakana), you are in fact not being tested on whether you know the kanas but whether you can remember the sequence of kanas that you have just heard or seen, meaning that even if you knew all the kanas perfectly before starting, it would still be like a 'Simon Says' game, but with kanas instead of colours. Also I don't recall seeing the symbols that lengthen a vowel or double a consonant. Finally, it would be really funny if instead of just falling face down when getting the answer wrong enough times (meaning you have failed the level), she sits down and grabs her knee like in Family Guy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9j3heYZAk8 .

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.

Nice and educative!

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.