Welcome to gaijiN5, the first in a series of Visual MUDs that teach Japanese straight to the point using partitioned immersion techniques, various memory hacks and psychology to help you not only retain but enjoy your learning. Essentially theway that this game teaches is by throwing you in the deep end with slowly deflating water wings. This method is well suited to people wanting to learn Japanese in a fast, thorough and media orientated way(here's looking at you fans of anime, manga and music). It's like getting a comic, text book, flash cards, card game, video game and a chat targeted to improving your language ability. But be warned learning a language by an immersion method isn't for the faint of heart so if this Kickstarter proposal is too long for you to read, a game with many many hours of gameplay probably wouldn't suit you. Nor would learning Japanese. This is a game with people who want to move from away from subtitles more than those who prefer dubbed Japanese media(though, you are more than welcome to take this crash course).

The name of the game comes from two things; gaijin being the Japanese word for foreigner and N5 being the first level of the JLPT(Japanese Language Proficiency Test). If the game has a reasonable success I will continue the series with each game as a level of the test up to N1 and beyond. The game is going to be a slice of life where you have to do everyday stuff like eat, buy clothes and pay rent so you will not only learn words, phrases and grammar but also about cultural stuff, history and using actual locations so you can get the geography down, understand it and find things easier when you are there. It will be just like being there, but restricted to the language of the test(and the ones before it).

Though this is a game that's educational, I wouldn't call it Edutainment. gaijiN5 isn't just a simple quiz game or incomplete text and is a lot less bland than something like My Japanese Coach. It doesn't just have an arbitrary leveling system based on structured lessons like other methods do to 'gamify learning'. At the end of the day, this is a game first and foremost. But please don't assume that this is going to be another Spanish for Everyone. Not that those games aren't... fun in their own right, but to be honest even though this is clearly a game it would even be a stretch to call it that for it is more than the sum of its parts. This is a fun and quick tool perfect for any language learners belt.

I'm not making a game... I'm making an experience.

 Learning any language is perceived to be very difficult. Especially Japanese with it's complex writing system and backwards grammar.

So why would anyone do this? Peoples reasons range from love of the culture to wanting to understand various Japanese media; anime, manga, movies, TV, music, books and so on. Language learning is fun and rewarding in the same way that logic puzzles are; the further through you are the more everything flows and makes sense. It serves to make you smarter and to communicate and understand people better.

The reason I love learning Japanese is because it feels like a game mechanic in itself, learning the language of the advanced ancients. In the same way that I slowly came to understand the language of the Al Bhed in Final Fantasy X, I get the same thrill when I identify things I understand in Japanese which is all over my technology from TVs and Consoles to the vehicles we drive. That's a perfect example, one time when fixing my van I needed to pick out the right fuse. Even though I was just starting Japanese I was able to sound out and understand the katakana on the cover of the fuse box without needing a dictionary. I quickly found the fuse I needed, it was an amazing feeling. The other thing I love about it is that it shares an alphabet with Chinese which is the most spoken language in the world. So although I don't know how to say anything in Chinese I can still understand a headline on a newspaper!

When I say the term Visual MUD, I mean a Visual Novel crossed with a MUD. Well, what are those?

I decided to make the base of the game a Visual Novel, largely because of their immense popularity in Japan and their simple, yet still multimedia approach to getting their point across to the reader. Visual Novels are a type of interactive fiction akin to the physical pick a path adventure novels where by picking a series of choices you change the flow and influence the outcome of the story. However as they are video games, they offer a higher fidelity experience with various animations, imagery, sounds and easily accessible information organised for ease of use. Visually, most Visual Novels consist of backgrounds overlaid with an anime character or two onscreen having conversation with you or any other party in the bottom text box along with direction of how the scene unfolds. Honestly they are generally much like the choice engine in most modern RPGs(and other games with RPG elements) as if it were controlling a cut scene.

In Japan Visual Novels have always been very popular. In 2006, nearly 70% of the PC game titles in Japan were Visual Novels. Although in recent years the genre has also been well received in the west beyond its usual dedicated fanbase with games like The Walking Dead, Catherine and Heavy Rain. However in the mainstream, Visual Novels generally suffer with their minimalistic gameplay which the majority of player interaction is limited to clicking to keep the text, graphics, sound and story moving. However, Visual Novels make up for this with deep and branching narratives.

