Katawa Shoujo, aka that game about disabled girls.
So, for those that have not heard of it, Katawa Shoujo is an original English-made visual novel. VNs are essentially Japan's answer to choose your own adventure style novels, with a narrative that branches off in different paths. However, these are usually less about having a lot of options so much as focusing on story and characters that you can make occasional choices to.
With that out of the way, this was a game developed by members of 4chan that after being inspired by an art sketch of five girls with different disabilities, decided to make a vn exploring the characters and doing their best to portray them with respect.
The story follows Hisao nakai who, after being diagnosed with a fatal heart condition that makes exercise and strong emotion at risk of inciting heart attacks, is enrolled to a private high school for disabled students. After getting to know the students and starting to make friends, you're given 5 romance routes to pick from.
The game itself isn't hard as such, many of the paths contain only a handful of choices which are pretty easy to figure out if they're the correct option or not. As I've said, the focus is more as a scripted novel where you get to form bonds with the characters.
Fair warning, the game is lengthy. The overall script is just slightly under half a million words, not counting some repeated scenes. Thus, save states are strongly recommended for easy access to different routes and decision-making, particularly if you have a desire to see all the alternate paths and endings.
The game was mostly an American effort with some international cooperation, so it's originally written in English, not Japanese. I say this because it was written to look and feel like an English translation of Japanese products. Some basic knowledge on Japanese culture is recommended, but not necessary as such.
As to how I have an accessible copy: I'd been dying to play this since it came out some years ago from the premise, but the graphics and pixelated text makes it impossible for screen readers to use it. An online friend with experience in programming was nice enough to rip the text, music, and sound effects and script them to java as an html file. The only difference being that the cgi short clips and anime-inspired spritework for the characters was removed. Otherwise, it plays identically to the original.
So I've decided to share my copy to the forum, to experience an originally visual game depicting disabled characters in hopes of finding respectful depictions and a rewarding story in it's own right.
There's no worries of copyright, the original work was made freeware and allows derivative works, even being put up on torrent sites for easier distribution by the creators.
Download it here: http://www.mediafire.com/download/1ckc1 … 4lw/ks.zip
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