A long while back, my favorite video game company, Namco (makers of Pac-Man), made a puzzle game series in Japan called Mojipittan.  If you’ve ever played Taiko Drum Master or Go Vacation, you might have seen characters or music from that game.  I really wanted Mojipittan to come to the US, but it used the Japanese written language to make the puzzles, kind of like Scrabble.  But because of the way Japanese written language works, there’s no way they’d be able to translate it to English.  But now we have something a little similar with Kana Quest.  It doesn’t play like Mojipittan, as it’s more of a sliding puzzle game where you must match sounds that Japanese written symbols make with other tiles to solve the levels.  It’s available on Switch and PC, but reviewed on Switch here.

In each level of Kana Quest, there are tiles with Japanese written symbols on them.  These particular types of symbols have a consonant sound followed by a vowel sound.  When you double tap on one of the tiles, you can even hear the sound as well as see the English letters it makes.  Your job is to slide the tiles around so that each one matches with another one either by the first consonant sound or the vowel sound.  In later levels, you’ll even have to uncover mystery tiles by using clues from surrounding tiles to guess what they could be.  To finish a level, all tiles must be connected to one another, with no one left out.  You can get bronze, silver, or gold medals depending on how few moves you used to finish.  You can either use the controllers or the touch screen in handheld mode, but I found it much easier just to use the touch screen.

My main problem with this game is that to unlock levels, you must have a certain number of gold medals.  And it’s hard enough to finish the stages on their own, so eventually I hit a roadblock.  I would’ve rated this game WAY higher if they just let you play all the levels without having to unlock them.  Also, I’m not sure if this game is very effective at helping you learn the Japanese word symbols very well, and you don’t make words either.  But if you’re trying to learn Japanese, this game might be a little helpful.  I liked the pixel style graphics, too.

Kid Factor:

Nothing violent or objectionable here.  The game could be considered educational, but reading skill is still required.  Because of that and the high difficulty of the puzzles, I’d say this one is best for older kids.  Kana Quest is rated E for Everyone.

Tags: Game Reviews