The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy's director departed his previous studio - the team behind the classic Danganronpa's - so he could work unlimited overtime without bankrupting the company.
Kazutaka Kodaka, who you might know as the chief architect of the Danganronpa series, departed developer Spike Chunsoft back in 2017. He then established Too Kyoo Games with just six other developers, including Rui Komatsuzaki, the artist responsible for Danganronpa's distinct visual stylings.
In a new interview with RealSound (and translated by Automaton Media), Kodaka elaborated on why he departed Spike Chunsoft. "I did not quit Spike Chunsoft out of dislike for the company. We have been working together on Rain Code ever since I left," Kodaka says, referencing Master Detective Archives: Rain Code, released last year in 2023.
"The main reason was that I wanted to work on a variety of different projects at the same time, including not only video games but manga and anime as well," the director and writer continued. "Rather than forming a huge development team, I wanted to bring together a small group of people with the easy-going idea that we could all continue earning a living as freelancers even if the company were to go bankrupt," Kodaka continued.
Weirdly, this ties into a previous comment from Kodaka earlier this year, that Too Kyoo Games has gone into debt making The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy. The strategy game was actually canceled at a previous publisher, and so in an effort to get it out of the door, Too Kyoo Games borrowed a substantial sum of money via a loan, which it's still working to pay back.
Elsewhere in the new interview, Kodaka explains that he wanted to do as much overtime as he wanted. Japan's current labor laws mean that as an employee, he's only able to work for a set number of hours, but as the boss of his own company at Too Kyoo Games, Kodaka would effectively be able to work whenever he wanted, circumventing the laws.
"Myself, Masafumi Takada (composer), Kotaro Uchikoshi (scenario writer), and Komatsuzaki (character designer) are company directors, so we can work as much as we want," Kodaka joked.
Right now, The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy is set to launch in early 2025 for PC and Nintendo Switch.
Take a look at our upcoming Switch games guide for a dive into all the new titles you can play before Kodaka's new venture arrives.
