Latest news with #TheHundredLine:LastDefenseAcademy
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Danganronpa creator would love to port his acclaimed strategy RPG to more consoles, but the studio is "still on the brink of going under"
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Kazutaka Kodaka's new strategy RPG The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy came out just a few weeks ago, but the developer's still on thin ice financially. By most metrics, The Hundred Line seems to have gone down like a treat for players. On Steam, the game has over 1,400 user reviews with 91% of people giving it a thumbs up. And it's also gotten some sweet reactions on Metacritic and such, but it hasn't totally saved its developer Too Kyo Games yet. Over on BlueSky, one fan asked about whether The Hundred Line would ever come out on more platforms after its launch on PC and Nintendo Switch on April 24, 2025. Co-director and Dangonronpa creator Kazutaka Kodaka responded by saying: "If I can pay off my debt early and secure enough operating funds for the company, I'd love to get started right away. But right now, we're still on the brink of going under." Kodaka previously explained how the studio "ended up with a lot of debt" while making the game since funding a fashionable high school visual novel, tactical RPG hybrid with around 100 full-fledged endings is a significant undertaking. For those out of the loop, Too Kyo Games was jointly formed by Kodaka and Zero Escape creator Kotaro Uchikoshi. The visual novel royalty worked on a few other games together, but The Hundred Line is easily the team's biggest, most ambitious production yet. Here's hoping the duo can keep making wild, unpredictable games while finding some financial stability. In the meantime, check out some of the other new games of 2025 to see what's coming next.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Even Yoko Taro says it was "more dangerous," and other devs tried to stop him, but Danganronpa's creator insisted on having 100 endings in his absurd new RPG
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Nier Automata's effortlessly eccentric director Yoko Taro has said he originally made games with multiple endings at a time when short games were out of fashion. Now? He reckons making games with 100 endings, like Danganronpa creator's new game, is a risky move. In the latest issue of Famitsu Magazine, the Nier mastermind sat down for a chat with Danganronpa's Kazutaka Kodaka and 999 director Koutarou Uchikoshi, who recently teamed up to release strategy RPG The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, a dangerous high school-set game that has seemingly countless routes to complete. Nier Automata's 26 routes were a major deal when the game first released – even though most of them were joke endings. But Taro explains in quotes translated by Redditor ComunCoutinho and Google Translate that he only added multiple routes to his Drakengard series for the extra replayability. You see, for most of the 2000s, a game's length was somewhat used to measure whether it was worth the price. In 2025, with dozens of games competing for our time every single month, a 500-hour epic doesn't seem as appealing. "In the current year, making something with 100 different routes and endings is the more dangerous play," Taro tells the developers of The Hundred Line, which has roughly 100 routes and endings. That's not an idea that put the developers off, though. Uchikoshi apparently created a flowchart containing all 100 routes to show Kodaka how rash his initial idea was, but seeing everything physically laid out apparently got the famed visual novel maestro more motivated to do it. Kodaka is at least aware of the gamble he took. He recently said that he'd love to port The Hundred Line to more consoles, but the studio is still "on the brink of going under," which isn't a surprise considering the team ended up with a lot of debt trying to create the ambitious genre-bending hybrid in the first place. Yoko Taro says Nier: Automata has so many endings because "Square Enix told us" to "add more content"
Business Mayor
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Business Mayor
Last Defense Academy makes confusion part of the fun
The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy starts off by asking a simple question: what happens when you pluck a handful of colorful teenagers from their homes, plop them in a state-of-the-art school filled with every convenience, then force them to fight for their lives? Your guide as you navigate this question is an unsettling and creepy-cute mascot that knows more than it's let on, and there's an overarching mystery to the world that you can't quite put your finger on. If you, like I, answered ' Danganronpa !' — as this premise sounds very much like the plot of the quirky and irreverent murder-mystery series from Spike Chunsoft — then congratulations! We're both totally wrong! And after 45 in-game days with LDA, I still have no idea what's going on, and I love it. I'm going to be gentle with myself and you for thinking LDA is another entry in the genre of high school-themed killing games. After all, it was developed by Kazutaka Kodaka, creator and writer of the Danganronpa franchise, in collaboration with Kotaro