Planetfurry BBS

[mwalimu]

I heard about this game, Katawa Shoujo, a few days ago and downloaded it. Or I should say the Act 1 version of it. It's available for download at http://katawa-shoujo.com/. The full version is not yet available and no idea when it will be, but apparently it's being developed under a creative commons license and will also be free. Sources indicate the full version will have adult content but there wasn't really anything above PG-13 in this release.

It's an interactive visual novel, manga style, with multiple endings. The viewpoint character is a male teenager named Hisao who is found to have a heart condition that leaves him hospitalized for several months. Once released he is enrolled in a school for disabled teens, where he soon encounters several different girls each with different personalities and disabilities. There are six different endings to Act 1, five involving different girls and one with another male student. There are several points along the way where you choose your responses, and these determine which scenes you encounter and ultimately which ending you reach.

My first time through took somewhere around 2 hours and covered a little over half the scenes. I spent a few more hours finding my way to all of the endings, speeding through parts I'd seen before, and then had to poke around a bit to pick up one earlier scene I'd managed to skip around.

It wasn't a game genre I was familiar with, but I found it highly enjoyable.