Hitori

ひとり — alone

A short narrative game about bullying, belonging, and the people who watch and say nothing. Created by Jatin Agrawal with RPG Maker MZ as an independent study.

Play in your browser · Download for Windows · Read the design report · Watch a playthrough

The game

You begin as Justin, a transfer student trying to find his place in a new school. Toby is one of the first people to welcome you. As you become part of the class, fitting in starts to pull you away from the person who helped you belong.

The second act follows the same days through Toby's eyes. Familiar conversations and small moments take on a different meaning when you experience the other side of them.

Hitori uses perspective-taking and everyday interactions to explore bystander behavior. It takes approximately 10 minutes, with dialogue, exploration, a short tag minigame, and cats. Its educational aim is to prompt reflection and discussion; the report presents design reflections rather than a controlled evaluation of educational effectiveness.

Engine	RPG Maker MZ
Format	Single-player narrative / educational game
Platforms	Browser (HTML5) and Windows
Play time	Approximately 10 minutes
Themes	Bullying, social exclusion, peer pressure, empathy, and intervention

Play

Browser

Open Hitori on itch.io and select Run game.

Windows

1. Download Hitori.zip from the GitHub Release or itch.io.
2. Extract the entire archive.
3. Open the extracted Hitori folder and run Game.exe. Keep the surrounding folders and runtime files together.

Players do not need the RPG Maker editor to run the packaged game.

Control	Action
Arrow keys	Move
Space	Interact / advance dialogue
X	Open the menu; use this in the browser instead of Esc

Design and implementation

• Two perspectives, one timeline: the shift from Justin to Toby reframes earlier interactions through the experience of the excluded student.
• Event-driven storytelling: map events, conditional branches, switches, and variables coordinate conversations and story progression.
• State across acts: the report describes retaining narrative context while resetting the player's position and viewpoint.
• Audio as perspective: pitch and ambience changes reinforce the shift between inclusion and isolation.
• A moment of play: the tag minigame gives the central friendship an interaction beyond dialogue.

The 10-page independent study report covers motivation, narrative and character design, implementation, reflections, and areas for further development. It contains major story spoilers.

Repository contents

Path	Contents
game/data/	Original JSON maps, events, dialogue, database, and configuration extracted from the published Windows build
game/js/plugins/scrollfix.js	Small scrolling-text adjustment present in the package; it is not enabled in the packaged plugin configuration
game/README.md	How the extracted files relate to the complete game
docs/Hitori-IS-Report.pdf	Original project report
docs/plugin-inventory.json	Names and versions of enabled packaged plugins
CREDITS.md	Asset credits supplied with the game
docs/distribution.md	Package provenance, checksum, and distribution notes

The complete Windows distribution is attached to the release as Hitori.zip, byte-for-byte as downloaded from itch.io. The extracted files in this repository retain their original bytes and relative paths beneath game/.

This is a published-build archive with game data and documentation. The download contains encrypted assets and has no .rmmzproject editor file. A clone alone therefore does not provide a complete editable RPG Maker project or a standalone playable build. Use the release package or itch.io to play.

Credits and use

Game by Jatin Agrawal / J10_Official. See CREDITS.md for the original music and art acknowledgements. The distribution also includes RPG Maker MZ components, VisuStella plugins, and NW.js runtime components with their respective notices. The itch.io page discloses AI assistance for graphics.

Third-party engines, plugins, music, fonts, and art retain their respective owners' terms. This repository does not grant an additional reuse license for those materials. The engine, third-party plugin implementations, and asset library are distributed inside the complete game package rather than as a separately reusable source library. See the distribution notes.