Uchikoshi, known for his work on the adventure-puzzle game series Zero Escape . And though LDA oozes with the DNA from both series, it stands so completely apart mechanically and narratively that while I can get a grasp on the former, I'm lost with the latter. The cast of this game is full of great characters. Image: Too Kyo Games The premise is simple enough. You play as Takumi Sumino, who gets whisked away to the Last Defense Academy, where he and a group of others use their newly awakened powers to defend the school from monster attacks for 100 days. Should they fail, the invaders will destroy the school and thereby… because of plot… all of humanity. Usually past a certain point, I can figure out a game's core gameplay loop and rough narrative thrust. When the first body dropped in Danganronpa , I immediately understood that I'd be spending the rest of the game solving my classmates' murders. But I haven't been able to figure out LDA . I understand the gameplay loop easily enough: it's a tactical RPG with visual novel-like relationship-building elements. Combat takes place on a gridded battlefield with each combatant able to attack in a different configuration, similar to chess. One of Takumi's abilities attacks enemies in a straight line. My ally, Gaku, attacks in a rectangular pattern. Each of my allies' attacks contributes to a voltage meter that allows us to use our special abilities when full. And if one of my allies should fall, they'll be revived before the next wave of enemies. I like how the tactical combat isn't like Fire Emblem or Triangle Strategy . LDA is unique, as you're not trying to manage the complex rock-paper-scissors formula of what weapons are strong or weak against each other. Instead, life is the engine that drives combat. Actions you take are determined by how many action points, or AP, you have, and killing certain enemies grants you more AP. On the flip side, allies who are near death can unleash big special attacks that can clear entire battlefields at the cost of losing them for the rest of the wave. Combat is grid-based, and allies can attack in varying configurations. Images: Too Kyo Games Combat then becomes a function of playing with life totals — my enemies and mine. I'll arrange my attacks in such a way that every time I act, I kill an enemy and gain more AP so I can just keep going, denying my enemies the chance to fight back. Then, when I'm out of AP, I can unleash a killing blow that ends the round. My allies get revived the next round, and I can start the process all over again. I've been left so unsatisfied by the crop of tactical RPGs lately, and LDA fills the gaping hole Fire Emblem Engage created and the Advance Wars remakes could not fix. But while I've got a handle on the combat, I still haven't the faintest clue of the story it's trying to tell. My confusion is so thorough that as I go through each new day, my experiences start sounding like wartime letters from the front lines. It's day 33. Our self-proclaimed leader, Hiruko, is still missing. We're starting to suspect she'll never return. Meanwhile, the enemy keeps hurling themselves at our defenses. So far, we've been able to hold them off. Gaku recently developed his power, revealing himself to be a peerless ranged fighter. But our forces are nowhere near full strength, since Ima, Kako, and Shouma refuse to fight. And alas! Our foodstores have burnt up and I fear we'll starve soon. War is grim, but I fight knowing the closer I get to the 100th day is a day I am closer to returning home… or so I hope. LDA 's narrative is so unlike anything I've ever experienced that not knowing what's happening next is part of the fun. I like getting dragged along for the ride, discovering new developments alongside the characters, who are themselves a delight. As other outlets have pointed out, Darumi Amemiya is the physical manifestation of the irony-poisoned and terminally online dirtbag edgel(ady), and I adore her even if her characterization gets uncomfortably familiar sometimes. I am thou, thou art I… unfortunately. Image: Too Kyo Games I also really enjoy how the characters are over-the-top caricatures themselves — Darumi's the creepy murder-obsessed emo girl, Takemaru's the typical fighting-obsessed delinquent — but make decisions like normal people. I often struggle to get into 'transported to another world' stories because none of the decisions made in them have ever made sense to me, a woman who can't turn off her overly logical and reason-obsessed brain in order to just go with the flow. So it's incredibly refreshing to see these characters push back on the circumstances they've been dropped in. Instead of just accepting that they've been taken from everything they've ever known and forced to fight and die (even if that death is temporary), some of my allies maintain a healthy level of skepticism, question everything, and refuse to fight. I know I would! And even better, other characters in the game understand and acknowledge that as a reasonable position. There's no rah-rah speech of 'You must fight!' that convinces them to take up arms. The reluctant characters are given the space to come around on their own time and for their own reasons. That may sound boring. After all, in an isekai-like narrative, the characters are usually forced to get on board quickly otherwise there wouldn't be a plot. So seeing a game take its time with the reluctant characters, letting them work through their hangups in a natural and unforced way, was pleasing to my brain. In the almost 50 days I've spent with LDA , I do have some working theories as to where the overall story will go. How it gets there, though, I have no clue, but I'm excited to see what twists the game will take along the way. The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy is out now on Switch and PC.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has Charlie Cox and it knows how to use him
