By joyful coincidence, I completed enjoying Danganronpa V3: Killing Concord for the primary time earlier this month – which means that I’ve lastly conquered the complete essential story of an enormous multimedia franchise that is had a chokehold on my consideration ever since I received swept up by its mini-renaissance throughout the pandemic lockdowns of 2020. Extra to the purpose, although, it additionally signifies that I went into the demo for The Hundred Line: Final Protection Academy at this month’s Steam Subsequent Fest with the ending to co-creator Kazutaka Kodaka’s most well-known physique of labor about as recent in my reminiscence because it will get.

Kodaka and a number of other different notable ex-Spike Chunsoft staff based their impartial studio Too Kyo Video games across the time of V3’s launch in 2017, and since then a number of of the video games they’ve launched have been enthusiastically picked up on as probably being Danganronpa 4 in spirit if not in identify. This led followers to minor disappointment within the case of each World’s Finish Membership in 2020 and Grasp Detective Archives: Rain Code in 2023, each of which clearly share a lot of DNA with Danganronpa however diverge on some essential element (no killing recreation in World’s Finish Membership; no college life in Rain Code).

Now, naturally, The Hundred Line is getting the identical remedy, and having performed the demo, it is positively leaning into the comparability even more durable than anything Too Kyo have put out to this point. Some musical motifs and sound cues will probably be so acquainted to Danganronpa followers that the callbacks border on straight-up reuse; to say nothing of the artwork type and archetypes used to assemble a solid of characters who give the identical feeling of heat and but barely surreal overfamiliarity you get when assembly your pals’ first cousins at a marriage.

All of that is after all solely emphasised by the truth that the opening half hour of the sport – which performs out in a back-to-back collection of fully-animated, fully-voiced cutscenes that really feel barely uncanny if you happen to’re used to Danganronpa’s visible novel type of supply – performs out virtually beat-for-beat like its non secular predecessors. A painfully abnormal teenage boy and his she’s-not-my-girlfriend are interrupted on their option to a traditional day in school by a collection of misadventures, culminating in our protagonist waking up in an unknown classroom filled with strangers and face-to-face with an effed-up trying cartoon mascot who’s working the present.

Too Kyo are so eager to tease you for pondering what they know you are pondering at this level that there is even a member of the group who’s extraordinarily overestimated on the prospect that they are all about to be pressured into some form of last-kid-standing combat to the demise. Which is the place the narratives diverge, after all, as a result of The Hundred Line: Final Protection Academy is a turn-based technique through which the characters are tasked with working collectively to combat evil robots and freaky monsters, and thus actively avert the sort of world-ending disaster that normally exists within the bigger-picture background of the Dangaronpa collection.

As a comparatively current convert to the delights of turn-based fight, I do not really feel fairly so certified to evaluate The Hundred Line’s deserves as a technique recreation as I do to speak about its relationship to Danganronpa. However I am not a complete novice both, and to this point it is introduced me with an fascinating strategic puzzle in locations with out doing something I would contemplate groundbreaking, which is what I’ve come to anticipate when an skilled crew specialising in narrative-led video games department out into a complete new gameplay type. I would take an informed guess, although, that The Hundred Line will work higher as an entry-level technique recreation expertise for visible novel followers than the opposite approach round.

The demo covers the primary seven in-game days and ends with a cliffhanger which I will not spoil right here however which ought to fulfill gamers who’ve arrived on the recreation by way of the creators’ earlier works. However that is not to say that I feel The Hundred Line is cleverly hiding its true intention to reboot the killing recreation idea underneath the bait-and-switch cowl of a totally completely different style, and actually, I would a lot choose it to remain that approach. In any case, I actually simply completed enjoying Kodaka’s 60-hour justification as to why he should not must maintain making Danganronpa again and again except he decides he actually needs to once more; and on condition that Too Kyo’s relationship with the IP holders at Spike Chunsoft is by all accounts nonetheless excellent, I feel that Danganronpa 4, if and when it arrives, will in all probability be known as… properly, Danganronpa 4, or some variation thereon.

You in all probability will not do your self or the sport any favours by going into The Hundred Line: Final Protection Academy merely hoping for extra Danganronpa. However however, The Hundred Line needs you to know that it understands what you appreciated about Danganronpa, and that Too Kyo can nonetheless ship the weird-yet-lovable characters and wild plots you need – simply with out being restricted to the identical type of gameplay, or the very tight (certainly, by the tip, noticeably repetitive) components that mentioned franchise adopted for its central trilogy.

To this point what I’ve seen of this recreation has managed admirably to strike a troublesome steadiness between brand-new enterprise and self-conscious nostalgia journey, and whereas I am under no circumstances certain which half will emerge victorious within the full launch, it is received me satisfied to tag alongside for the journey. And if you concentrate on it, there’s one thing very well timed a few sort-of-follow-up to Danganronpa popping out in 2025 that reminds us we’re truly all the time higher off banding collectively than permitting ourselves to be pitted towards each other. Checked out that approach, perhaps it is not a lot a subversion of established tropes as a pure evolution of them.

The Hundred Line: Final Protection Academy demo is obtainable on Steam now, with the complete recreation anticipated to launch on April twenty fourth for Home windows and Nintendo Change. And there is excellent news for PC gamers, since progress from this demo will be carried over to the complete launch.