## Playing 'Kanji Safari'

To start a game, select Start 'Kanji Safari'... from the Game menu. This will bring up the Kanji Safari dialog shown below in Figure 1 or Figure 2 (depending on whether you checked the cover the play area with tiles checkbox).

Figure 1. A sample Kanji Safari dialog (open)

Figure 2. A sample Kanji Safari dialog (covered)

If you start a game with only a single player selected, simply use the mouse to click tiles which match. If you are playing a game with more than one player, control of the tile selector moves from player to player as they complete their turns. The first 3 players use controls on the keyboard (these controls are fixed and shown in the Setup players dialog), whilst the fourth player uses the mouse.

The keys for each player are shown in Table 1 below. You may notice that the keys are spread across the keyboard so that all players have easy access to their control keys, even if 4 players are playing.

Player | Up | Down | Left | Right | Select
1 ** | a | z | s | d | f
2 | j | m | k | l | ;
3 | 4 | 1 | 5 | 6 | +
4 | mouse | mouse | mouse | mouse | mouse

Table 1. Player control keys

** If you start a game with only a single player selected, use the mouse to select tiles.

Scores for matching tiles are based on the number of strokes in each Kanji character, motivating students to learn more complex Kanji. A double-score is also given for triple tile matches, significantly rewarding players who know all the properties of the Kanji. Thus, to get the maximum score, you need to have the Kanji with the largest number of strokes and you need a triple tile match.

The Round counter can be used to limit games to a certain number of rounds. Before you start a game with other players, you need to decide how many rounds you will play. When you hit this round limit, the player with the highest score wins the game.

You will also see a Player timer and a Game timer at the top right corner of the screen. The Player timer shows how long a particular player has taken to have their turn, and the Game timer shows how long the game has been running. You may wish to limit a player to have their turn within 30 seconds to keep the game moving along.

The game progressively works through all selected tilesets by randomly selecting words from them until all have been used. Then it begins the full set of selected tilesets again. Thus, you will be exposed to a comprehensive set of Kana or Kanji whilst you play.

You can press the Reset button at any time to reset the player scores and start playing with a new set of tiles.

Pressing the Exit button will abort the current game.