I was first made aware of Koira — the debut title from Belgium-based Studio Tolima — at gamescom 2023. In a round-up article that went live after the trade show, I wrote about how impressed I was by this heartfelt adventure game inspired by Journey and Princess Mononoke. Having previously played through the publicly available Steam demo, I’ll suffice to mention here that Koira is shaping up to be an excellent time and that I am very excited to experience the full version when it releases on April 1st.
In the meantime, at gamescom 2024, I spoke to two of the people behind Koira, namely, main programmer Sander Vanhove and studio head and creative director Ben Lega, about the connection that the player slowly establishes with the puppy that is the heart and soul behind the game, the expressive art style, and more:
Hello, and thank you for having me here today! Can you briefly introduce yourselves and describe Koira in your own words?
Sander Vanhove: Hi, my name is Sander Vanhove, I’m the main programmer of the project.
Ben Lega: Hello, I’m Ben Lega — I’m the creative director of the project. To describe Koira in a few words: it’s a 2D narrative adventure game where the player wakes up in a snowy forest and befriends a little puppy. Together, the two set out to find shelter, but along the way, they are chased by hunters who are trying to snatch the dog.
I first heard of Koira at last year’s gamescom. Can you describe the game’s progress from last year to now?
Sander Vanhove: Last year, we were shaping up the game and seeing where it was going. Now, we really know what the game is going to be like, which is why we were also able to release a demo. The demo is only a part of the story, but we hope that players can get a little hooked since we also stop at a cliffhanger in the story. The whole game will be a big expansion of what players will experience in the demo, though, with way more art, way more music and way more animations.
Ben Lega: Like Sander said, now we are basically wrapping up production, so the game is going to release quite soon. Last year, we were finalizing pre-production, and now it’s just rounding up the project and ramping up the marketing — it’s a very exciting moment for us!
After playing and being really impressed with the demo, it is clear to me that the heart and soul behind Koira lies in the connection that the player slowly establishes with the dog. What are some of the ways through which you are encouraging and reinforcing this connection?
Sander Vanhove: I think one of the biggest ways we do that has to do with the fact that we don’t use any text at all, so you can very much project your own meaning on the story as well as on the behaviour of the dog. Having no text makes it so that players tend to be more playful, and they can try out things like playing fetch with the dog. This kind of very natural interaction within the environments, I think, is the focus point of that relationship.
Ben Lega: What we wanted is that a lot of the puzzles directly reflect current story beats and emotions. So, we didn’t want to just create a series of complex puzzles just so that we could have them…bonding with the dog is really at the core of the project, so to do that, we try to elicit a lot of different feelings.
For example, even in the demo, there are moments in which players feed the dog, moments in which they play with the dog and there are even just moments of loneliness in which the dog is not accompanying the player. We are using a lot of these different moments and different specific emotions to reinforce that bond between the player and the dog.
When I met up with the both of you at gamescom 2023, you specifically told me that Koira is inspired by Princess Mononoke. As such, what would you say are the primary themes behind the story you’re trying to tell? Are they similar to Princess Mononoke in some way?
Sander Vanhove: One of the big themes in Koira is duality: there’s no pure good and no pure evil…there’s always this morally gray zone in between. That’s why we think of the hunters that are present in the game as being very ambiguous and mysterious. They use violence, yes, but, in the end, it’s not really clear what their goals are. So, I think duality is definitely one of the big themes.
You mentioned earlier that there are no spoken words in Koira — was it difficult to have the characters express so much without saying a single word?
Sander Vanhove: That’s a big plus of Ben’s art style…having our characters have big heads means they also have big eyes, so we can make the pupils go around. Now, it is quite a challenge to have the characters always look at the right things, be it pieces of the puzzle or other items.
But, also, it’s more than looking at things…sometimes characters say a lot by the shape that their eyes take: are they angry or are they happy? It took us a lot of polish just to have the right emotions on display, which is very important because there is no text…we have to explain things in the subtlest of ways. A glance can signify what the player is supposed to do or what they are supposed to feel.
Ben Lega: We rely a lot on the body language of the characters to express their emotions. And, I think it’s something that you see in a lot of games without text: the developers usually tell a story through the art, the music, cinematography and so on. But, we wanted to have a big focus on the characters because we wanted the story to also be very easy to understand and not be too cryptic or rely too much on environmental storytelling. We want the story to be more like a fairy tale: very easy to understand but with deeper layers of symbolic meaning.
There are scenes in Koira in which sound and music are completely absent, but there are also scenes where the orchestral soundtrack swells up. How do you decide if a scene is better with sound and music or none at all?
Sander Vanhove: Most of the time, we add music to strengthen the emotions within a scene. For example, there is this moment in the demo where the players and the dog slide down a hill, and the music crescendos as they do so. On the other hand, when we want the player to be more contemplative or take their time, we tone down the music so that they can explore their surroundings.
Ben Lega: We’re being very intentional with the music because it is one of the ways through which we convey the story of Koira. We didn’t want there to be music blasting at all times because then you wouldn’t really feel anything. When there is music, it is there to underline a key story moment. This being said, we also have environmental sound design so that the world feels magical and alive. And then, the main characters are voiced by instruments so even in quieter moments, players will still be able to generate some musicality. This musicality is really important because it is one way through which the player forms a bond of friendship with the dog.
Music is also an important part of the gameplay itself, as pressing the action button conjures magical notes which allow the player character to interact with the world or with the dog. How did music become such an integral part of Koira?
Ben Lega: For about the first year of work on what would become Koira, I was the only one attached to the project. Eventually, the composer, Reginald Noe, joined and wrote a lot of the music, which inspired the bittersweet and melancholic tone of the game and really matched well with the world I wanted to create. From there, I knew I wanted to make a kind of generative music experience, and that’s how music and sound became a major part of the game.
So, as you saw in the demo, the two characters sing together to activate the dormant power which lies within the magical statues that they find. This allows us to use the music as kind of a red thread, narratively, as the songs that they sing represents the stage of the friendship between the player and the dog. We think that incorporating music into the gameplay of Koira really represents this relationship and how it evolves.
If there is one phrase or feeling you’d like people to keep with them after finishing Koira, what would it be?
Ben Lega: I really wanted Koira to feel like an interactive animation because there is a really strong sensation, after watching a full-length animation, of having lived through many different emotions like happiness, joy, sadness and so on. I think when people finish playing Koira, we’d like them to feel as if they’ve been on an emotional journey. We want them to take away this feeling of having lived an adventure that was meaningful and very rich, even though the game should only take the average player about three hours to go through.
Koira is set to release on April 1st, 2025, on PlayStation 5 and Steam.
