Ochitsubaki

Ochitsubaki is a story-based game about trauma, translation and the difficulty of making one person’s experience understood by another. It follows Hanashiro, an immortal who has witnessed the apocalypse across cycles of reincarnation and plans to die in 10 years, when the camellias fall, unless they find a reason to live. The story also features two-tailed catboys, gods with cloud hair and slapfights.

Immortals and endings

Hanashiro and their remaining kin respond differently to the trauma of immortality and repeatedly witnessing the end of the world. Shiragiku is cheerful, flippant, whimsical and capricious; Shirayuri is missing. Shiragiku remembers every apocalypse and has not been hurt by any since the first, Shirayuri remembers none, and Hanashiro remembers only some, though they do not know which. Hanashiro and Shirayuri have seen the world end before, but no one believed them.

Hanashiro misses speaking their fey mother tongue, the Amayuri tongue, but cannot find anyone willing to listen, even among their own kind. Then Hanashiro meets Lun Kochouran, an enemy who might be the first in a millennium to learn the language—and might also be the first to kill an immortal.

Language and story

The game explores how people who are hypermarginalized may have to translate their identities and trauma for others, even when the result is far from the source. It also depicts recovery through another person’s compassion and consideration: someone who recognizes the effects of trauma and is willing to meet a person’s needs without necessarily understanding them.

The main choice is which language to play in: Japanese, English or Japanese translation. The English and Japanese versions are different renditions of the story, and the Japanese translation is a separate option. Each language offers a similar but distinct route, reflecting the loss that can happen when stories and trauma are translated.

Aesthetic and music

Ochitsubaki combines modern elegance with retro anime-inspired character portraits. Its original soundtrack draws on traditional Asian pentatonic scales, particularly Japanese ones, with a contemporary twist.