Planned Release Date: October 2026

About This Demo

Try Penko Vox: Japanese for free

This demo is the first chapter of the full game: Hajimari Town, the start of your voyage across the Kotoba Islands. Talk to people in your own words, by text or by voice, and see whether learning Japanese by actually talking works for you. Everything runs offline on your own computer, and it's also the best way to check that your PC runs the AI smoothly before you buy.

What's in the demo

• Hajimari Town and Route 1: the town's story, from your first morning to the welcome party where you introduce yourself in Japanese.
  
• Talk to anyone: there are no dialogue menus. Residents answer what you actually say, remember you, and have names and lives of their own.
  
• Four conversation scenes (N5): greetings, meeting a classmate, chatting about the weather and visiting a friend's house, by text or by voice call.
  
• Gentle corrections: mistakes are rephrased the way a good teacher would, with a quick check and an explanation one tap away.
  
• Reading help: pitch accent, furigana, romaji, translations and a tap-anywhere dictionary.
  
• Word spirits: catch spirits hiding in the tall grass on Route 1 by reading their words.
  
• Practice: Japanese typing, 3D kana writing with stroke order, karuta and ear training.

Your progress carries over

Everything you learn and do in the demo carries over to the full game. The full game continues the voyage through four more towns, from N5 to N1, with town stories, a rival, 100 word spirits, fishing, mini-games and over 40 conversation scenes.

Private by design

The AI, speech recognition and voices all run on your own machine. No accounts, no cloud, no data leaves your computer.

Good to know

• Penko Vox uses generative AI. It's a strong practice partner, but it can make mistakes. It's a learning aid, not a replacement for a teacher.
  
• A CPU with AVX2 and 16 GB of RAM are required. The first reply after launch takes a moment while the AI loads.

AI Generated Content Disclosure

The developers describe how their game uses AI Generated Content like this:

Penko Vox: Japanese uses local generative AI to power its immersive language learning experience. An integrated Large Language Model (LLM) acts as a native Japanese tutor, generating real-time dialogue based on user input, while a Neural Text-to-Speech (TTS) engine synthesizes high-fidelity Japanese audio for listening practice.