Japanese with Mayu

This game shows lots of potential, but at its current state I unfortunately cannot recommend it. The Dev is working on new content and improvents as we speak, so in all honesty this should have been an early access title. The Idea to teach japanese with a visual novel style game is brilliant, as it has the potential to be a very fun and useful way of learning japanese. However in practice the game does very little to teach you japanese. As it is right now, it just presents you the text in both japanese and english at the same time, while highlighting a few key vocabularies to quiz you on later. The conversations use simple language and everyday subjects, so the game is clearly aimed at people who have hardly any foundation in learning japanese, however it fails to teach grammar structure or kana. It only teaches a few select words, which doesn't do too much for new learners. To be fair here, the Developer added some Kana functionality, so maybe they will expand on the rest. For more experienced learners having this extra bit of immersion can be good, especially if regular games are still a bit daunting. For me personally it was a nice and quick refresher. As far as the Story goes: It is entertaining enough, but the writing feels clunky every now and then. Not only due to the simple language, but also some weird dialogues. In one chapter Mayu invites Liam to her room and she is talking about the snacks. First she says its not tasty, then all of a sudden it is tasty. This truly got me confused. It also felt weird, that the Teacher changes to a tracksuit for P.E., but Mayu did not. Despite being the poster girl of the game and actually participating in the classes. Also Liam and Mayu seem to grow a deep bond, however most of it is glossed over to rush to the big finale in Episode 6, so it appears weird to us the player. Since all we know is that Mayu does not like sports and is a big fan of books. It is definitely not the kind of Visual Novel you would be reading, if it did not have the language learning bonus. Speaking of Big finale: I was streaming the game, so with Distractions I finished this game in under an hour, which is too short, even for the low price the game is asking for. Especially as this game has very little replay value or language learning features that keep you engaged after you finished the story. This also means players can refund the game after experiencing the entire game, which is also bad for the developer After all you can get similiarily effective japanese learning apps for free or buy monthly subscriptions to useful ressources like bunpro.jp for a similiar price. Next I have to adress the AI Shaped Elephant in the Room. Most of the Art, if not all of it has been generated by AI. This is evident in the backgrounds when rooms don't show doors, have them, blackboards or other furniture in weird places. The Book Props were also generated by AI, as evident by the weird handlike structures below the Heart. As for the Characters I suspect AI usage as well, but these look a lot cleaner. The only evidence I have is the Chibi of Mayu only having 2 clips instead of 3. The Voices also seem to be AI generated. The quality is ok and definitely better than no voice acting at all, even if I would have preferred real human voices. I am not blaming the developer for using AI, as they are as far as I know a single developer, and probably don't have the skills and / or money (yet) to create all Art Assets themselves or engage voice actors. I would appreciate a more detailed description of the AI Usage on the steam page though. Also slightly disturbing AI Art such as the book cover should not make it into the final product. I would like to see these improvents to the game in future Updates: - Short Lessons before each Episode that focus on Grammar that is used in the episode - Not displaying the english text immediately with the japanese subtitle. - Ideally Options to play back audio only, japanese text only, english text - Improvements in overall Quality of Writing and Art - Waaaaay more Content Well lastly I wish the developer the very best and hope to come back later in a year or so, to find a product I can recommend.

