Pinyin Hai is a game for practicing hanzi (chinese characters) on a mobile phone. It is under development and there is a playable demo-version for download here. "Pinyin" is the name for chinese pronunciation written with western letters. "Pinyin Hai" means sea of pinyin.

The aim of the game is to match as many characters with their correct pinyin pronunciation as possible. You drop characters, bombs or fireballs in the pinyin hai ("sea of pinyin") which is constantly rising. Correct hit eliminates the pinyin wave and counts as a score, but incorrect hit turns it to a rock. Bombs remove a pinyin wave or a rock, without score. A fireball removes an entire column of pinyin waves.

There are three ways to use the game: either you just play the first level, the demo version, and play with the characters that comes with the download: 100 of the most common characters. Or else you play the first level, then register with a username on the Internet through a wap page and get a password. This way you can download higher levels individually customized to your own current level of character recognition. After each level you can have your result uploaded and saved on the server to get a level better suited for you next time you play, all to make you learn the characters faster. The third way to use the game is to register as game provider on the Internet. After registering you can enter which sets of characters you want for the different levels. You will get a code and using this code other players can download the game with the sets of characters that you have selected. This method is for teachers, to provide their students with games suited to their other course material.

Pinyin Hai is a Java midlet game using MIDP 2.0, CLC1.1. It is aimed at phones comparable to Nokia series 40 2:nd edition or above, with screen widths from 128 pixels to 210 pixels. This means it is playable on most modern smaller mobile phones. It doesn't use chinese fonts, all characters are png images, so you don't need a chinese enabled phone to play it.
Higher levels than first level are fetched over the Internet with HTTP, so if you want to play higher levels, your phone, network operator and network settings must allow Internet connection.

You can download a beta version here