Announced last year, Koira is a whimsical story about a forest spirit and a puppy they saved, but more importantly, the relationships we make. Published by DON’T NOD and developed by Studio TOLIMA, Koira shared a new trailer during the Summer Game Fest edition of Day of the Devs 2024 and set its release window for 2025. In Koira, play as a forest spirit trying to get home when she hears a puppy in distress.
After saving and befriending the helpless creature, the two embark on a transformative journey where they learn the true meaning of friendship with lots of adventures and puzzles along the way.
We spoke with Ben Lega, Game Director at Studio TOLIMA, about Koira, its art, inspiration, and how you can evoke emotion without any dialogue. Koira is the second third-party game to be published by DON’T NOD and the debut game from Belgium-based Studio TOLIMA.
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For inspiration, Ben Lega explained that the game’s core narrative didn’t develop first. Instead, it was the art. “Initially, I wanted to find something that had a striking visual sight. So, initially, I was just starting a lot of concepts and drawing many things, trying to find something that would be striking and unique. Because typically today, you know, many games come out. I saw that we needed to have a very striking visual identity that would catch the attention of players. One base idea was to have the texture to explore, which was to have an image with a lot of contrast—with a lot of difference between the light and the shadow. I started to explore this idea of the flat-shaded characters. So very quickly, I just had the main character, who was this black [silhouette] on the white background, and already, there was the idea of just erasing the bottom of their feet to kind of anchor him into the world. And suddenly, there was a world taking life.”
Lega continued, “The character was there in this kind of a big white plane. And directly, it felt kind of cold because it was just pure snow. It was this character in this lonely, snowy plains who was ready to add some bushes and some trees to kind of make them explore this area, but it still felt very lonely and cold. And so naturally, I felt like he needed some spark of warmth alongside it. So I added this small, cute puppy, and suddenly, there was something happening between the two main characters where they were in this bubble of warmth and friendship in a cold and lonely area of the winter.”
“And so directly kind of this tension that you find most in the story and the art style between both very wholesome game very cute that has a lot of nice moments between the two characters. Obviously, they can play fetch, you play hide and seek, you can frankly build a snowman or make a snow angel with a dog, and you can do all the kinds of activities you would expect from doing in the snow. This is where the dog is almost like a small kid, more than a dog.”
But after the art came the music, and the story began to find itself. Lega explained, “The first person that joined the team—because initially, I was working on the project on my own—was the musician. He has a very unique kind of style in how we compose [the score], which is very minimalistic and very melancholic. And so his composition directly inspired the game. [At this starting point], it’s basically just a walking simulator with your dog in the snowy forest, playing some sounds and placing some music directly [to give] a very striking mood of a nostalgic of melancholy. So, we knew that he wanted to tell this bittersweet story of the characters where they are both in a moment of bliss. But at the same time, there are some dangers. [Koira is all about] protecting your dog and progressing in the forest with him. And the kind of tension naturally arose from there and then progressively, we built up the story from from that meaning.”
The trailer highlights the main theme of Koira: friendship, with glimpses of interactions and adventures the two enjoy as they grow closer. These include playing fetch, feeding the puppy, traversing the forest, and overcoming challenges together. The 2D hand-drawn art and animation are paired with an emotive soundtrack and the singing mechanic, which the spirit can use to wake the forest and interact with her new friend. And without dialogue, how did Studio TOLIMA tackle intimacy and emotion?
“[Koira] is a narrative game where we don’t have any texts, nor dialogue. So, all the story and the emotions are shown through the animation and the music,” Ben Lega explained, “And so obviously, the musical score plays a huge role in conveying the emotions. But we also wanted that in the animation [itself]… We went for this style of kind of very flat shaded silhouette characters, which is something that is also very handy. [It] allows us to create a lot of animation. We like this hand-drawn animation style that allows us to be very expressive already in the characters’ poses. And you see it in a lot of indie games…We wanted to have these big eyes that allow them to be very expressive and allow us to have this animation that is a mix between hand-drawn animation and also a puppet-procedural animation.”
Lega continued to break down the animation process, “So the character splits into a bunch of different pieces. For the main character, you have the body—a bit like Rayman—you know that he has this floating feature [for the head, arms, and legs]—which also allows us to create an easier switch between the different animations. For example, the hands are animated separately. We have a button that allows us to control the hands to be the voice of the character. And so you can as you walk, make gestures, or talk to the dog, and you will reply back. You [also] have the head that is separated [which] allows us to control where the character is looking. And you also have the eyes and the face feature, so that we can shoulder different emotions through the eyes and how [the characters] look at each other. There’s a lot of subtle emotion just passing through kind of the eye contact…”
Since Koira is the first game for Studio TOLIMA, we asked Lega what he had learned about himself throughout the creative process. Here, he was just as detailed as he was when describing the animation process. Lega began, “The studio formed around the fact that we signed the publishing deal with DON’T NOD. So before that, I was working mostly on a small game. [Koira] is the first commercial project that I worked on, and my first one with a bigger team.” But his learning didn’t just come from his own growth but from how his team worked together.
“For the whole team, we kind of built the studio around [this game],” Lega explained, “There was a lot of learning about just working with people and learning to make a game together and how to share a vision… But I think the most maybe important ones were more about the intention of the design. Initially, there were a lot of ideas that were more about some emotions and moods—ideas that were quite abstract. As we went into production, we had to refine more and more these ideas into concrete structures.”
But growth isn’t without difficulties and Lega was open about the difficulties in developing Koira. Lega said, “We kind of put ourselves in some difficulties. There’s already the idea of doing a whole game without any text, which is already quite a challenge. You have to tutorialize so many things just by showing them [to players]. And it’s so easy when you think about it when you can write, ‘Hold this to do that,’ but we have to try to find an animation to show that. On top of that, we wanted to have inspiration during the project [from] Florence. One of the things that [Florence] does that I really liked is that they adapt the gameplay to the different moments in the story, which allows us to basically not have one type of puzzle that repeats all the time.”
Lega continued, “We have kind of the same aspects where basically, we have moments where we have to protect the dog, moments where you can sing to activate some magical statues, moments where you can make snowmen, you can play minigames, there are bonding moments. Basically, we have a lot of different gameplay that we juggle. We try to find this unique game design recipe, which was really challenging. Looking at the constraints that we had, I think it was a super fun challenge to do, which was very interesting for all of us. We really learned a lot [when it comes to] game design and how to find out our own recipe of how we want to make games. It was really like a formative experience.”
While it’s important what developers learn from their games, it’s also important what they leave their players with when the credits roll. For Lega, it was all about having players embrace the challenge that the game offers you. Questioning what you do in the world, your relationship with the dog, and the actions you took along the way to protect him. Lega began by explaining Koira’s inspiration, “The thing is that we liked emotional stories, cinematographic games—like a Journey, for example, that’s focused on the animation, the arts, the music to create these big emotional moments. What these games often do is that they can have a very cryptic story, something that’s very mysterious, and people can kind of project what they want in the story.”
Lega continued by honing in on what Koira will leave players feeling, “Our goal was to try to keep that DNA and that strength in showing strong emotion in a graphic way, but to anchor it in a more straightforward storyline. So, at the end of the game, you have strong emotional moments, and there is a clear story of what’s happening and why it’s happening. But at the same time, at the end of the game, we want to leave the player with a lot of open questions and things that they might interpret their own way or relate from their own personal experience. We hope that we can make a story that’s touching and universal. That’s clear for everyone, but at the same time, it can be very personal for each person.”
Koira is set for release in 2025.