This is my first time playing a visual novel style game. I chose it because I am truly interested in learning Japanese and the pricing was perfect at $2.99. **Review (From a Japanese Language Beginner and First Time Visual Novel Player)** I'll start off by saying I love this game for what it's trying to do. It definitely has it's strengths and weaknesses so I'll try to cover them in a logical fashion. First, you need to already know some Japanese to understand this game to some degree. For example in the early part of the game it mentions buying water at a convenience store. You see the text and hear the phrase. But if you aren't familiar with Japanese you might be lost when it comes to remembering the symbols used or how it was said later in the game. This becomes extremely apparent in later episodes that I felt were too long and I became overwhelmed trying to remember what each phrase meant without a review list and no way to study without doing an exam. For a beginner like me, the Repeat button is the best physical feature as you can review the same line over and over to hear how it's pronounced. I felt that the audio along with the subtitles made it very easy for me to recognize some patterns in the phrasing. I attribute my love of anime for allowing me to understand many of the phrases that were spoken even if I didn't recognize the symbols or they weren't a highlighted word. The voice over acting is very very good. It was easy to understand, engaging, and emotional. Overall I would still highly recommend this game. It's a fun and entertaining way to learn Japanese and I'm excited to see where this goes in the future. And I would like to see more episodes added in the future as it currently only has 6 episodes. **Wishlist** Highlight the Japanese kanji as it's spoken. Allow the user to hover over every symbol (even those not highlighted) to understand it's meaning Allow the user to click on every symbol to hear how it is pronounced. Missing the list of kanji their definitions for reviewing independently of the review exam. Missing the ability to Auto-play scenes (especially those that don't include highlighted text). The Yes, No Responses (and other responses) the user needs to respond with are missing the English translation (without them you are basically guessing your response -- though I'm not sure yet if that affects gameplay any). Missing the ability to toggle on the transliteration of the kanji into English based wording like "Arigato" rather than just having the symbols. It would have been nice at least to have this in the hover option or underneath the symbols. Review quizzes are missing the hint function, so beginners will not be able to use context to understand if they don't remember the associated photos or scene. Bugs: In some cases the buttons for the review screen extended off the screen. So it might make sense to add resolution features in the menu in the future. Or at least the ability to change text size. Once you move to a new room/scene, you might not be able to return in some instances. There's no way to exit the game. Without forcibly stopping it through Steam. It's truly an Isekai now. Seriously though please fix this part if nothing else.

I'm a Japanese teacher who is always looking for good learning materials for my students and all the learners. This game helps learners learn new words in real-life conversation and the "review" after each episodes helps words stick in your memory. This is a new game and I wouldn't say it's perfect (I haven't found any perfect learning game yet) but the idea, concept, and system of this game is amazing and I'm looking forward to more updates!! Below are the features I hope they'll add in the future. (I know this is a lot but this game has so much potential!!!) - Turn on/off English subtitles - Furigana for kanji (also able to turn on/off) - More highlighted words to check meanings and pronunciations - Save words to word list - More episodes in different situations (e.g. the main character speaks beginner-level Japanese and shows how exactly beginners can communicate with people even only using basic words, like people who know you talk to you clearly and slowly but some people speak really fast and you try to understand what they say. It would be amazing if the character starts with beginner level and slowly moving up to higher level together with the players!) Thank you for making this game. I'd love to hear about more updates :)

[i]Japanese with Mayu[/i] was an enjoyable experience for me. Its Japanese is at about an N4 level, so following along with it was fun. The dialogue does contain some more advanced vocabulary, but the Episodes' reviews will only quiz you on the highlighted words, which are ordinary N5/N4 vocab. The audio was rather good. Whether the voices were AI or not, they were clear and expressive. The only thing I did not care for was the garbled/fake katakana in one of the AI-generated backgrounds. Try the demo to see if you vibe with the format of this educational visual novel. If you do, I think you will find the story to be heartwarming, and the Japanese to be informative.

Came into this knowing 0 Japanese. Came out ready to RIZZ up the Japanese baddies on my first trip to Japan I liked how I could replay the audio for the quiz text. Would have also been great to be able to hear the other characters in the sentence so I can systematically see how the word is being used. Since I came in knowing 0 Japanese though, sometimes the selections that were pure Japanese characters were just a guessing game :( Overall a fun short experience, looking forward to the developer adding more chapters (Maybe some intro chapters for people with no experience)

I picked this up because I wanted something that would help me practice Japanese, and I ended up enjoying it much more than I expected. The visual novel itself is genuinely charming, and having voiced dialogue made it a lot easier to connect spoken words with what I was reading. I liked how the learning aspect never felt forced. Instead of interrupting the story a lot, each episode ends with a short review that goes over the new vocabulary and phrases you just saw. I think the game currently relies on the player to be somewhat familiar with Hiragana already, and hopefully there's plans to add a minigame or introduction episode where we get to learn Hiragana first so it's more absolute beginner friendly. It's clear this was made with a lot of care. I'm looking forward to seeing where the story goes and hope the developers continue supporting it.

Whoever this developer is they are destined for greatness! They are doing so many things right! This game was so much fun and I feel like I really learned alot of Japanese! So easy to pick up and play for any type of person or level of Japanese learner! The art style and the characters felt so real! I felt like I could be fully immersed into this world! I'm booking my plane ticket to Japan right now! I need alotttt more episodes and an J-drama adaptation! I'll also be waiting for the Korean story version soon! :O :) :D