OH! DANGO! JAM/Getting Started

When you start OH! DANGO! JAM you'll be greeted by three menus:
 * Game Start: Click to go to the game menu.
 * Ranking: Brings you to the top 500 players of the game. The ranking is grouped by fifties.
 * Data Regist: Saves the game.

Characters
At the start of the game you'll only be able to choose from a few of the characters in the game. As you play, you can acquire up to three characters in the form of items.

Each character has a completely different set of animations thereby varying their attacks, defense timing, jumps and walking distances.

Coins
You get coins from the minigame, from beating your opponent and from selling items. You can get extra coins by using a combo in the fight.

Coins do nothing other than act as a tie breaker for the ranking system.

Items
Items are what characters are called when they are stored in your inventory. Your active character counts as an item, however you can't sell it unless you switch to another item/character. The placement of the item doesn't matter, your current character could be in any of the three slots; sadly there is no notification which is the one you are using. You either need to learn to recognize the Japanese characters, but more importantly the slot which is the character you're using because you can have more than one of the same character type in your inventory.

When you switch from one character to another, you don't lose anything. Your stats are adjusted as shown in the window before you change, but by switching back they are reverted to how they were before.

If you want to get rid of an item, you have two choices. You can either sell it in the shop, or wait for a fourth item to override one of your inventory slots.

Shop
The shop is where you can sell items you don't want anymore. The item cannot be your active character.

Notice the rapidly changing number on this menu, in the box next to "Value". This is the multiplier by which your item will be sold at. The number by your item is its base value or "Price", and the multiplier adjusts it so that you get more or less coins than its base value.

When you click on the item you want to sell, you'll see what multiplier was picked and the resulting total amount that you will receive. If you don't like how much you're going to get, click "No" and then click the item again to generate another multiplier value.

When you're ready to sell at the desired price, click "Yes."

Stats
Your characters stats alter everything within the game. Each character has a specific, unchangeable speed; but the rest of their stats, although varied slightly from character to character, is up to how you want to distribute your stat points.

Whenever you level up you're given the choice to apply three stat points to any of four stats: HP, Attack, Magic and Defense.


 * HP: Increases the amount of health you have.
 * Attack: Increases the amount of damage you deal with your attack.
 * Magic: Increases the amount of damage you deal with your magic attack.
 * Defense: Decreases the amount of damage you take.

Fighting
When you first start fighting, make sure you click the "M" near the bottom. By default the game is set to "A." These two letters stand for Auto and Manual. If you leave it on "A" you'll just watch your character be controlled by the game's AI, so switch it to manual so you can do it yourself.

The key is to simply take out your opponent by attacking them in one of three ways: attack, magic and your special attack.

As you play you'll want to learn how to guard so that you can protect yourself from powerful enemies and special attacks. When you use guard, your character will freeze up and assume a "counter" position. When in this position your character has a few moments of time where if it's struck it will bounce your enemy upwards and sustain no damage from the attack. However if the guard isn't timed well then you will take damage either before or after the "counter" position is active.

Special Attacks
Each character has a special attack that is usually an exaggeration of one of their normal attacks. Special attacks use up one section of the blue bar and initiate with a flashy blue animation, followed up of course by a powerful attack that can often times destroy opponents in a single flurry. All special attacks hit multiple times and are thus the best way to get combos and bonus coins.

Mini game
On the select game menu screen, you'll see your character walking along on some sort of surface. While using your mouse, you can cause the ground to form at different heights (by putting your mouse where you want the ground to level out). Your character will follow the path, no matter what.

In this minigame red mushrooms randomly spawn. When your character reaches one, you are rewarded with a small, random amount of coins that ranges from 0 to 160. You can set the game to be on the select game menu screen and then minimize the window or change to another tab to be able to do other stuff on your computer while your character gathers more and more coins.