The visual novel garnered a lot of positive critique for its optimistic portrayal of a diverse cast of less-abled characters. Not given much a choice, Hisao goes anyway and soon learns that less-abled people are not as alien or different as he imagined them to be. After all, he was fine just a few weeks prior, but now they are putting him in the same category as amputees, blind people, the deaf, and who knows what else. He is a young man fed up with being told he is sick and less-abled, and he hates the idea of moving to a school specializing in catering to such people. On top of that, his concerned parents have him moved to Yamaku High School for Disabled Students. His life falls apart as he is kept in the hospital for weeks, his classmates soon stop visiting, and he has to come to terms with all the medicine he must take and activities he can never do again. He is immediately hospitalized and learns that he has a rare heart condition without an available cure. The story is followed from the perspective of Hisao, a regular Japanese dude who suffers a heart attack while meeting with his crush. The core idea of the game is that it’s a romantic visual novel with a branching narrative that pushes players into a relationship with one of several girls, BUT it takes place in a school for students with various disabilities.

This is a visual novel famously made by a ragtag group of people who banded together via internet forums, most prominently 4Chan, and decided to work and expand on a design sketch penned by a Japanese artist. Let’s roll back for a bit and address what Katawa Shoujo is. In fact, I hope reading about it here will remind some people that they still need to reinstall it and play through one of its branching storylines they haven’t explored yet. And its popularity was certainly not undeserved. Very much in the same way as Doki Doki Literature Club just recently. Visual novels aren’t a big genre in The West, so it really drew my attention when every big gaming outlet was talking about this amazing new visual novel.

That might sound like an overstatement, but Katawa Shoujo is one of my most replayed games and I have had it installed almost continuously since its original release. Then in the last four we talk games from Katawa Shoujo to Far Cry 3.The opening theme to Katawa Shoujo, a little piano piece called Wiosna, is such an earworm that it has become one of the most recognizable music pieces in gaming for me. The third one was a trigger warning for the entire thing. The first three parts deal with the events and controversies in the gaming community. Those of us willing to brave the recording hours tackled it all. And on the other hand, proved to be one of the best years in gaming. After last year's hopefulness of things being better, on one front 2012 proved to be an even worse year than its predecessor. After much loss of sleep and sanity the 2012 end of year podcast has finally arrived.

Katawa shoujo game theory