WordPlayer: The Hundred Line Subverts – but Also Respects – the Auteur

The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy - the latest (and most interesting) game from Japanese developer Too Kyo Games - knows that there's a good chance you're playing it because of the names attached to it. The game is directed by Kazutaka Kodaka and Kotaro Uchikoshi, two men best known for cult classic narrative-focused series. Kodaka wrote and created the tremendously strange, bleak, and exciting Danganronpa series, in which children are forced into killing games whereby they must kill to survive. Uchikoshi is the director of the Zero Escape series, mechanically twisty games about groups of strangers solving escape rooms while making choices that branch the story in different directions. 

These are reductive descriptions of two complicated and beloved series, both of which are known for their shocking moments, wild twists, and increasingly obtuse narrative "rules" that are used to justify some thrilling moments. Both series are heavy on text, feature very strange characters who slowly reveal hidden depth beyond their most outwardly defining characteristic, debuted on handheld systems, and have built up cult fanbases. When Too Kyo formed in 2017, those fanbases - which already overlapped heavily - were united in anticipation, waiting to see what two directors known for their offbeat, twisty, and frequently intense games would do next.

To say that The Hundred Line contains references and sly winks to Danganronpa would be an understatement.

The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy is more-or-less exactly what I was hoping for from Too Kyo Games - which is to say, it's a game for freaks. It's full of strange plot twists and reveals, loaded up with hyper-specific character quirks, silly mechanics, and a "gifting" system that encourages you to get to know the other characters better. There's something strangely cozy and comforting about it, despite the game featuring a sinister narrative about the world's destruction.

I'm a big fan of the Danganronpa series, and I think part of that fandom is the strange appeal of being locked into an evolving space that is failing to perform its primary function. Danganronpa and The Hundred Line both put you in a school that's out of operation. It's a very specific sensation, being able to roam around an inherently familiar space that feels like it should be off-limits; that sense of being "trapped" but also wanting to explore. The Hundred Line works on this familiarity, this sense of returning to a situation that players of the previous series have already been in. 

To say that The Hundred Line contains references and sly winks to Danganronpa would be an understatement. If you've played Danganronpa and heard that this game, too, is about a bunch of young people being locked in a school, you're likely to come into it with specific expectations. The Hundred Line's script doesn't just understand this, it directly addresses it. One character, Darumi Amemiya, constantly calls out her desire for everything to descend into a "killing game", and there are several gameplay progression systems lifted wholesale from Kodaka's earlier series.

There's an understanding that you might expect the game to operate like Danganronpa - and this feeling isn't simply going to go away when you realise this isn't the same thing. Without spoiling it, I was impressed by The Hundred Line's commitment to the bit, its willingness to keep reminding you that its premise is very similar to Kodaka's earlier work and that any fondness you have for that project may explain why you picked this one up.

In the early stages, especially, The Hundred Line revels in playing with your expectations. There's a character who is presented as the game's equivalent of Monokuma, the giant cuddly-looking bear who drives all the violence in the Danganronpa series, and expectations are set around the role they're going to serve - but then the game does something truly surprising with that character. It's soon revealed, too, that not only will you not be killing the other kids, but in fact they are all unkillable. This reveal is made with a wink and a nod. 

The Hundred Line is built on a much bigger twist - one that isn't uncovered until you're very far into the game, and one that feels lifted right out of Uchikoshi's Zero Escape playbook. There's something about the tenor of The Hundred Line, a prevailing sense of unease that the game knows you're anticipating a big central upheaval on the horizon. Your progression through the story is just a little too smooth, and some of the systems are too straightforward. The game lets you feel the undulations below the surface without pointing them out explicitly. There's a trust in the player to pick up on this unease, to feel the pull of the big change fans of Zero Escape will be expecting.

Part of the fun of The Hundred Line is that the team has the confidence to know a large portion of the audience came in with specific expectations that the game then simultaneously plays to and subverts. The team at Too Kyo has crafted a game that does not necessitate previous knowledge of their other works but assumes you've come in with at least some sense of what those games were and why people took to them.

Now and then it comes out and tells the player that it's not going to do the thing they might anticipate - but because of who made the game, it's difficult to let go of the notion that every assurance the characters aren't all about to kill one another might be a misdirect. I have not managed to finish The Hundred Line - players who have seen everything report that it takes about 150 hours - but I'm proceeding through it with the understanding that the game could twist itself into any number of shapes, as is typical for these directors.

The Hundred Line treats its directors as proper auteurs - artists with distinctive styles, whose games are clearly identifiable as being made by them and which feel of a piece with the rest of their body of work. This is, you have to suspect, part of the reason why Too Kyo Games was formed - to combine the fandoms of these two directors, and to make games that would appeal to that base. There's something intrinsically thrilling about playing a game like this and seeing these directors fully embracing their storytelling reputation. More to the point, they embrace the notion that they're big and successful enough now that they can bank on their reputations, even play around with it, winking at an audience that knows to wink back.

A recent trailer for Death Stranding 2, the upcoming game directed by Hideo Kojima, had me thinking about this as well. If you have even a passing familiarity with Metal Gear Solid, it's impossible to watch without seeing Solid Snake - the protagonist of Kojima's Metal Gear Solid series - in Luca Marinelli's new character, Neil. Based on what we've seen so far, this goes far beyond a simple visual homage: this is a straight-up metatextual link, even if the character is, technically, legally distinct from Kojima's earlier creation (owned by Konami). I'm always pleased to see distinct voices rising up in games, especially when they have interesting, strange, unique stories to tell. 

The Hundred Line leverages our expectations of its directors to create a game that is both familiar and surprising, one that subverts their previous work while also feeling of a piece with it. It's the kind of bold design that takes real confidence in the audience to pick up what you're putting down. As much as a new Danganronpa or Zero Escape would make me happy, creating something totally new that scratches the same itches is far more exciting.