Kickstart a music game that teaches you to write Japanese

If you’ve ever studied Japanese, you’ll know that the process of reading, writing, and pronouncing the language starts with its phonetic syllabary, hiragana. If you’ve never studied Japanese, or have yet to master the script, learning the 46 symbols may seem a bit daunting at first. Hiragana Pixel Party seeks to make the process easier and more fun by turning it into a game.

[fve]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ud_VMWRASE[/fve]

If you’re able to read and write Japanese, backing the game’s Kickstarter would mostly be a vote for educational games and support for learners who may benefit from these games. But if if you’re interested in learning Japanese there could be some real utility.

I can’t exactly speak to the effectiveness of the game, as I struggled with the task of learning both hiragana and katakana long before these newfangled smartphones, but the pixel art aesthetic and rhythm-based gameplay certainly allow for ample repetition of the sounds of the script. Katakana also seems to be instructed in the game, based on the screens available in the Kickstarter, and even if it isn’t, it’s essentially structured the same as hiragana.

The project has a very modest funding goal of £4,000 ($6,500), so if you’re interested in seeing a PC or console port, you can make that possible by pitching in.

A similar project, Koe was also funded previously, as was the Kickstarter project that later became Influent, available now for Steam.

(See: Influent review: learn a language by crashing planes)

Language teaching games are nothing new, but this one is unique in its focused scope and interesting, music-led approach. Apps like Duolingo are probably not going to be teaching Asian languages anytime soon, so anyone who’d like to start reading Japanese may want to give this one a look-see.