Though gaijiN5 is going to play more like a MUD in that it is a multiplayer adventure where you read what what's on the screen which is all in Japanese and type the commands which are also all in Japanese. 

The MUD is another video game genre in the same interactive fiction vein, they are a usually a lot deeper in superficial choices but not necessarily in branching narrative and have minimal multimedia assets relying on conveying the scenes by text only. MUD stands for Multi User Dungeon, they are essentially multiplayer Text Adventure games of the 80s and 90s. Generally the games follow the format of giving a description of the area and the player types in a command and the game responds; Like walk west, look at the building, walk inside, see what's for sale, look at something, pick it up, ask how much, buy it, eat it and heal yourself or you could introduce yourself and have a bit of conversation if you want. Ask about family or talk about the weather. MUDs tend to try to be open ended. MUDs are the grandfather of the MMORPG genre and the closest thing you can get to a digital PnP game like Dungeons & Dragons. So they have a lot more human interaction, roleplaying, hack and slash, and chat elements than something like a Visual Novel.

For years I've played around with crazy ideas of why you are in Japan from being on vacation and having your wallet and passport stolen to being on a cruise ship that went down near Okinawa and having to work your way up, or even just being in a computer simulation. But I quite like what I've settled on.

A card game company has found a bug in their mass collectible card game, Doritori. This error is causing people to be haunted by the ghosts of uncertainty when they handle the cards. To help pinpoint the problem they have created purpose built cyborg suits that have the ability to see the ghosts and have hired foreigners to pilot them because language is an easily measurable part of the brain and they want it for test data. Since they've assumed that you know next to nothing about Japanese, it has been restricted to the JLPT N5 requirements.

So this is why your view of the world, the language and ability to express is simplified, why you have to write in commands, and why you are restricted to the game area. The story of the game is essentially getting to the bottom of what is causing the problem which may be deeper then it seems.

As the game is part MUD, there is a whole world to explore! To play the game you type in commands to move around, talk to people, play cards and do lots of other stuff like eating, paying to stay at hotels or rent an apartment or try afford a house, party, go mountain climbing, try not get sick, watch tv and movies, listen to the radio or recorded music, talk on the phone, send and receive mail, read books, manga and newspapers, become a smoker and try to give up smoking, go from elementary school through to university, or buy pet; and that's just stuff off the top of my head.

This game is slice of life so not only is it accurate in possible actions but also locations. gaijiN5 takes part in the northeastern suburbs of Tokyo; Adachi, Katsushika, and Edogawa. The following four games will also make their way through Tokyo with the sixth game having all the things beyond the tests like slang and dialects and it takes place over the rest of Japan.

 But you have to ask yourself what better map design could you get than the biggest metropolis the world has to offer! On top of that, Japan could even be called an exotic land to most. All of the locations are accurate to their real world counterparts and the locations are spaced out enough that moving through it won't be boring or repetitive with a similar frequency of stores that are in reality and will represent approximately the same amount of time as it would in real life, so the trains and expressway are a good time saver.

gaijiN5 is also accurate in item costs. You will get the equivalent of minimum wage by defeating ghosts as a full time job, but you get paid per ghost so you can quite easily go overtime. But that's not all, you will earn rewards for completing quests or reaching achievements. There will also be the potential of getting a second job and as it is multiplayer you you can talk to and correct other players for more in game yen.

And to top it off it will be riddled with interesting pop culture, historical and cultural facts and references!

The interface is themed to what you would imagine a cyborg HUD to look like. Much like other games of the genre the game screen a background with the character talking(or action expressing) using a speech bubble with text written top to bottom, right to left. But unlike other games that just change a characters pose and clear the text it will keep everything said like a chat log with new things appearing to the left and older things to the right. A neat thing about doing it that way is not only does the newest information happen first and foremost but also if you were to read what was happening chronologically it would read right to left like a Japanese book or manga. The input bar will be below it with a couple of buttons to make the chat filter Japanese only, English only or mixed and to choose what emotion your customisable avatar is expressing as well as emoticons. Then there will be some HUD elements like time/date, what area you're in, a mini-map, your health and energy, ghosts count, game timers and maybe some shortcuts like inventory, card deck and tools you acquire through the game.

The game operates on two alternating five minute timers, so every 2:30 you have something to do(but you can always talk to and correct people). One is for your energy(which is used to do any action) and the other is for the arrival of ghosts. There are a couple of reasons for this. First it is uniform and keeps the game even to the frequency of play also it's an addictive game play mechanic that keeps you checking back to get as many moves as you can. This is common in micro-transaction based games because its psychological effects in order to get you wanting to spend more money. I'm making the game on subscription, so this just has the benefit of getting you more excited at going back to the game.

