Video Game / Hollow Cocoon

"Trapped in a cocoon, the silkworm weaves her final dream."

Hollow Cocoon is an indie J-horror video game developed by Nayuta Studio. Set in the 1980s, university student Minato Jinba receives a call from his father, Eiji to return to his late mother's hometown of Ichinose as the health of his estranged maternal grandmother, Kinu Miyama has suddenly taken a turn for the worse. There, he must unravel the mystery behind the events that led to the current situation and come to grips with his relationship with his grandmother.

A free demo was released on October 9, 2023 while the full game made its' debut on December 7, 2023.

This game is not to be confused with Cocoon (2023), an adventure-puzzle game also released in 2023.

Previews: Alpha build gameplay,Teaser/release window trailer

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Hollow Cocoon provides examples of the following tropes:

• Big Fancy House: The Miyama residence is huge and even comes with a chicken coop on the property.
• Catapult Nightmare: Minato experiences an especially vivid nightmare involving his grandfather's death, a memory of the only conversation he'd had with Kinu as a young boy and his mother's suicide that causes this to great effect.
• Cool Old Guy: Minato adored his grandfather Souchi as a child and the feeling was mutual as shown through the latter's reply letter to the former.
• Cower Power: Minato can only run and hide in closets whenever he encounters the monster as he has no means to properly defend himself.
• Death Faked for You: The family doctor serving the Miyama household had to do this at the behest of Kyuhei, Kinu and Ayano's father, to keep the public safe from Ayano after her Monstrous Transformation, using the body of the servant she'd killed as a decoy.
• Developer's Foresight: If the player hatches the egg, the chick will be present in cutscenes from then on, even in the ending.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • Minato's mother, Yui, was so heartbroken upon learning of her father's sudden death that she fell into a very deep depression and as shown from Minato's nightmare/memories, eventually committed suicide by being run over by a train not long after. A Gory Discretion Shot obscures the worst of it.
  • Kinu's will, found in the very last area of the game reveals this is the reason why she was found comatose in the first place, having hanged herself due to her Secretly Dying of a diagnosed brain tumor and knowing she would no longer be able to properly care for Ayano.
• First-Person Ghost: Minato doesn't have a character model so interactable items move by themselves when he's using them. At least until the two main endings of the game though the most we see of him is far away shots showing his full model or his face being obscured from the nose down.
• Full-Frontal Assault: In both the key art and the game itself, the intruder is completely nude so as to show the silkworm markings on her back with a case of Godiva Hair covering the essential bits.
• Green-Eyed Monster: How the entire story originated. In her younger years, Kinu was in love with Souchi who was engaged to Ayano. Because the Miyama sisters lost their mother as children, hence their close bond and Kinu felt that her older sister would steal Souchi's attention away from her, leading her to abandon Ayano during their yearly walk up to the mountains and resulted in Ayano's condition in the present day.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Minato is revealed to be one, half-human on his father's side and half-silkworm vampire on his mother's.
• Harmful to Minors: Minato witnessed his mother's suicide as a young boy and his comment after his nightmare all but states he repressed them as time passed.
• Hates Their Parent: Grandparent in this case. Minato deeply resents his grandmother for electing to not attend his mother's funeral and has not spoken to nor seen her in over a decade.
• Heroic BSoD: Yui takes the revelation that her entire life was a lie and that she's Ayano's half-vampire daughter so poorly, she takes her own life. Her son Minato fares slightly better, though, depending on his actions.
• I Am Who?: Minato has this reaction when he discovers the true nature of his lineage.
• Infinite Flashlight: Minato picks up a flashlight after first encountering the monster after it enters the Miyama house and it doesn't need a change of batteries whatsoever through the rest of the game.
• Joke Item: The egg. It hatches into a chick that does nothing but follow Minato around, even in cutscenes.
• Lock and Key Puzzle: Several can be found through the game. An item-based puzzle involves extracting one from a grease pit.
