A game designed to help people learn Japanese while preventing the language from being erased by demons is now on Kickstarter. Shujinkou is seeking $45,000 by November 5, 2019. If fully funded, people will be able to to try and close portals that invite monsters into the world on PCs.
The base Shujinkou game will be a Metroidvania-like platformer where people follow Shu, Jin, and Kou as they attempt to stop the demons and save their world’s universal language, Japanese. This will mean using certain hiragana, katakana, and kanji in each level to attack demons’ weaknesses to defeat them. However, using other words will affect the world while teaching people the language. Getting adjective artifacts will let you change a level’s path and give you access to new areas, verbs provide buffs and debuffs, boss fights involve real-time questiosn, and the four minigames help you learn new words and build relationships with other characters.
Here’s a video showing Shujinkou in action.
If people want to be able to contribute and get a copy of Shujinkou, the least amount of money that can currently be kicked in is $28. This is for the Machidoshiyori II tier, which is only available until October 9, 2019 for 191 more people. It gives people the early access demo, full game, and three wallpapers. After that tier is gone, the $30 Chounin option will be the cheapest way to opt in to Shujinkou and support the title.
If the Shujinkou Kickstarter is fully funded, the expected delivery window for the game is September 2021. Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 versions are also being considered.
