mixed habitat & densely vegetated hiding places

Wrapping up edutainment month, I played Wagotabi, a RPG designed to teach you basic Japanese. I wanted to give the game a fair evaluation so I started way in advance and have played short sessions every day (their recommendation for optimal memorization). As of today I've played for 35 hours across 50 days, and I've completed all the available content so far. The game is in early access and more content is planned for the future, though there isn't a set timeline.



The game's story is that you're a student traveling to Japan to learn from the Japanese Masters of each prefecture. (So far only Kagawa and Okayama are available.) This requires a series of quests that involve searching for objects from Japanese folklore. Along the way you learn a few words and points of grammar at a time, immediately using them to talk to NPCs, figure out where to go for side quests, buy food and drinks, and solve puzzles.



Generally you communicate in the form of clicking on words or kana to put them in the right order, though later in the game you also learn how to type kana with the "flick keyboard" used on Japanese smartphones. During ordinary interactions you can try as many times as necessary to get it right, but for boss battles you're only allowed a certain number of mistakes before you have to start over. By default boss battles are also timed, but I found this just pressured me to guess rather than thinking about the answer, so I turned it off.

The tone is lighthearted and the quests often find funny ways to incorporate the vocabulary you're learning. (I especially enjoyed the one about the tired bus driver who won't transport you until you bring him an increasingly absurd number of specific fruits and vegetables to replenish his energy.) The game is relentlessly enthusiastic about Japanese culture and tourist attractions, as you might expect.



Spaced repetition review quizzes are also offered, which you don't have to do, but you probably should. (They're handy for days when you don't have much time to spend on the game but you don't want to lose your streak.) You can also go back to specific topics you want to review. The game provides a helpful dictionary of everything you've learned so far, as well as graphs showing your progress. I liked how the UI starts out with everything labeled in English, and then gradually switches to Japanese once you know enough to read each item. That's a nice touch.

So, as a complete beginner, how much Japanese did I actually learn? Well, I've memorized all the hiragana, some katakana, and a few common kanji. I understand how to put basic sentences together, how particles are used, and how to conjugate common verb types. The game thinks I've "mastered" 83 vocabulary words and am "learning" 292 more, but that is a very generous evaluation. In reality, the words I have "mastered" are mostly the ones I can reliably find in my copious notes. I can't follow speech unless the sentences are short and use only common words, and the game doesn't ask you to talk so I certainly can't do that! I hand-wrote my notes but I'm sure my stroke order would make a real teacher weep.



I think this game would be a helpful supplement if you're already studying Japanese, or a good way to review if you studied a long time ago and you want to get back into it. It's also just fun to play with if you're a language nerd and want a taste of how Japanese works. It won't get you too far on its own, but I don't think it claims to. I recommend it as long as you go in with realistic expectations of how much a game can teach.

One caveat is that it's an early access game, and while everything works fine, content updates may adjust what's taught in sections you've already completed. During my playthrough they made a change that introduced な adjectives earlier in the game, leading me to be surprised by them suddenly appearing in "reviews" when they'd never been taught to me in the first place. But as always with early access, you just have to roll with stuff. I'll definitely keep an eye on future development.

Wagotabi: A Japanese Journey is on Steam for $9.99 USD (currently on sale for $7.49). There's also a free demo.