Manga-ville
Kanji training mobile Visual Novel RPG
Platform | Android, iOS |
---|---|
Genre | Visual Novel, RPG, Educational |
Mode | 1 player |
Year | 2016 |
Target audience | Japanese culture enthusiasts (12-25) |
Play time | 12 minutes per mission |
Technology | Unity 5 |
Team | 3 people |
Production time | 5 months |
Role | Game Design, Programming, Audio Direction |
Description
Manga-ville is a Visual Novel / RPG where the player can learn Japanese ideographic characters or “kanji” while battling Japanese demons.
The vocabulary taught is divided into themes, each theme being represented by a professor or “sensei”. The player chooses a sensei and a mission to learn a new word on the theme, for a total of 25 missions per theme.
Words are made of 1 or more kanji, and can be used in battle as fighting spells. The effect of a spell is based on its meaning. In each mission, the player character fights a Japanese demon whose weakness is the word that has been learned at the beginning of the mission. All the words learned with the same sensei in previous missions can also be used in battle for more tactical moves.
Video
Sensei shows how to draw
Screenshots
Context
This game was my final student project at Gobelins. The constraint was to make a game with features related to transmedia, culture and/or innovative use of technology.
Team
- Long Nguyen Huu: Game design, Gameplay programming, UI programming, Audio direction
- Antoine Litzler: Game design, Art, Visual direction
- Maxime Campin (outside Gobelins): Music, Sound design
Role
Design
- Menu flow
- Lesson flow
- Dialogue improvements
Programming
- Menu navigation
- Automated kanji drawing
- Kanji drawing recognition
- Turn-based RPG battle
- Audio mixing
- Database management
- Localisation
Interface
- Feedback design
Packages
- KanjiVG: open kanji drawing database
- $N Multistroke Recognizer: gesture recognizer
- Vectrosity: vector graphics package for Unity
- Fungus: narrative framework for Unity (for Visual Novel phases)
- Smart Localization Pro: localization package for Unity