Also, with the energy limit it forces players to pace themselves as far as advancing through the words so they don't add too many new words and overwhelm themselves and to keep coming back to it rather than advancing the story to the end as a race and losing that reason to return. With the ghosts, it doesn't lump a lot on you at once at random intervals, it keeps it manageable and is spaced together enough to keep craving more words without having to wait long periods.

Every so often over the past few years I've toyed with the idea of making a game to teach Japanese by immersion. It is an amazing concept because immersion is widely considered one of the best ways to learn a language.

To be immersed in a language is to be surrounded by it whether by being somewhere where no one speaks your language, at a school designed to teach all of the subjects in a difficult language or putting yourself in a bubble to only consume Japanese media. However immersion is hard, as there are a lot of words you don't know coming at you without very much to associate them with. But the benefits are undeniable rapid and thorough linguistic, memory and cogitative abilities. It lets you learn about other cultures and customs. It increases your employability.

You may ask how does any of that help when playing a game in a different language?

gaijiN5 focuses on a partitioned immersion so pretty much all the game works on Japanese. You read the screen in front of you which is a description of your current view, things that are happening and what people are saying but it is restricted to the basic conversational Japanese. In game, the cyborg suit is equipped with a 'translation matrix'. If you don't understand a word or grammar article, you can click on it to get to keep a card of it. On this card is all sorts of information, the pronunciation including a visual guide to the pitch tones(which pretty much no resources show,d only dictionaries), the kanji, type, English meanings, mnemonics for the pronunciation and kanji using radicals, descriptive notes, example sentences, similar words, easy to mix up words, what it is used frequently with and pictures by various commissioned artists. But the real cool thing is the card you keep is used in a game that you can play with NPCs or players. This is also where the systems problem comes in. You will start to be haunted by ghosts of what you clicked.

Another cool thing about just clicking the words you don't know is that it instantly scales for a users ability so you play the game at your own pace without any repetitive boring quizzes, if you know a word you don't need to click it. There is no arbitrary structure of what someone thinks you should learn(aside from the JLPT, but that is official). Instead things come up as you need to know them in the chaos that is making it through the world not knowing a language.

But if you are the kind of person who thrives on having structured lessons, as this is a slice of life you can always attend the schools in game.

In Elementary School you will learn things like Hiragana, Tenten/Rendaku/Hanten, Mora vs Syllable, Katakana, Grammar, Basic Radicals and Kanji, Pitch Accent, and Verb Conjugation both Plain(Negative,Past,Past Negative) and Polite(Negative,Past,Past,Negative) forms and more.

High School will teach you Colours, Counting,Time, Date, Space, Doing Things, Asking Directions, Getting Around, Expressing Want, Buying, Eating and Drinking, Family, Animals, Nature, Working and more.

And then even more at University...

The game within a game is a mass collectible card game called Doritori which is cross between dominoes and the Japanese word game Shiritori.

Each player draws five cards from the deck they have created. They play rock paper scissors to see who starts by laying down the first card. Each player then plays a card to the field like tiles. By matching either cards first and last characters together to play vertically, the second and second to last characters to play horizontally and any more characters in the center to play diagonally. You can only play a card in a slot if it connects to every card around it appropriately and the more cards it connects to, the more points you get. If a player is unable to play they pick up. The game ends when a player runs out of cards in their hand or their deck(and get the appropriate score bonus or penalty), the score is tallied and a winner decided.

But clicking a word doesn't just get you a card, shows doubt which encourages the ghosts to come at inopportune times. Much like how Japanese horror is paced, they will creep up on you slowly and visibly as an unstoppable force(giving you time to prepare yourself mentally) and then they strike! They have the ability to go into your mind and taunt you with words you do not know, so words you don't know literally come back to haunt you. They are pretty easy to get away, defeat them by responding correctly to the word that they say to you based on SRS readings. If you beat them you get experience and yen(with a multiplier for answering hastily), but if you get it wrong you lose health and they come at you again with the same word sooner rather than later.

