Siren, Silent Hill, Fatal Frame… There’s something about Japanese horror that just hits differently. It’s a slower dread compared to the body horror or gore of some Western titles. The genre builds its terror through ambiance and gameplay. Though the demo was short, Nayuta Studio’s upcoming Hollow Cocoon is brimming with potential, inspiring a similar feeling to some of the aforementioned classics. The small slice of gameplay is intriguing, leaving more questions than answers. It’s definitely interested me enough to keep an eye on the game’s development.
In Hollow Cocoon, you play as Jinba Minato, who’s visiting his hometown of Ichinose following news of his grandmother’s illness. The story takes place in the 1980s, which comes through in the game’s beautiful environment. Many Japanese YouTubers are starting to pick up and talk about this game, and according to some comments I’ve seen, Ichinose is very realistic in its depiction of the Japanese countryside. In the story, Jinba is not on good terms with his grandmother, which you learn as you explore her house. She used to raise silkworms, apparently. While the creature you’ll eventually flee from does not appear for long, it seems to have some silkworm traits. The game will feature multiple endings and paths.
As for the gameplay, Hollow Cocoon plays in a fashion that’s very similar to Shadow Corridor or Chilla’s Art titles. It’s a walking sim from a first-person viewpoint. The bulk of the demo had me walking around Jinba’s grandmother’s house. Jinba is just an ordinary person without special powers or a tough physical build. So it looks like he’ll need to hide in closets and such to evade the creature in the final product. The demo also has you using hints scattered around the house to find items. For example, in order to unlock the dresser, I had to figure out a way to obtain the key from the bathtub drain.
The best part of the demo, unironically, is the coin pinball mini-game. You can access it in the yard, and playing it requires 10 yen coins. You can pick up these coins all around the map, and the demo gives you many of them. If I had an infinite number of coins, I’d still be playing the mini-game!
The house is fairly small, but its labyrinth design makes it bigger than it seems. Perhaps the layout isn’t as confusing as I’m making it out to be. I’m just not very good at finding my way through maps. It’s embarrassing how many times the similar-looking hallways turned me around, even though I literally just came from the room I wanted to return to. I’m not sure if the devs plan on making the house bigger than what we got in the demo, but hopefully, they do. Running around a space as small and cramped as what we experienced in the demo while being chased by a silkworm-monster hybrid sounds terrifying! In fact, my first thought when I realized this was how much it reminded me of that horrible level in Siren when you had to escape the abandoned house as Harumi.
It’s a little hard to describe what makes Hollow Cocoon scary. I went in without any prior knowledge of what happens in the demo and streamed it for my friends so that they could virtually hold my hand throughout. They were useless at providing comfort as they didn’t seem scared at all. It doesn’t look scary since the majority of the demo was exploring the house. The only thing that’s scary about it is the ambiance, which is the very atmospheric horror that works precisely because it keeps its secrets and monster close to its chest. I sincerely hope that the demo is an accurate indicator of how the game will end up.
Between its interesting premise and detailed setting, I’m excited to see just what secrets lie in Jinba’s grandmother’s home. This is only the second project from Nayuta Studio (with Cineris Somnia as its debut title), so it’s hard to venture a guess as to the quality of its horror. Hopefully, it can maintain this tense atmosphere as you explore Ichinose and uncover its secrets.
Hollow Cocoon will come out on December 6, 2023, for the Windows PC. The demo is readily available on Steam.
