Hanzi Hero 字海残卷
A survivor-style action roguelite where your powers are Chinese characters: pick radicals, fuse them into hanzi, grow those into words.
Challenge
Make Chinese characters the game mechanic rather than decoration: readable in a crowded fight, approachable for players who don't read Chinese, and deep enough that every pick is a real decision. And keep a Babylon.js battlefield full of enemies, fog and calligraphy effects running smoothly on a phone.
Approach
On level-up you pick radicals, and they fuse into characters that become skills: 日 + 月 = 明, 雨 + 田 = 雷, 人 + 木 = 休. Duplicate radicals push a skill along different axes, characters grow into words such as 明月 and 雷雨, and certain pick histories unlock hidden characters. Runs move through fog-of-war dungeon chambers with elites, bosses, relics and two heroes; every four waves the realm shifts and stamps a giant glyph from the Thousand Character Classic. A sibling deckbuilder, Cangjie Road 仓颉之路, applies the same character logic to a tower climb.
Outcome
Live in the browser at v0.5.0, with an ink-wash identity from the title screen to the HUD, Chinese and English (with pinyin), paper and night-ink themes, a phone landscape and home-screen mode, an online leaderboard and a public changelog.
