A GameMaker game that combines two study goals in one: learning Japanese kana and preparing for the Philippine FE (Fundamentals of Engineering) IT exam — a key requirement for working in Japan on a skilled visa.
Asteroids fall from the sky labeled with hiragana or katakana characters. Type the correct romanization to destroy them before they reach the bottom.
Progression — Start with vowels only. New kana rows unlock as your score increases, gradually adding:
- Vowels (a i u e o)
- K / G rows
- S / Z rows
- T / D rows
- N, M, Y, R rows
- H / B / P rows
- ん
Free Play — All kana rows unlocked from the start. Includes the FE Continue system (see below).
Practice (Select Rows) — Choose specific kana rows to drill with no penalty.
Katakana — Katakana variant of the game.
In Free Play mode, when you get a game over you can press C to attempt a continue. A multiple-choice IT/CS question from the Philippine FE exam bank will appear. Answer correctly (press 1–4) to revive with 2 HP. Each question covers topics directly tested on the FE exam:
- Algorithms & data structures (Big-O, sorting, search)
- Memory & operating systems
- Networking (TCP/UDP, OSI layers, ARP)
- Databases (SQL, normalization, keys)
- Software engineering (SDLC, Agile, testing)
- OOP & programming concepts
- Computer architecture (CPU, ALU, cache)
- Security (AES, hashing, DDoS)
This makes the game a practical study tool for Filipinos preparing for the FE exam as part of the Japanese skilled worker visa process.
- Type romaji to match falling kana (input uses prefix pruning — narrows to valid matches as you type)
- Arrow keys / Enter — navigate menus
- Space — toggle rows in Practice mode
- C — attempt FE continue on game over (Free Play only)
- 1–4 — select FE answer
Open JapaneseLearningAsteroids/JapaneseLearningAsteroids.yyp in GameMaker to build and run.