Dragon Tale - A Serious Game for Learning Japanese Kanji

To counter the difficult task of studying kanji when learning the Japanese language, we suggest an adventure style Serious Game. Previous solutions are focused on small 2D games or gamification of virtual kanji trainers. Our goal is to utilize the concept of flow by immersing the player in a rich storyline with Japanese mythology, turn-based encounters and various mini games to train all aspects of kanji: stroke order, meaning, pronunciations and compound words. We further introduce Augmented Reality to the language acquisition as an innovative way to combine virtual content with the real world. A first test revealed great potential of such an approach and feedback for further development.