Asoi: Quick Japanese Games Using Your WaniKani Vocabulary 🎮

[Gunleifo]

Hello everyone!

We’ve made a website called Asoi that creates simple Japanese learning games using your WaniKani vocabulary.

About the Project

Asoi is meant to be a quick and easy way to reinforce what you’ve already learned without adding another full SRS system to your routine. It’s great for when you have a few minutes to spare or just want a break from regular reviews.

Current Games:

• Recall: Practice recalling vocabulary from English meanings
• Word Split: Identify word boundaries in text without spaces
• Memory Match: A classic matching game with your vocabulary

How It Works

You can connect your WaniKani API key or upload your own vocabulary list. The games use vocabulary you already know, so you’re reinforcing existing knowledge instead of learning new material.

Development Status

We’re always working on improving Asoi. If you notice anything or have feedback, please let us know. If you’d like to check it out, you can find it at Asoi.io.

We hope some of you will try it out and find it useful!

Update #1

Hello everyone!

Our exams are finally over, so we’ve had time to add some new updates to Asoi!

What’s New

• Kanji Rain: Type readings of falling vocabulary before they hit the ground.
• Random Game: Instantly jump into a random game
• Updated Landing Page: Cleaner design, easier to get started
• Profiles: Track your best performances and see which words give you the most trouble

We’ve also introduced Rin, our new mascot! She’s here to make the site feel more fun and welcoming, and we’re planning to bring her into more of the games over time with helpful notes and encouragement.

We’re still fixing some issues and have much more planned. If anyone has ideas for improving the site, please let us know!

Update #2

Hello everyone!

We’ve been busy improving Asoi and wanted to share some of the latest updates!

Conjugate Battle

Master verbs by conjugating them into different forms!

Kanji Twin

Spot the difference! Match kanji that look alike but aren’t the same

Deck Management

Learning from a textbook? Watching anime? Upload your own custom decks or download community created ones to reinforce exactly what you want.

We’ve also added juice effects to make the games feel more dynamic and updated the landing and profile pages for a cleaner experience!

Give it a try and let us know what you think! We love hearing from you

[RainbowBrite13]

Thank you for creating this! This is something I’ve really needed was to having the words I’m studying on WK be put into fun games! I personally love word searches and crosswords a lot!

[Gunleifo]

Thanks, we very much felt the same way! We hope everything’s working well for you, but if you run into anything that needs fixing or have suggestions for improvements, feel free to let us know!

[RainbowBrite13]

Maybe look into the Japanese language learning video games Nihongo Quest N5, Koe 声, Shujinkou, and Wagotabi to get other ideas on games that could be created to test one’s WaniKani knowledge.

[wiredmensch]

Looks promising, I will try it tonight and edit my reply.

[uragaan]

This kinda stuff happens way too often. Not fun.

[equant]

I love this. Jordle is great. I imported 155 words, and the recall game seems to be giving me the same 10 to 20 words over and over.

[Brave-foot]

This sounds and looks great!! I’ll try it when I get home after work

[Gunleifo]

Thank you! The Recall game should be completely random, but we might have messed something up in the logic. We’ll take a look and post an update when it’s fixed!

[Gunleifo]

Thanks for the feedback! Since the game pulls vocabulary directly from WaniKani, it only accepts the specific answer WaniKani assigns (in this case, きぶん for ‘feeling/mood’). We may look into supporting alternative correct answers in the future!

[uragaan]

Like in wanikani when you see 少女、女の子、女子 you can type in “girl” and be correct for all of them. Meanwhile this game when asking for “girl”, only sees one of those three as correct.

[Gunleifo]

Oh, I get it now! I hadn’t really noticed since I’m not that high level yet, so I didn’t run into this issue as much. I’ve made some changes, and it should hopefully now accept multiple correct answers like WaniKani does. It at least works for “girl” now! The site only uses vocabulary words, so readings or kanji that appear in compounds might not always be accepted as standalone answers though. Let me know if you run into any other cases where it doesn’t work as expected!

[mithi]

Hey I really like this. In particular, I really like the “recall” game. Really fun. This is definitely something I will use over and over.

Maybe instead of forcing people to use Wanikani API or upload their own vocab, you can also provide a default vocab?

What I did was downloaded your sample CSV and then uploaded it again

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You might find this cool btw if you’re interested in the frequency rank of kanjis

Kanji Heatmap

[Gunleifo]

Thank you! Glad you’re enjoying Recall! I will definitely check it out - looks really cool!

[HachiNoMichi]

Thank you! This is definitely something I’ve been looking for

[Balmer]

This is a good idea. I knew of KaniWani and the other one, but already going to Japanese classes, doing homework, plus Wanikani and Bunpro, plus doing reading and listening, another full SRS is completely overkill (and I don’t think this reverse learning is something that needs to be done regularly anyways). However a game that you can play when you have time is cool. I also like a lot this conjugation practice: Japanese Conjugation Practice, maybe you can add a similar game for the verbs already studied on Wanikani.

[Tyxo22m]

thank uou for sharing the link to the Japanese Conjugation Practice site.
My conjugations still needs lots of work.

[tinfoilhat]

This looks really cute, I’ll give it a try later!

[Gunleifo]

Thanks! Let me know if you spot any errors or have ideas for improvements!

[Gunleifo]

Hi, this is a bit late haha, but we actually just implemented a game like this! If you’d like to check it out, we’d love to hear your feedback!