Hsueh Tse Tan

About

Hsueh Tse Tan is a minimalistic word-matching game. It functions like a multiple-choice type of questions. A vocabulary word or a Chinese definition will be displayed, and the player will have to select the correct corresponding meaning or vocabulary. It was born before AI existed.

This game caught the attention of our English teacher and in return, they requested to review the game and offered to give us a heads-up of upcoming pop-quiz scopes.

Words

Source

The source of the vocabulary word and meanings in the game came from the handout published by the school and the textbook used by the school.

In the game, this is broken up into 3 categories, Hsueh Tse, Chih Kau, and Textbook. Idioms and phrases fall under the Textbook category.

All the words were keyed in to the database one by one.

Ranges

Players select ranges to play by toggling pages; they correspond to the exact pages from the books. There are presets of exam ranges available as well.

The number of questions can be altered in settings. It ranges from 5 to 30. This field is ignored if there are not enough words in the range, or if another setting called the “Play All” is enabled.

Under the Play All mode, every single word will show up. To make sure the player actually intended to do so, the game double-checks with the player if the total sum of the words exceeds 100 or more.

Features

Lucky?

Questions show up alternately in English or Chinese, and the player has to choose the correct meaning or vocabulary. The game will mark an answer as “lucky” if it took the player longer than their average time to answer. Then, it will prompt the player to answer it one more time after all questions are answered.

Review?

If a question was answered incorrectly, the game will prompt the player to answer it at the end of the game again, and again, and again, until the player finally gets it right. To not be too annoying, a maximum of 1 incorrect question will be reviewed. This feature can be turned off in settings.

Rude!

Some people, for some reason, enjoy being roasted. Me personally I just feel uncomfortable with overly nice and polite games. So when this preference is enabled, all the messages in the game turns rude. For example, after answering a question correctly, instead of congratulating the player, the game simply displays .

The reception of this feature was far more positive than I expected. It appealed to many, and I received numerous submissions of offensive sentences to be added to the game.

While funny and all that, this feature was requested to be toned down by the “guardians,” and many sentences had to be rewritten to pass the quality check. People were not amused.

No Transitions

There are a lot of well-designed transitions in the game, but the player can disable them if their device cannot handle it or any other reasons.

Game Over

The game calculates accuracy (in percentage and raw numbers), maximum correct combo, and average answering time per question.

The background also changes accordingly. It becomes more lively and happy as the player progresses through the questions with high accuracy.

Roadmap

As the semester came to an end and such pop-quizzes were no longer relevant, this project officially stopped updating. Below are a few features that were brought up but never had a chance to enter the game.

...

None, as every single feature requested was added to the game!