Koira is an upcoming narrative adventure developed by Studio Tolima and published byDONTNOD. You play as a traveller who rescues a lost puppy. The pair forge a deep friendship in order to escape a musical woodland and find their way home.
A quirk of Koira is that Studio Tolima uses no text to tell their narrative, instead opting for more subtle forms of storytelling in a similar vein to Journey. Instead, the traveller and puppy communicate using musical notes and can harmonise together to solve puzzles.
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In an interview withGame Rant, game director and studio head Ben Lega explained that the decision to make Koira text-free came early in the development process. The studio was inspired by the aforementioned Journey, Disney’s Fantasia and the films of Charlie Chaplin.
Friendship Conquers All
“The design philosophy grew very quickly into doing the whole game without a single word of text, not just the storytelling aspect,” Lega revealed. “The time we gained by not writing dialogues we would have to translate, we then lost in scratching our heads on how to convey clear narrative intent and gameplay tutorials without writing a single word. But the challenge was exhilarating!”
Lega appeared in ashort videoaired during Summer Game Fest’s Day of the Devs last month, explaining some of the unique features of Koira. Every character you meet in Koira is ‘voiced’ by a different instrument, which is a neat touch. Perhaps most importantly, you’re able to play fetch as well as hide-and-seek with the puppy. Koira isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, though. There are “mysterious hunters” roaming the forest actively trying to harm the pair.
“Our goal with Koira is to create a universal tale which focuses on the emotional journey,” Lega says in the snippet. “We want to create a game that is as immersive and intuitive as possible.”
Koira is set for a 2025 release, and is intended to have a demo sometime this summer.
