OH! DANGO! JAM/Gameplay

When you start OH! DANGO! JAM you'll be greeted by three menus:
 * Game Start:
 * Ranking:

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.

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. 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.