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Rice Games · 13 Feb 2025
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Aiming to appeal to both speakers and non-speakers of Japanese, play as Shu, Jin, and Kou as you try to save the world from the Akuma in this single player JRPG!
A retired samurai (主) is entrusted with saving his home from intelligent, language-devouring "Akuma" alongside an eccentric fox (人) freed from a cursed abode and an astute princess (公) with her own ambitions.
Shujinkou is a dungeon-crawling JRPG that offers a unique opportunity to learn Japanese as you play. It features thousands of Japanese words, phrases, kana, kanji, and grammar elements that players can master through focus, diligence, and consistency. The language content spans from JLPT N5 to N1 standards, accommodating learners at any stage.** Shujinkou is NOT purely a learning tool—it is a video game with optional, but comprehensive language learning functionalities embedded into various gameplay mechanics***.*
However, learning Japanese is entirely optional. For those more interested in the adventure, Shujinkou delivers a rich JRPG experience. Players can immerse themselves in hundreds of skills, items, equipment forging, cooking, fishing, quests, minigames, shops, and countless achievements and records to break. Explore a vast world, engage with a riveting story, meet multifaceted characters, enjoy stunning artwork, and lose yourself in hours of dynamic music.
All of these elements are woven together through an 80+ hour story campaign with over 200 hours of gameplay content, gradually introducing a complex set of RPG mechanics throughout the journey to create a truly comprehensive experience.
We hosted a Closed Beta testing period from June to July 2024, where we received feedback from many players who played the Windows version of Shujinkou. They had access to around 30% of the story campaign. Here are some of the comments we received:
✅ "I really love how much Japanese integration there is while still retaining a full game scenario—an ultimate success in gamified learning!"
✅ "My favorite part was that I'm learning a skill I can use with time, so it's not even that guilty of a pastime like most other games."
✅ "I basically played it every day I was able to, and found myself genuinely learning things to the point that I, without any help, read what someone wrote (in Japanese) on a Discord server the other day."
✅ "Shujinkou has been great for getting me to reengage with learning Japanese and I basically enjoyed all of the characters that I met from minor NPCs to the playable cast, which isn't a small feat."
✅ "The Art team did a very good job in the character designs and the monsters, both in the open world and while fighting—the huge art of the Yajuu was badass. Oh, and good lord did the Music team nail it. I just cannot express to you how well they came off to me as music is a very big part of my overall enjoyment and experience in a game."
Explore over a dozen labyrinths and over 40 handcrafted maps spanning tens of thousands of tiles, looking for Kanakae Orbs, orbs imbued with elements of nature and Japanese kana and kanji, and avoiding large, dangerous foes called "Yajuu" (野獣, やじゅう)
Shujinkou's Battle System is filled with dozens of mechanics, including Battle Skills (Arawasu, 現す, あらわす), Akuma Negotiation (Koushou, 交渉, こうしょう), the Escape Minigame, and more. However, the most effective way to defeat the akuma of Shujinkou is by striking their** Elemental Weaknesses** and** Ontological Weaknesses**.
English

Gust / Koei Tecmo Europe · 2016
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