SRS is a spaced repetition system which is a good memory technique that repeats cards at further distanced intervals to help commit to your long term memory. It's easiest to picture 5 stacks of cards, if you answer it right it moves up a stack and further into the future but getting it wrong makes it move down a level and come again sooner. As the words level up in game, you get scarier ghosts and the word gets smaller making it harder to see the detail, but closer to how you are going to see it in the wild. When you've maxed the cards level it will ask in reverse, and then it will unlock the radicals for the words and then the kanji. Radicals are a much better way to learn kanji as it breaks it down into smaller kanji that you can make a story about rather than learning step by step, rather than by stroke order. Imagine learning all the words you know in English letter by letter stroke by stroke!

As the words level up, the ghosts will evolve into different ghosts and monsters allowing you to learn more about Japans rich supernatural side. Also, their text will gradually shrink to a whisper, thus allowing you to get used to the smaller text that you would actually see in the wild!

With few shining gems in a sea of shovelware, incomplete and out of date material; a new game going into such a giant niche can be intimidating for both the creator and customer. 

But after years of using various products with varying levels of success, I have seen what works and what doesn't and I have painstakingly found what I believe is the best method for teaching Japanese. Not only were there blaring problems in other methods, but there were always things lacking. So it's been a goal for a while now to make a Japanese game that teaches by some form of immersion with a lot of benefit and minimal downfall.

This game is essentially a textbook on crack. Exploring the world a visual story with friends with almost all of the benefits and none of the drawbacks of the other methods.

For people who already know some Japanese, clicking on words you don't know works perfectly as the game is already scaled to your ability. You don't need to complete an awkward test at the beginning to have an automated system guess what your ability is. This game represents the chaos of learning a language, the levels represent how much you can chew off rather than the masking chapters of a textbook.

Oh, I haven't forgotten about you people who don't know who already know this level of Japanese. Since you are only clicking on words you know(and you know these words) you won't be earning yen and experience from defeating ghosts. Instead, you can put your ability to use and correct others in conversation to get the same benefit! This way, you can still enjoy the experience to it's full potential and be a valued member of the community. And who knows, you might even find yourself clicking a word or two(or just buying Doritori booster packs from the game stores).

I love Japan and know a lot about the place and I figure why not make something I know and share it with the world. They say to people starting writing, "write what you know, even if it's just writing about being a writer." Well, I know a lot more than just being a writer. This is a game that in a way has been 22 years in the making.

 What better way to pay tribute to something that means so much for me than to use my various art, programming, game design and language talents to teach others with the game I always wished I had. This way I can help to promote unity between Japan and the world because communication is a two way street, by learning Japanese you can help them with English as they help you. But honestly, every day I learn. Especially as I try to make the most complete experience for you. But this means I get to understand everything a little better. Passing on knowledge of Japanese for a living is a dream.

People usually ask why I love Japan so much. I think my love affair for Japan started with Japanese media and pop culture as seems to be the case quite a lot. I fell in love with the style and started emulating the drawing style. I also found the culture and tradition quite neat. As a dual citizen of New Zealand and Canada I moved to BC, Canada when I was six. With my Kiwi accent and kind and weird demeanor, I was pretty bullied so I used Japanese culture as a form of escapism. So that echoed through my life, but I am still amazed. It is the culture and people I love more these days.

The words that pop into my mind when I think Japan are beauty, simplicity, honer, skilled and motivated. I love that even though they are technologically advanced, they are still strong in their roots and tradition thanks to things like Shinto and festivals. What other place has one foot in the past and one in the future like this? None I can think of. With their honor still intact, it is quite literally Samurai working on spaceships.

With all the information that I've read over my life, when I do make it there for a few months this year I don't think much will shock me(though till I get used to it I'm sure I'll be amazed with anime styled stars in my eyes). To me being in Japan is the closest modern equivalent to 'the new world' of the age of exploration.

So I've been working on this for a few months now to get it to the point that I'm at now. I've made quite a bit of the skeleton, almost of the cards a bulk of their information, locations, a bit of the basic story and some of the programming is done. Since I'm already this far though, you may be wondering why I am seeking help on Kickstarter. There are a few things reaching the initial Kickstarter goal will help with;

 First and foremost, I need to make it to Japan to complete the project. There are a few reasons for this. First, I want to check the authenticity and accuracy of the information I have gotten off the internet as I would rather confirm information firsthand before spreading it. I need to take photos for the backgrounds of the in game locations if having them in accurate locations is going to make them actually mean anything. I would use Google Street View Images, but those have copyright issues and anyone can already see the locations through their 'eyes'. Getting my own photos will not only guarantee them confirmed through my eyes to be of the best angle of my choosing and accurate to the date I was there. Depending on how well the Kickstarters funding goes, these will ether be used as reference for beautifully rendered backgrounds or be rotoscoped. Either way, I'm sure it will even more be painstakingly tedious getting those photos than  the hours spent walking on Google Street View. But I'll have a smile on my face!

