There's a really solid learning tool here buried under tons of pointless if not obnoxious features. Interacting with items in the world, hearing their pronunciation, seeing their spelling and being quizzed on them is excellent - like advanced flash cards with visual cues that are placed in a memorable environment. The environments seem memorable at least... well, once they are completed, and I barely got there. There are tons of features, menus and games that just immediately put me off. I am no fan of duolingo - but I'll say that its bare bones streamlining works for vocab. My two years learning Japanese has shown me learning, especially vocab, is done through simple repetition. Figuring out mechanics and menus, even twenty minutes in, feels like a tedious distraction. The game should be the least complicated part, language is complicated enough - especially if it's a game about just learning nouns.

The immediate oddity is that items are hidden in boxes, you are only allowed to open a limited number... then are suppose to place the items around the environment? There is a separate mode just for moving stuff around. It's not like there's a satisfying conclusion for say, putting the cash register where it should go as a game, or a real decorating mechanic; but rather you can just kinda toss stuff around or set it on something. And so you begin with a kinda dark colorless environment full of boxes and very very slowly fill it out, or rather just leave bacon and coffee and cash registers all over the floor?

It feels to me like a lot of early access games - partially fleshed out ideas where more features are dumped in. If you are super into gamified learning this might be worth a try, I don't know.

As for Japanese - I appreciate that they added furigana in the item details, however, item previews still just show kanji, it'd be better if they just showed kana. If you knew the kanji in, say, "gyuunyuu" you would probably already know that means milk.

this game is fun and challenging <3 I enjoy it a lot! we need more games like this

i love it. It's a fun game that allows you to learn a language in your free time.