Can an indie RPG teach you Japanese? Rice Games Inc thinks so, as they release a big demo for their ambitious JRPG, Shujinkou on Steam PC.
Shujinkou is a massive, 80-hour dungeon-crawling RPG with hundreds of enemies, skills, and quests. The world and story are drawn from Japanese folklore and the Edo-period. It follows a retired samurai’s quest to defeat an invasion and save his stolen language. The name of the game is a portmanteau of the party members: Shu, Jin, and Kou!
The old-school grid-based labyrinths, rich 2D artwork, and turn-based combat looks like Etrian Odyssey meets Shin Megami Tensei.
Shujinkou also dives deep into the Japanese language, featuring thousands of words, phrases, kanji and other elements. The Japanese language content includes JLPT N5 to N1, and no, I’m not sure what that means.It also includes over 700 vocal lines from male and female Japanese speakers.
The Steam page stresses that the language-learning component is entirely optional. It’s not an educational game, but an RPG with some impressive language learning aspects.
The developers ran a closed beta earlier this year. One player called it “an ultimate success in gamified learning.”
The meaty demo includes about 15 hours of gameplay. The full release is planned for December, though a specific release date has not yet been announced.
