Prerelease patch 0.18

On January 29, ladiesgamers published a lovely article about Hiragana Flashcards. It’s the first non-steam review our game has received, and we’re incredibly grateful for it.

If you haven’t read it yet, we’d love for you to check it out 💖

This patch also includes several changes inspired directly by the feedback in that review.

Deck order randomness option

In her article, Laurane mentioned the following about card order:

“Gameplay revolves around picking cards at random and identifying the correct hiragana. In theory, the cards are randomized, but in practice, I sometimes drew the same card three times in a row. This small quirk can be a little frustrating, but it also makes the game feel more like a genuine memory challenge.” — Laurane

She’s absolutely right. With a fully random deck generation, it’s possible for the same card to appear multiple times in a row.

To address this, we’ve added a new Deck order randomness option under Settings. You can now choose between:

Random (the original behavior) Fully random deck generation, where repeated kana can easely happen sometimes.

Reduced repetitions (new, now defaulted option) On this option, an additional pass is applied to the deck. When the same Kana are next to each other, cards are swapped around in the deck. (So there is still a small chance of repetition, but it is greatly reduced.)

Background music feedback improvements

Another point Laurane raised was about the background music:

“The background music leans fully into lo-fi territory. It’s calm and unobtrusive, which fits the studying atmosphere well. However, the track loops continuously, and over longer sessions, it can feel repetitive.” — Laurane

The game soundtrack currently consists of 14 Lo-Fi tracks, to make this clearer, we’ve improved the music track indicator:

When a new track starts, the indicator now clearly shows which track is playing and who it’s by. The indicator remains visible for a few seconds whenever the tracks switch.

This should make music changes more noticeable, as lo-fi track transitions can sometimes kinda happen without you noticing.

Kana introduction word updates

Lastly, we’ve gone through and changed some of the example words used when kana are introduced.

We’ve tried to pick more iconic and recognizable words per kana, so you may notice some new or updated examples during gameplay.

As always, thank you for playing Hiragana Flashcards

and a huge thank you to Laurane for the thoughtful review and feedback 💕