The game follows Minato Jinba, a university student. He lives away from his parents, in a boarding house in the city. Minato gets news from his father that Minato's maternal grandmother is in critical condition, so he takes the journey to a village deep in the mountains where his mother was born.
But Minato harbors a deep resentment towards his grandmother and hasn't seen her for over a decade. She didn't even go to Minato's mother's (or her daughter's) funeral, which just made her relationship with Minato deteriorate more. In his entire life, Minato has only had one conversation with his grandmother. She said two things that stood out: "…the thing with silkworms, you know; even if they could leave their cocoons, they have no mouths to eat, and their wings do not fly. They simply lay their eggs and perish," and "People are the reason they suffer this fate."
As the sky gets dark, Minato enters the house where his grandmother had lived. I doubt he expected to find what he did: a terrifying situation with a shocking truth. The captivating story has a branching narrative with four unique endings. Your choices as Minato will determine which path he takes.
Hollow Cocoon has both auto and manual save options. This allows you to immediately return to your last checkpoint if you get a game over. There are three difficulty options: one for those who only want the story, one for those who want a challenging experience, and one in between. The difficulty cannot be raised once you've started a playthrough, but it can be lowered at any time. Thankfully, there are settings to reduce motion sickness. Adjust your viewing angles, toggle a central dot display, disable camera shake, and more.
Developed by Nayuta Studio and published by Regista, Hollow Cocoon will be released for Nintendo Switch on July 25.