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UPDATE: Kotaro Uchikoshi says his new game was cancelled partly due to "major changes in the game development landscape."
UPDATE 21:37pm UK: In a follow-up tweet, Uchikoshi clarified that he's still part of TooKyo Games and he hasn't fallen out with fellow studio co-founder Kazutaka Kodaka. In fact, Kodaka jokes he "may have fallen in love" with the Danganronpa dev. "We're still so close that we even have pajama parties at each other's houses, sipping strawberry milk boba together."
As for his new studio's cancelled game - which you can read about below - it's no surprise to hear that Uchikoshi can't get into the finer details of why it got scrapped or what he was actually making. "I'll let you use your imagination, but if Uchi fans had heard the title, they might have danced like crazy with nosebleeds for three days and three nights straight," he wrote. "On a more serious note, I think it's fair to say that major changes in the game development landscape may have played a part. And what brought about those changes? Needless to say... AI (artificial intelligence)."
The famed Zero Escape writer explained that gen-AI has put somewhat of a squeeze on "mid-sized developers" who need to find ways of lowering the cost of making games - particularly pertinent this week as Google announced a publicly available gen-AI game dev tool. Here's what Uchikoshi had to say about the topic:
"Advances in AI have made it possible for people to create games at a much lower cost. To stay competitive, mid-sized game developers like us need to find ways to cut costs. However, these days, using AI to make games is generally frowned upon, isn't it? Unfortunately, under these circumstances, we're fighting a losing battle.
"It's often assumed that using AI could cause creators to lose their jobs. But the opposite can also be true. In other words, "not using AI" could also cause creators to lose their jobs. If using AI had been an option, perhaps the project wouldn't have been canceled. Of course, humans would have handled all the creative work, leaving only the tedious tasks to AI. That way, we might have been able to cut development time, not staff.
"Oh, and just to be clear, that doesn't mean the budget was the direct cause of the cancellation. I'm just saying that if we'd been able to cut costs further, things might have turned out differently."
ORIGINAL STORY 20:14pm UK:A new game from Kotaro Uchikoshi (of Zero Escape and The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy fame) has been cancelled, leaving his studio's fate in doubt.
Uchikoshi first became a beloved name after he wrote and directed the Zero Escape trilogy, a cult classic series of locked-room puzzlers on the DS that was eventually ported to modern platforms. The self-proclaimed "Deadass Underrated Director" recently jumped online both to announce his new studio Crash Keys and ask for help.
"Honestly, I'm not doing well at all... Why, you ask...? Because the game our whole team had poured our hearts and souls into for about a year and a half was suddenly canceled," he tweeted earlier today. "I mean, I lost my job overnight. Talk about a bolt from the blue."
Crash Keys actually opened its doors in March 2025, and Uchikoshi planned to formally reveal the company and its first game sometime next year. "But then came that whole 'bolt from the blue' incident," he explained - forcing him to go public earlier than expected.
The studio is now looking for anyone who "might be interested in working with us or investing in our projects." In his typical off-key humour, Uchikoshi warned the developer might struggle to stay afloat without some kind of investment. "Please give us some work! At this rate, our company might literally crash into a million pieces. My team and I may be forced to survive on nothing but cicada shells collected from a run-down park. So please, help us! You're our only hope!"
The Crash Keys website only lists two other employees. There's Akira Mine, a writer with credits on Hundred Line and the upcoming Danganronpa 2x2, and Muri Sasaki, who contributed to both Zero Escape and AI: The Somnium Files. As some players have noted, Crash Keys also happens to be the name of a very important organisation in the Zero Escape trilogy, which raised a few eyebrows from starving series fans online.
After wrapping up work on the Zero Escape series, Uchikoshi co-founded a different development company (TooKyo Games) alongside another beloved visual novel maker - Danganronpa's Kazutaka Kodaka. The pair released the wildly ambitious but criminally overlooked strategy game The Hundred Line last year. It's unclear if Uchikoshi is still involved with TooKyo currently.
English (US) ·