Katawa Shoujo

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Katawa Shoujo (かたわ少女^?, lit. "Disability Girls" or "Cripple Girls") is a bishoujo-style visual novel by Four Leaf Studios.

The novel tells the story of Hisao, a young man diagnosed with arrythmia after a heart attack, and transferred to Yamaku, a school specialized in providing education and healthcare for disabled students. The story centers in how he deals with his newfound situation and relationships, in special with five other girls (Emi, Rin, Shizune, Lilly and Hanako) suffering with varying disabilities (Even though Misha is considered one of the main girls, her route is shared with Shizune's Route).

Katawa Shoujo was inspired by a sketch made by RAITA, which caused a stir in 4chan's /a/ board. Soon after, Four Leaf Studios (4LS) was assembled from various users to make a visual novel from the sketch.As of now, only the demo has been released. This demo covers Act 1 and consists of the prologue and the first 7 days. The full game had been under development since 2007, with a demo released in April 29, 2009, and finally being released in January 4, 2012, after 5 years under development. It was well-received by the community, even when compared to other, more traditional visual novels. Despite the success, 4LS has already stated they do not intend on taking another project under the 4LS name for now, although it was hinted that it would not be impossible in the future.

The game is composed of a Prologue, which contains two short scenes, a first act (labelled Act 1), in which one chooses the route taken, and 3 more Acts for each route. There's a Good Ending and a Bad Ending for each route too, although some of them also displays a Neutral, mostly bitter-sweet, Ending. The endings are based on the player's choice throughout the chosen route.

While the demo contains no adult content, the full version of Katawa Shoujo contains adult content with the option to skip all sexually explicit scenes. Katawa Shoujo was created using the Ren'Py visual novel engine. The game uses a traditional text and sprite-based visual novel model with an ADV-style text box.

The full game and the demo (which was translated to several other languages), as well as the soundtrack and other media, are available for download at http://www.katawa-shoujo.com/. It is licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-ND License , thus being free of charge.