So half of the Kickstarter is for Japan which Flights, Food, Accommodation, Transport, Camera, Computer plus the Domains/Server and Amazon/Kickstarter Fees.

The other half of the funding goal goes to my eating habit and dislike of having rain on my parade. If I don't get the Kickstarter, I'll still continue to work on the project because it is a labour of love. Though I may have to find another way to eat while I do it so it will slow down progress as it will be just me working part time on the project. But I'm determined to have this released as soon as I can while still maintaining its highest quality. I'm confident that people will think this project is as great as I do, so even though there is that fear of rejection deep in the pit of my stomach it's easy to quell. The other main purpose of this Kickstarter to raise awareness, start to build a game community, and get a feel for community interest. By showing your interest you will be throwing me further down the rabbit hole and make the game as perfect as I can.

I've noticed a lot of Kickstarter projects will withhold features from their products to make their stretch goals. I think this is a bizarre practice as it may seem like more help is adding to the project but really it feels like holding hostage the features that would be in their ideal iteration.

The game is currently is being made by me alone unless it earns enough to afford a team. I am capable of doing every part, but that is at the speed of one person and I will easily admit that people who train in their field are more skilled in their niche. Though, all the text has been proofread by natives and learners.

Beyond the initial funding the stretch goals will help achieve the greatest possible product, with the hiring of professional artists, coders and and writers for expanded scripts and storylines. The quality and delivery of the sprite and CG artwork is dependent on funding going further ahead.

For each stretch goal the project hits, the higher in quality it will be by leaps and bounds. Two heads are better than one and the more the merrier but I really want to pay people their worth. I'll only get people onboard who have a real passion for the project. if there is not enough money, it'll come out of my smaller cut and/or the games sales and whatever is left over will go directly towards the sequels assets. This is a huge and amazing project!

All work by other people will be at least double checked by me to make sure it is up to my standard of quality.

Beyond: If there is support substantially beyond the Kickstarter stretch goals; after I release gaijiN4 this game will be half price and by gaijiN3 this game will be free to play. Any extra money will go to hiring even more awesome people to do everything even better and faster; meaning more features sooner, hand drawn backgrounds and more. As another extra bonus I'll make this the game that I release the Chrome/Firefox buddy app which will extend your clicking across the internet and allow you to defeat ghosts without going into the game, otherwise it'll take the backburner to making a better quality game.

I'm planning on having a fleshed out alpha by June, the engine should mostly be just a slice of life text adventure to get the engine working as well as possible.

Around October the closed beta will be done, which more of the story and artwork.

By the open beta the game will be mostly done and just tested for bugs and refined. Also, I am to have all the artwork done to make this into a visual novel and improving/refining where needed.

Full version of the game is estimated come out 2nd quarter next year

But it will always be improved with new features every time a new JLPT level game is released

Some of the plans for future versions are:

So aside from the gift of helping people learn, there are the inevitable backer rewards. I have decided to make the rewards most early access, discount, and lifetime access rewards. I decided against the usual throwing of random crap merchandise; shirts, hats and mousepads covered in logos that you are never going to wear as it is wasteful to resources with the time to plan, design and find how to make, the money to make it that could go into making the project even better, also taking into mind the resources to the environment to make the things and then ship them everywhere(especially cause I live in such a remote part of the world, if I have to pay so much to have things shipped to New Zealand it is going to cost the same to ship it out). This goes against the amazingness of digital products, why I'm not in tshirt design and this franchise is still new enough that bling isn't as important.

If you think this project is as awesome as I do I encourage you to share it on your poison of choice and help this be as successful as it can be! From what I see and hear, Kickstarters are either wildly successful or they stuggle to get noticed. If you love the concept of this project and would rather see it as the former, do your part and share!

The series is called gaijinSEKAI, sekai being Japanese for world.

gaijiN5.com

gaijinSEKAI.com

Both of those links redirect here for now for ease of sharing!

facebook.com/gaijinSEKAI

twitter.com/gaijinSEKAI

gaijinSEKAI.tumblr.com

ask.fm/gaijinSEKAI