Koira hits meaningful notes, and may hit harder emotionally for pet owners
I went into Koira without much knowledge, being more or less aware that it was published by DON’T NOD (the studio who brought us last year’s excellent Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden and which I also previously reviewed), and that it was about a girl and her new puppy trying to survive a mysterious wilderness full of dangers. Because of DON’T NOD’s track record for gameplay that never seems to match the quality of the narrative, I felt I knew what to expect. And while the game itself, developed by Studio Tolima, proved to unfold in a straightforward manner, something outside the game made my experience anything but.
Koira is an isometric-view adventure game that sees the protagonist and her dog moving from one place to the next, each area offering small puzzles and stealth sections. The gameplay throughout remained mostly on my periphery, like a vignette of artistic shorts that had me playing fetch, hide and seek, or finding musical notes to be sung. Once I uncovered such moments and discovered their solution, every future puzzle became immediately solvable. It all became rote and by the numbers, but the whole time I played I was uncustomarily immune to these grievances due to that old adage “It’s not the final destination that matters, it’s the journey.”
That saying held true in my time with Koira, but only because of something in my life that has been stressing me out lately. And that would be Bella – she’s my thirteen year old Italian Greyhound with a bad heart, a failing kidney requiring IV fluid every few days, and a tongue that escapes her mouth from lack of all but seven teeth. I love her and am ready to see her pass on, but my parents are not and due to that oh so common weakness of the heart, I am forced to watch her suffer. Before I played I might not have been able to say that, but I can now and with conviction. I’m even able to tell my parents that I think it’s time to start thinking about these things, when I’d usually not be able to be assertive. Koira isn’t a game about letting go, but recognizing the love between mankind and our pets, and how that love sometimes requires hard choices and sacrifice.
And it’s why Koira will go down as one of the most memorable games I’ve ever played and one of the best cases for games as an artform. Because in the end it transcended the medium to help me reconcile that it was time for Bella to go – her journey was a great one with such moment to moment mini-games of her own that will be imprinted in my mind until the day my journey too meets its final destination.
This review is based on a PlayStation 5 code sent to SideQuesting by the publisher. Images and video courtesy publisher.
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