Hi all,

About a year ago we spammed posted on this forum about our Android game Kasui. We made quite a few updates since, so we thought we should spam post an update. :-)

Here's a video showing what it's about: http://[video=youtube]https://www.youtub...Q0[/video]

It's free (no ads, no IAP, no permissions required). We hope you kanji fans find it fun! Please let us know what you think. :-)

You can get it on Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/detai...ames.kasui

Thanks for reading.

I tried it and it looks great.

On my tablet, UI in menu was hard to use, it more often than not did not recognize taps on buttons, but on my phone this was not a problem.

This should teach you 2-kanji compounds? I am asking, because joining 水 and 火 is possible but it returns "fire and water" and AFAIK that is translation of single kanjis and not translation of compound... btw, google translate 水火 as "watermelon". Though it seems that hiragana of the compound is correct - すいか.

Same situation with:
山水 (さんすい) "mountain and water" -> should be "landscape" or "hills and rivers"

And this looks like it is also wrong:
水木 (みずき) "dogwood" -> should be Mizuki (name), dogwood should be writen in katakana as ハナミズキ
水月 (すいげつ) "water and moon" -> looks like it is only used in names, Suigetsu

So, from first four compounds listed in menu under Jukugo stats, level 1 水 all four are (probably?) wrong, though compounds do exist (as names at least) and pronunciation as hiragana seems okay too.

To end on positive note, next one, 火山 (かざん) "volcano" is correct.

Still, while it looks very nice, until translations are corrected, I cannot recommend it. - I was wrong, compounds are correct, some are just unusual.

Some suggestions:
If you keep names compounds, move them into separate levels.
Nice addon would be to have voice over for compounds.
Also, for beginner levels, pairing image (small fire) and single kanji words (火), instead of making compounds would be great too.

Note: I am not Japanese and my entire knowledge of Japanese language consists of kana and half of RTK1 + few words I learned from watching anime and grammar of toddler level. Examples above is what I think is correct - or Google translate and Google search engine thinks is correct.

Thank you very much for trying the game!!!

Ouch, sorry to hear that you had problems with your tablet. Looks like I should get a tablet for testing (I only tested it on phones).

The vocabulary mostly came verbatim from EDICT, with only minor editing. For instance, here's the EDICT definition for 水木(みずき):

http://www.edrdg.org/jmdictdb/cgi-bin/en...&q=1736790

But, as you said, "dogwood" is commonly written 花水木(はなみずき) (also the name of a cheesy movie :-)). Maybe some of the entries should be reviewed; for instance, while the first definition given by EDICT for 山水(さんすい) is "mountain and water", it's commonly used to refer to landscapes with mountains and water, so maybe "landscape" would be better. However this could lead beginners to think that 山水 is the correct word for "landscape" (風景(ふうけい) is much more common).

Maybe I should have made it clear that it's more of a game than an educational tool. Most of the vocabulary, while "interesting", is not very useful (玉露(ぎょくろ), "high-class green tea", is not a word you use every day). To make the game cover more useful vocabulary I'd need to add much more kanji, which in turn would make the game impossibly hard.

Still, I hope that kanji fans find the game an interesting diversion from Anki or WaniKani or whatever. Beginners could also pick some kanji readings from it. :-)

By the way, don't trust Google Translate. While "watermelon" is indeed pronounced すいか, it's written 西瓜 in kanji. :-)

I remember seeing this a while back.
Question: does it support custom word lists?

I stand corrected. Looks like I have learned something new today. I did not expect that 水火 "fire and water" could be considered to be one compound word.

Also, damn you Google, I would think that you have enough of money to do a decent job with your translation tools.

From english -> jp, they translate watermelon into correct kanji. But i was translating from jp -> english and they keep suggesting wrong words just because they have same reading, argh...

Yeah, Japanese is full of words like that. :-) A more common one is 左右(さゆう), which literally means "left and right", but when followed by する usually means "influence". For instance, 「食生活(しょくせいかつ)は健康(けんこう)を左右(さゆう)する」 = "eating habits influence health". :-)

I'll try to revise word definitions for the next release (山水 will definitely become "landscape"). Thank you very much for pointing it out! I'll probably cross-check with weblio.

I've just checked and it looks like Google does translate 水火 to "watermelon". That's funny. :-)

Again, thanks for the suggestions and comments. :-)

Zarxrax: it doesn't support custom word lists. Sorry.

fzort Wrote:Zarxrax: it doesn't support custom word lists. Sorry.

If it possible (and not too much work) it would awesome. It could make this game very educational

juniperpansy Wrote:If it possible (and not too much work) it would awesome.

That would be... an awful lot of work. Sorry.

(I've started to add a global leaderboard for the game this weekend. Probably no one will use it, but I don't care. :-))