[1] The game is set in 1995 and follows a college girl named Kathy who returns to her hometown to look into a mystery related to her recently deceased grandfather while confronting her troubled past.

Shortly after the funeral, Kathy's grandmother explains that an incident involving Joseph had left him confined to a wheelchair in a vegetative state without any medical explanation.

After realizing who she is, Charles explains that he and Joseph had a falling out after Kathy's father, Brian, and her mother became involved in criminal activity.

Unable to get more information at this point, Kathy turns her attention to an overdeveloped photo Joseph had stashed in a safe: an image of a forest with three bright orbs of lights and a red flower.

Kathy has suspicions that the local church, whose founder ran a cult in the 1970s, may know more, as their symbol features the same three light orbs, but cannot get any more useful information from the current priest, Isaac.

Kathy eventually finds her way to the spot where the photo was taken, but suddenly has a strange encounter with a mysterious bald man dressed in red who instructs her to continue following her grandfather.

Kathy returns to the photo site, and this time she finds a torn drawing by Nathan featuring the mysterious man in red.

Kathy is imprisoned but quickly breaks out and finds that the key she swiped unlocks Isaac's family mausoleum in the town's cemetery.

He also explains that he wasn't destroying Lily's paintings, but rather uncovering what was hidden underneath, and that the red man can be found somewhere north of Conwell Woods.

Kathy then proceeds to decrypt that information to find the location Isaac mentioned: a deep pit in the middle of the forest surrounded by the hallucinogenic red flowers.

She is eventually guided by an apparition of Lily to meet with Joseph, who instructs Kathy to burn all the red flowers to sever this supernatural world from the reality above to save Eileen and future potential victims.

Kathy Rain was developed by Clifftop Games, a one-man Swedish indie studio founded by Joel Staaf Hästö.

[7] In early 2021, a director's cut for the game was announced,[8] and was released for Windows, macOS, Android, iOS and Nintendo Switch on 26 October 2021.