Hanzi Pets

Title page
Initial pet selections
Home page
Feed pet page
Fight page

👉 Play Now - Click Here!

Inspiration

The project was born from a simple problem: learning a new language—especially one as visual as Chinese—can feel like a grind. I wanted to combine the nostalgic "need-to-care" mechanics of a Tamagotchi with the rich mythology of the Four Symbols (Si Xiang). By tying a pet's evolution to the player's literacy progress, we transform rote memorization into a quest to awaken ancient guardians like the Vermillion Phoenix and the Azure Dragon.

What it does

Hanzi Pets is a web-based virtual pet simulator where players "adopt" one of the mythological guardians of the four directions.

Learn by Feeding: To keep your pet healthy and help it evolve from a hatchling to an adult, you must correctly identify Chinese characters.

Evolution System: As your literacy "XP" grows, your pet physically changes, gaining new features and sprites.

Interactive Command Bar: A custom-built UI allows you to navigate between the Home, Feed, and Fight screens using unique pixel-art icons.

How we built it

Engine: Built from scratch using Pygame (Python) with the help of Claude's Sonnet 4.6 and Gemini 3.

Cross-Platform Deployment: Utilized Pygbag and WebAssembly (WASM) to package a traditionally desktop-based library for the browser, hosted via GitHub Pages.

Assets: Custom-generated pixel art assets, optimized for 200x200px sprite scaling.

Audio: Implemented a dual-format "Smart Loader" to handle audio compatibility across local Mac environments (MP3) and web browsers (OGG).