BOKURA

BOKURA is a two-player puzzle adventure that cannot be played alone. Two people must play on two separate machines, and what each player sees on their screen is fundamentally different. The same character appears to one player as an animal out of a picture book and to the other as a robot. Interactive objects can move differently between the two views. Communication between players — voice chat is essential — is the gameplay.

The story follows two boys who run away from home and encounter a dead deer that causes them to faint. When they wake, the worlds they see have diverged. One sees a world of animals; the other sees a world of machines. The journey is to find out what happened and whether they can return to the world they shared.

The game is a side-scrolling co-op puzzle adventure with critical choices throughout that branch the story. Total gameplay runs three to four hours, but the experience is structured around the relationship between you and whoever you choose to play with. The developer tokoronyori — known for the 2016 hit Hitoribocchi Wakusei (Lonely Planet) — created BOKURA as a member of the first Kodansha Game Creators' Lab cohort, specializing in experiences only possible through the medium of games.