Kohana
A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android
*Nominated for Best Art and Best Narrative category in the Indonesia Games Awards 2022
"Once close, now far apart. What should be done to close the distance?"
Kohana, a Japanese confection store in a world where humans and youkai coexist together. Ren, the young confection maker and the owner of the store, has been continuously attacked by a fox-shaped shadow. He knows the perpetrator, yet did nothing to stop them. Once the store guardian, Komainu, has enough and swears that he will eliminate the attacker, Ren has to do whatever it takes to stop the bloodshed between the two people he holds dear, even if it costs him his own life.
Witness the relationship between two childhood friends and unravel the tragedy that pushed them apart.
Kohana is a short visual novel made in one month by Mushroomallow Studio for Spooktober VN Jam 2021 event. There are 2 different endings that you can find in this visual novel.
CONTENT WARNING: Light descriptions of violence, including death, grief, and blood. Please be cautious if you're sensitive to these things.
- Format: Visual Novel
- Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Tragedy
- Length: 9000+ words
- Language: English. Portuguese BR
- Platform: PC (Windows, Mac, Linux), Android
If you enjoy our game, please give our twitter a follow to for more information about updates and future games from us.
- Leader, Artist: Mushroomallow
- Story writer : Nami
- Editor, Proofreader : Clover Zero (Twitter)
- UI design, Ren’Py Scripter : MadScientist (Twitter)
- Guest Composer : Jasson Prestiliano (JP Soundworks Youtube | Twitter)
- Guest Composer : Ford Audio Design (Twitter | SoundCloud)
- Guest Line Editor : Cygni (Twitter| Itch.io)
- Portuguese BR translation : Exzanorxis
Let us know in the comment if you find any problem, or if you have any question. We hope you enjoy your time playing the game!
Download
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Development log
- Kohana 1.2 Update (Fixing sentences)Jan 09, 2022
- Kohana - PostmortemNov 01, 2021
- Kohana is Released!Oct 02, 2021
Comments
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Such a touching bittersweet story about friendship and forgiveness. The character designs for Ren, Iroha, Komainu, and the Youkai are absolutely gorgeous. The art and the music create an amazing haunting atmosphere.
Such a lovely comment... Thank you so much! It really made my day when I heard someone enjoyed playing the game that we made!
Just played your VN on my android tablet. I really like it! I love the concept of expressing feelings through food, it makes so much sense! (I love to cook)
It was a nice little story! The art was great! I will have to try your other games! Thank you!
Thank you for playing Kohana, and I'm happy to hear that it resonates with you!
Personally, I've noticed that the expression of feelings through food is more prominent in Japanese cuisine, such as the dedication of certain foods to welcome specific seasons and the significance attached to certain dishes. I've always loved this concept in storytelling, and especially in Kohana, I aimed to incorporate it into the game.
Food elements are present in all of our visual novels. I hope you'll enjoy the other two as well!
This is a very lovely game. So happy I got to play it! Everything from the music to the art, to the writing is beautiful.
Thank you for playing and for making a video from Kohana! I've also leave a like and comment in the video. I hope you had a great time playing our short vn! ^^
Phenomenal story line u guys r the best love ur game this game just made my day whatan experience awesome 👌 thank u guys so much love it 👍
Thanks for making another video about our game! Much appreciated! ^^
U r very welcome love ur games 👍
You're a young owner of a sweet shop in Japan but if only you toke up sword fighting instead of confection creating as you are constantly attacked by Yokai half fox/half human beings that wish you dead. The illustrations are amazing, the story is really good and I enjoyed the sfx and music so serene and beautiful. I hope you create more games!
Please watch my playthrough and support me at SecretDoorGaming. :)
Hmm, Ren would be too soft-hearted to wield a sword, but the thought of Ren as a sword wielding youkai slayer is not bad actually 🤔
Anyway, thanks for playing Kohana! Gonna check out the video when I get the chance ^^
Thanks! Yes Ren is indeed too soft though he could beef up with carrying all those bags of sugar for his sweets! 😁
the atmosphere is really established by the art, animations, bgm, and sfx! the story is also well written and the character designs are beautiful. also love the color scheme so much.
