Hard to believe it's the end of the year! Let's talk about the exciting new updates we have for Nihongo Quest!

Nihongo Quest is an MMO!

I am very excited to announce that Nihongo Quest is an MMO...at least for now!

This may come as a surprise to some of you (since this definitely wasn't something that was hyped), so let's explain some of the benefits to making this an MMO.

One thing I will note before I get into things: do not forget your Nihongo Quest password! We don't have a password recovery system (yet), so don't lose this, please!

Community

The primary purpose of making this game an MMO is of course the community it can build. You can of course learn Japanese on your own, but doing it in a community makes things easier in several regards.

First, there is an eventual goal to create "classes" to play through Nihongo Quest together. For example, we might have a "class" that starts January 1st and plays everyday at 5 pm. This way, you can make friends, have other people to bounce any Japanese questions off of, and be able to establish a routine for your studies. How it would work is TBD, but the point is, there is a lot of room for creativity to help people study!

Second, we can create new kinds of battles and games that could only be done in a community. By including Raid Battles, PvP, etc. we can create more unique and fun ways for you to study Japanese!

Play anywhere at anytime

While we are only supporting PC and Mac through our public alpha so far, mobile (and Linux!) will also be introduced as time goes on. For me, it's very important to be able to play and study the game on your laptop and be able to pick it up later to play on your phone. By creating an MMO with an account system, you can do exactly that! In my tests of the game, I have been able to change seamlessly from my computer to my phone! 

Cross play

Going along with that is cross play. I was having trouble with the old Nihongo Quest multiplayer system because only PCs and Macs could be the host for other multiplayer games. But now with an MMO, mobile players can play with other mobile players, PC or Mac players can play with mobile players, etc. This way, you can play with your friends no matter how they choose to play!

Disadvantages 

My goal is always to be honest with you guys, so here's the deal: an MMO is great (and a lot of fun!) but it's also a lot more complicated.

Obviously, if the server is down, you can't play the game. So far I haven't had any problems in my testing, but once a large number of people start to play the game at once, we will probably go through some growing pains. I'm hoping it's going to hold up for the alpha, but please be patient with me if things don't work as expected.

Second, all of your saves are stored on the cloud. Which is good because you can play from anywhere, but bad because if something goes wrong with the sever, everyone's save files could be impacted. I am going to try my best to not let that happen, but again, please be patient as we test this out.

Finally, not everyone wants to play an online game. Some prefer to play offline. I am going to try to make offline play an option, but admittedly, it's going to take time. And even if we do create an offline option, you may not be able to transition from an online game to an offline game without issue. In other words, if you start offline, it might have to stay that way.

What's next?

Ideally, Nihongo Quest is going to be updated on the first of every month from here on out! Here's what I am hoping to have for our next update:

1) Katakana

2) An SRS review system built in

3) "Build your own study city" feature

4) Character customization (kind of)

• As a side note to this, as of right now, every time you enter battle right now, there is a bug where you are a blonde dude (no matter which character you pick). This is a bug due to the character customization feature being incomplete.

What is "Build your own study city?"

I have an ambitious plan that will let students create their own study plan in Nihongo Quest.

Basically, I know not everyone who wants to play the game needs to study Hiragana and Katakana. However, I need to build things in order, so I don't want to make someone who is N3 wait until the game gets to that stage.

In order to do that, I hope to get a feature included in the game that lets students pick which words will appear in their next city. Yes, you will need to create the curriculum on your own, but you will be able to study whatever Japanese you want using the Nihongo Quest system! More details on this will be coming later!

Feedback? Let me know!

As always, feel free to let me know if you have any feedback on the game! Thanks everyone!