Doge Store Clerk Recreated in This Japanese-Learning Game

In case you've forgotten, all the way back in November 2022, we highlighted Shashingo: Learn Japanese with Photography, an Unreal Engine-powered edutainment game that teaches you basic Japanese through a simple process of virtual photography.

Since then, the game's solo developer, Ryan Pocock, a.k.a. Autumn Pioneer, has been hard at work implementing and refining Shashingo's features, announcing recently that the highly anticipated game will finally hit the shelves later this week.

With a short trailer showcasing the game's tribute to the iconic Shiba Inu from the once-popular Doge Store Clerk video, the developer announced that Shashingo launches this Tuesday, February 27, 2024. According to Ryan, the game will be released exclusively on Steam with a 10% discount on launch. A Nintendo Switch version of Shashingo is also in development, but its release date remains unknown at the moment.

For those unaware, Shashingo will enable you to traverse a stylized Japanese-style 3D world and capture an enormous number of various objects with your camera. Each photo you take then turns into a flash card with Japanese and English names for the object you have captured, allowing you to learn by observing.

On top of that, the game promises to include a game mode that tests your memory and is set to feature grammar lessons for beginners, serving as a full-fledged comprehensive introductory course for learning the ABCs of Japanese.

In 2023, Ryan also joined 80 Level to tell us how he came up with the idea for Shashingo, explain how he chose the art style for it, discuss his approach to promoting the game, and talk about the title's gameplay mechanic.

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