Zero Escape and Danganronpa creators form new team, announce games and an anime

Fuuuuuuu. sion. HAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Using the best parts of the digital distribution era of gaming, visual novels have been coming into a new renaissance of sorts. With the lowered cost of distribution, Eastern developers are seeing fewer obstacles in the way of publishing their games in the West. Because of this, we’ve seen more games coming West and interest in the genre flourish.

With all this growing interest, it would behoove some of the more seasoned developers and writers to strike while the iron is hot and start putting out new IPs that don’t require newcomers to play or read through previous games to understand what’s going on. Kazutaka Kodaka and Kotaro Uchikoshi have done just that and formed a new team dedicated to bringing their weird brand of fiction to life.

Branded as Too Kyo Games, the team is a gathering of arguably two of the biggest visual novel teams in the industry. Kodaka designed the popular schoolroom murder mystery Danganronpa series, while Uchikoshi wrote the ahead-of-its-time escape the room Zero Escape series. Both directors have pulled members of their previous teams along with them to the new team.

Quoting their website, the team’s mission is to bring “A sense of Fiction wiping out Reality. With the mission to change the perception of reality for all those that come in contact, Too Kyo Games is born.” Kodaka expanded on this mission in a statement broadcasted on YouTube: “The object of this company is to do something new, which is the creation of a new IP commonly known all over the world and in a future we will make indie games by ourselves. This new company enables us to move freely towards the goal.”

The team has also wasted no time in getting to work, announcing four projects across multiple mediums. The first project is a game that will be their main focus upfront and is described as a joint scenario between Kodaka and Uchikoshi. The artwork looks just like it was pulled from the Danganronpa series so fans of that style will definitely be pleased. While the genre has not been revealed, with those two at the helm I can only imagine how dark this tale will get.

The second project is an anime that will be produced in conjunction with Studio Pierrot. Kodaka will be the lead writer with character designs from Rui Komatsuzaki, lead concept artist of the Danganronpa series. The series is described as a take on ’90s action films such as Leon the Professional, a personal favorite of mine if I might add.

The third project is a bit esoteric with little information to go off of for right now, but the idea is that it’s a “children’s death game” and will be very shocking. It’s also being labeled as an action adventure game which, owing to the team’s background, might be a bit of a change for them. I’m interested to see what they can bring to the genre.

Lastly, there is one final project that will involve Spike Chunsoft that was started by Kodaka before he left the company. All that is really out as of now is the concept art that is described by the team as “cyberpunk” with character designs once again done by Komatsuzaki.

Whew, that’s a lot of new stuff to look forward to, some of it old, some of it new, but all of it looking very confident in its style. So what are you looking forward to most from this new team?

Too Kyo Games Formed [Famitsu]