Here's a question, what do you get when a bunch of people from 4chan get together to make a game inspired by an image from a Japanese artist?
Well in most cases the answer would be nothing at all but in this case you get a story about a guy who gets transferred to a school for disabled children and meets a diverse cast of characters and somewhere along the line finds a new perspective on life and perhaps love as well.
Katawa Shoujo made by Four Leaf Studios is a visual novel released for free earlier this year after several years of development and is the story about Hisao Nakai who after a near fatal heart attack that hospitalizes him for a considerable amount of time gets transferred to Yamaku High School for disabled children to start his life anew. The entire story is told from his perspective as he goes to his new school.
Now before I go any further I'd like to talk about the genre a bit. Visual Novels or VNs is a bit of an odd genre to itself as it's not really a game per say due to there is barely any interactivity to it other than making a few decisions occasionally to steer the story in one way or another.
One could say it is more a of Choose Your Own Adventure combined with a comic rather than a "normal" game, and even then the description is somewhat incorrect when given a closer scrutiny.
This difference may be something that some may find very off-putting unless you have had previous experience with Visual Novel titles or CYOA titles in some respect.
As unlike other games the player, or viewer in the lack of a better term, does not have much input into the story and what is happening in it other than at set points and even then he is bound by the whims of the story or in some respects the original writer of the story even more so than other games.
Visual Novels are very Japanese for a lack of a more fitting description of them. It is nothing something that would really come from a European or American developer and is suffice to say a product coming from the Japanese gaming culture. Which does make Katawa Shoujo an odd man out as it is a distinctly Japanese game developed by a Western developer.
One might think this would bring a different and "fresh" perspective on it but Katawa Shoujo works as a normal Visual Novel title does and on that note the game isn't remarkable even if a lot of care has been put into both the music and the character designs.
Another term that is usually used in conjunction with games like these is the term "Dating Game", and while it is an apt description to use I wouldn't call it 100% correct when talking about this title.
The term Dating game implies that you actively seek out to woo someone of the opposite gender in order to win their affection in order to win the game. In Katawa Shoujo this isn't the case, instead we have one introductory act that then separates into five separate non-overlapping stories that focuses on the different characters and Hisao's struggles as he first comes to term with his relationship and then the issues that appear in it.
Katawa Shoujo and its stories is really meant to be played in a certain order of progression, in this case the order in which the main five characters are introduced. Mainly due each story ramps up both in terms of choices you make and how they affect them and also how the stories play out.
The first couple of stories are relatively simple and you only have a few choices to make and barely any divergent paths to encounter but before long you come across the stories where your actions suddenly have a lot more consequences and later on some of your choices may have longer lasting effects to the story's path and progression.
It's a nice and subtle step up and I somewhat suspect it was both something that appeared during the development and also something to ease in people into the flow and mechanics of Visual Novels even if that could possibly be me looking too much into it.
But at the same time a lot of heart and thought has been put into the writing of especially the dialogue and a lot of is really good and incredibly funny to read even if the inner monologue of the main character can be a bit rambling at times.
The same can be said about the characters and this is frankly the strength of Katawa Shoujo in that the characters feel normal. For while they are all disabled in some way or another they aren't defined by just that and instead have a depth to them that make them feel like normal human beings. While one may argue that some characters do feel incredibly flat and only defined by their major character aspects something which I can agree with when it comes to certain side characters in particular but I'd say overall the characterisation in the game is very good. Some of the later stories are actually quite heart wrenching at places.
The stories themselves are very good at stringing you along as well with it's writing leaving you at times uncertain if you've made the right choice or not, especially when you've managed to enter the slow decline into the bad ending and at times it feels you are watching a car crash about to happen in slow motion as Hisao keeps slipping further and further downwards towards the end and it's proof to the writing that they usually leave you feel very hollow as you watch the credits roll (with the extra touch that it doesn't play music to further rub in the fact that it was not the way it should have ended) and you have yet not achieved the positive ending for the story which just prompts you to retry and find out where it did go wrong.
There are a few flaws though here and there, especially for the first path the writing feels very lacklustre and unfocused at times and the overall progression of that particular path it isn't remarkable compared to the later stories but that has more to do with the character in question being very uncomplicated and it's more things surrounding that character that is complicated.
The art is good but there is a limited range of facial expressions for the various character and at times the expression used isn't perhaps the most fitting for what is mentioned in the text but it's not something that appear that often.
But in the end Katawa Shoujo is a title with an interesting premise and a lot of heart put into it and is a remarkable achievement from such a small and diverse group of people with such an odd origin as well. Suffice to say I have to recommend it to those willing to overlook the whole Visual Novel aspect and give it a try. Because it's a very interesting experience.
0 comments:
Post a Comment