Thank you for playing Kohana! I'm glad to hear you enjoy the visual, and shout out to our programmer for adding those fancy effects to the game resulting in those beautiful atmosphere. ^^
I finally got a chance to play this and I LOVED IT! The art style is nice, the music is lovely, but the story is where it really shines! For a short VN, this packed an emotional punch and both epilogues were worth exploring! I personally enjoyed them both, but I did have a personal favorite. It was also a neat mechanic to have the choices be which confections Ren will make, and I LOVED the glossary and note system--it was neat that you could hover over certain terms in the text and see a quick note so it does not get in the way of the narrative. Excellent job with this precious little gem! I love stories about childhood friends, and I also love stories that deal with youkai, so I really loved this. It was obvious the team put a lot of love into this project ^^
Thank you for playing Kohana! It's really nice to see how you described which elements of the game that picked your interest, and we're happy to know that you enjoy the glossary! We thought it's important because a lot of words in Kohana can't be translated/doesn't feel right when translated into English, but we still want people to understand what they mean. Glad to know that it works!
Yes, I totally agree a lot of words just do not sound good translated so it is best to leave as is, which feels more natural and how you went about the glossary was so seamless, it was a wonderful feature ^^
I played this game in my stream and i loved it, the art, sound design, the atmosphere, everything was very unique, i only picked the good ending it seems but i'm looking forward to obtaining the other, thank you for creating this beautiful game! and kudos to you guys! keep up the good work!
Thank you for playing Kohana and for taking the time to write this lovely comment! Personally, I think both endings can be considered as good ending, but do check it out yourself. And good luck with the streaming! ^^
The setting and gorgeous art style of this had me interested very quickly. Having the choices be about the confections felt unique, but very fitting. Lovely, short game!
Thank you for playing Kohana! We'll check your video when we have the chance! ^^
Cute, it's a so cuuute story :)
The end maked me feels happy
I love this game more than anything
Oooh interesting visuals~
Although kind of lagging on very low end laptop??? But yeah not that important like only a little little amount of people use very low end laptop :T
Also why Komainu looks so hot (imagine him as a human though) /j
Hello, I am the one who did the scripting for Kohana. The amount of special effects (like rain, fire etc) might contribute on the lag on certain scenes (although I build Kohana on low end laptop myself- old i3 processors, 4GB RAM and no dedicated graphic cards). If your laptop spec is less than that then it might be the cause, but we are really sorry for the inconvenience
Oh yes as I said my specs is "very low", I also didn't have dedicated graphics, but I have 8 GB of RAM; though it's just RAM. I have Mobility Radeon HD 3400 as intergrated which is pretty bad itself and core 2 duo p8700 which have the same or a bit better specs than the i3 (three digit number) series~
Part 2~
Yep it ends~
The visual is eye catching and the music is excellent~! But I feel there's some plot hole in the story??? Idk could be my bias! Like why did the foxes attacks the confection shop in the 1st place? Why did they live along Youkai? How Ren met Iroha? Etc. But that also could be unimportant in the whole scheme of the story~>_<
Oooo the feelsss. I love Iroha, short-hair equals my type huhuuu. I rated before the jam period but only play it today and I'm glad I did. TwT
I came here after playing EDDA Cafe, and loved the experience! Keep up the good work.
Thank you! We hope you'll enjoy our future visual novels too! ^^
Can't wait. :D
A very well written story with interesting characters. I really like the use of Youkai from Japanese lore. Keep up the good work!
Thank you so much for playing and making a video of Kohana!
A really heartwarming story about the aftermath of a tragedy...I really love how the characters portrayed and the artwork's in this art is beautiful! Definitely reminds me of a shoujo manga, I learned a lot from the glossary of this game!
Thank you for playing Kohana! We're all growing up reading shoujo manga so it's a strong influence for us, both in art and story. And glad to hear the glossary is helpful! ^^
I just finished finding all the endings, and I wanted to say, thank you for making this visual novel. I enjoyed the artwork and the GUI is so polished and pretty!
Waaa thank you! The feedback feels extra special coming from you because you're one of our favorite dev! ^^
Oh my gosh, thank you! >W<
Incredibly beautiful artwork and story. Loved this game!
Thank you for playing Kohana!
I adore the art style! The color and texture are easy on the eyes. <3
Thank you so much! We're happy to hear that!
I just finished reading your visual novel and I enjoyed it. It's very wholesome and I like how you utilised some Japanese folklore into your story. I also enjoyed the subtle animations in your work. You've handled the anime art style very well and the illustrations of your youkai are amazing, I also like the coloring style you opted for, it gives that ukiyo-e style aesthetic. The illustrations of your characters are really good, and your background art is very clean and crisp. Guess my only critique would be the pacing of the story, but overall this was an excellent work.
Thank you so much for your generous feedbacks! We certainly hope that the story could be longer and more thoroughly told, but since our aim is to finish the game for the jam, it's the best we can do in one month development. Maybe there will be extended version in the near future? We'll see. 😉