Runesinger is a demo of a PC videogame to speak and spell Korean. The player practices a few nouns and verbs by serving food to hungry villagers during a North Korean famine.

    Inspired by melodic intonation therapy, the player sings a jingle. On each musical note, a ball bounces on an iconic syllable. Through a spelling puzzle, the player composes each syllable in Hangul, which is the phonetic alphabet of Korean. Subsequently, the player sings with Korean subtitles.

    The three-dimensional virtual environment, user interface, and story embody the rules of Hangul. Thus, Runesinger harnesses tropes of videogames to practice a foreign language in a meaningful context.

Presented at USC, TCETC, INTETAIN, ISAGA, and IEEE-GIC.
Honorably mentioned at Independent Games Festival, GDC and IEEE-GIC.

Here is the thesis paper, video,
software development toolkit (4 MB)
and demo. (80 MB).

(C) 2009 Ethan Kennerly

Postmortem at Game Career Guide
http://gamecareerguide.com/features/850/student_postmortem_.php

Summer Tour 2009:

Here is the free 3D graphics toolkit. Conveniently create Python-Ogre 1.1 prototypes and explore them at runtime. You're free to use my code or modify it. Download (4 MB).