Every Friday, A.V. Club staffers kick off the weekend by taking a look at the world of gaming, diving in to the ideas that underpin the hobby we love with a bit of Game Theory. We'll sound off in the space above, and invite you to respond down in the comments, telling us what you're playing this weekend, and what theories it's got you kicking around. The first thing that struck me when I finally got around, this week, to loading up Clair Obscur: Expedition 33—the new and extremely French turn-based RPG from Sandfall Interactive that everyone you know online has been losing their minds over since late April—was that the acting didn't suck. This isn't entirely surprising, given that the game stars Daredevil charisma machine Charlie Cox, and features supporting performances from the likes of Jennifer 'Shadowheart from Baldur's Gate 3' English. But that non-suckage is enough of a rarity in the gaming space—reminder that I'm fresh off Doom: The Dark Ages and The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, neither of which ever get past 'serviceable' in this department—that it still made me sit up and go 'Hey, holy shit.' And it's not just the performances, although the performances (including the facial acting and animation) are very good. (Especially as the game winds its way through its stunningly confident prologue chapter, slowly revealing the mystery of why all these very pretty, very young French people seem so hideously sad.) I was also struck by the rhythm of the opening conversation between Cox's Gustave and his young ward Maelle, the two of them talking over and interrupting each other in ways that felt more like natural speech than the stilted 'I say my line, now you say your line' manner of so much video game dialogue. Editing is a deeply underrated skill in the world of games, and Sandfall clearly gets it in a way that even big-money studios that drop stacks of cash on big-name actors often don't. And Clair Obscur needs that boost as it busts out of the gate, giving everything a grounding of human recognizability as it slowly spools out its high-concept premise: An ongoing apocalypse in which everyone over a certain age is suddenly, magically killed, with the lethal number dropping every year. It could be the stuff of pulpy melodrama, as Gustave reunites with his lover Sophie on the day she's set to have her 'Gommage.' But the game's writing, and its performances, dovetail so nicely that the whole mad concept becomes entirely believable. (Sandfall is also careful to capture the inevitable culture that arises from this society-altering threat, from the webs of foster families and orphanages that spawn as whole generations of children are orphaned, to the ways those who are about to die pile their furniture on the street so that survivors can take their pick.) Cox is especially mesmerizing as Gustave, as the character forces himself to adopt a series of fragile, brave faces in the face of a grief that is no less painful for having been perfectly predictable. I'm not that far into Clair Obscur, having only just recently cleared its first major boss fight, about four hours in. But I've already gotten the sense that it's a game that might be frontloading a big portion of its impact, with that incredibly dense and detailed prologue giving way to much quieter, less focused exploration once the titular Expedition actually begins. This could be a fatal flaw. I've played plenty of games where their first chapters—i.e., the bits that get completed first, and demoed a million times as devs do the work of convincing people that what they've made works—were clearly polished to perfection, only to have later acts feel like an afterthought. But it's here where the commitment to emotionally mature storytelling, to using actors and animators and editors to create characters who actually feel like people, pays huge dividends. Even if the game loses some of its early complexity once you're actually running around and beating up Geometry Monsters every few minutes (and as the cast gets, uh, reduced in the opening minutes of its first full chapter), the memory and weight of those opening minutes lingers. 'Why does what I'm doing matter?' is one of those big narrative hurdles any game story writer has to tackle. Few games have answered it as definitively as Clair Obscur does in those first few scenes, and understanding that effectively staging and recording those moments, not just as bits of a game, but as dramatic scenes, is a huge reason for that success. More from A.V. Club The Last Of Us finally eulogizes Joel Miller Mr. Fielder goes to Washington in this week's The Rehearsal Joe Biden diagnosed with "aggressive" form of prostate cancer
