Matcha

Matcha is a clever tile-sliding puzzle game that gives you practice reading Hangeul. It doesn't hold your hand very much in terms of romanization of the symbols, so if you are totally unfamiliar with the Korean alphabet, it might be wise to keep this reference chart handy: http://www.wright-house.com/korean/korean-graphics/hangul-basic.jpg It blows my mind that the top review is complaining that "you can't learn any Korean" by playing Matcha. Sir or madam, do you not understand that you need to know how to walk before you can learn to run? You have to learn the alphabet before you learn to read, and that is exactly what this game is for. It's not a "missed opportunity." It is called "doing things in the right order."

It's fun as-is even if you never intend to learn Korean; but if you're studying Korean, this is the best way I've seen to get good at reading hangul. As someone who has taught English overseas and who made up and used games in class, I've seen what does and doesn't work. What works is making the skill you want to teach an integral part of the gameplay, not just something you slap on to the gameplay (because if the learning goal is just slapped on, like you have to correctly spell this word to perform an attack, then the learning goal becomes an obstacle to fun). This game does a great job of making the skill the gameplay. The puzzle is about figuring out how to combine and uncombine hangul letters to make syllables, and you can only do so in accordance with the actual rules of hangul. So as you perform combinations, you're just learning the rules of hangul as you go. But if you don't really care about hangul and just want a puzzle game, it's still just a really excellent puzzle game. And at $3 standard price, it's an absolute steal for a puzzle game. (Don't expect to learn to speak Korean from this. It's JUST a tool for learning the writing system.)

An ingenious way to learn Hangul - saying this as a total beginner. Only wish the game could be played the other way around - sound cards instead of letters. Still - excellent game!

This is a fun an challenging game. If you want to learn Korean, this seems like a great way to test your understanding of Hangul. I'm stuck on a few challenges and thinking I should review some learning resources I have about the language. If you aren't familiar with Hangul, you may feel a bit of a learning curve.

Simple, yet very entertaining puzzle game that even allows those players who are starting out with learning Korean to get familiar with Hangeul!

Cute puzzle game to play when bored but don't have time or energy to commit to something more. Though, it's not actually serious language learning and the last two levels are a tad bugged last time I played