• Long-Lost Relative: It is revealed that Kinu is not Minato's real grandmother nor Yui's mother. She is in fact Minato's great-aunt and Yui's aunt. Rather, Yui was birthed via Emergency C Section from Ayano, Kinu's older sister; the woman who has been chasing Minato the entire time.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Souchi supposedly died falling down a well, something Minato finds suspicious. He ended up being right on the money that it was Never Suicide. Kinu had actually shoved him down there for getting too close to Ayano despite her hideous transformation and learning of Souchi's plan to use the special cocoon made by Kyuhei to return her to her human self even if the Mayuhime ending shows it wouldn't restore her humanity and personality back to her.
• Meaningful Background Event: Ayano briefly appears next to the torii gates on the outskirts of Ichinose as a Mysterious Watcher after Minato returns to the village after talking with Eiji at the clinic. She is also in the same area when Minato spots her during the Human ending.
• Multiple Endings: The game has 4 main endings, dependent on Minato's actions during the course of the game and two Non-Standard Game Over endings.
  • Ending 1- Human: Minato kills Ayano and severs ties with Kinu, rejecting his heritage.
  • Ending 2- Descendant of a Xenomorph: Minato spares Ayano, severing ties with his father and becoming the woman's sole caretaker.
  • Ending 3- Mayuhime: Minato gives Ayano a cocoon, seemingly turning her back into a human... Unfortunately, his actions were All for Nothing as she kills him the moment he lets his guard down.
  • Ending 4- UFO: Minato manages to evade the woman only to get abducted by aliens.
  • Dead End 1- Mary's Phone Call: Find and call a certain phone number plastered on a poster around town. Minato is stalked by a Creepy Doll that slowly seems to be getting closer... only to realize far too late she's the infamous Mary-san.
  • Dead End 2- Chicken Strikes Back: Go on. Bully those helpless chickens. See what happens.
• Our Vampires Are Different: After returning following her month-long disappearance in the mountains, Ayano gradually underwent a Monstrous Transformation into what is essentially a vampiric humanoid silkworm. It started with barely being able to speak, then an unnatural listlessness to the world around her, progressing into becoming The Needless, Weakened by the Light, Healing Factor, Ayano's limbs beginning to elongate with silkworm markings appearing on her back, her attacking and killing one of the servants, culminating in her nose receding, her left eye becoming a mass of insect eyes, a considerably gaunt appearance and an insatiable bloodlust only kept at bay with chicken blood. She also can be repelled by magical talismans, her daughter Yui feeling ill whenever she got close to one in the house and Minato mentioning that he gets severe headaches just by being in their presence when activated (though it does not impede him/the player in saving the game). Both Yui and Minato's bloodlust came about not long after they turned 13 with the latter's being somewhat less severe as a result of being a Half-Human Hybrid.
• Police Are Useless: Minato attempts to contact the police after discovering the intruder inside Kinu's home but he's interrupted mid-conversation by a Jump Scare of the woman trying to attack him and subsequently break the phone, leaving Minato to have to deal with the problem by himself.
• Save Point: The player can save by interacting with talismans found in various locations in the game.
• Scenery Porn: The introductory segment set during the late afternoon displays some absolutely gorgeous shots of Ichinose.
• Sticky Fingers: Minato can pocket a lot of loose change throughout the game.
• Title Drop: Zig-zagged. While not actually spoken out loud in-game, it's done through the item description for the special cocoon required to get the Mayuhime ending.
  A medicine made by great-grandfather Kyuhei. It cuts off the reincarnation cycle. Those who swallow it are left with a hollow cocoon-like soul.
• Town with a Dark Secret: Ichinose with its dark secret related to the Miyama silkworm harvesting company.
• Tragic Monster: Ayano. Abandoned by her sister through no fault of her own, eventually deteriorated into a near-feral state due to her gradual transformation over the years after her return and by the present time of the game has been slowly losing her memories of Kinu.
• The Unreveal: In the end, it's never revealed who Yui's father was nor what exactly happened to Ayano all those years ago when she vanished. The "She" mentioned in Ayano's notes in the cave where she was kept goes unexplained as well though it's implied to be the monster side of her slowly taking over.
• The Voice: Eiji and the university boarding house landlady are both never seen, the former only being heard during the second intro cutscene at the Ichinose clinic and phone calls to Minato with the latter being a minor character who kickstarts the main plot of the game.