55 hours into The Hundred Line: Final Protection Academy, Too Kyo Video games’ visible novel turn-based technique sport, I encountered a very touching scene. Two characters, who a couple of days earlier discovered one thing notably shocking–one of a number of moments within the sport that recontextualizes the entire experience–get up early and find yourself watching the solar rise collectively. It is a bit second of tranquility, of two individuals bonding over pure magnificence amid a very tough string of days, and it landed superbly. It felt like the sport was tapping into one thing a bit deeper, a bit extra melancholic, than what I would seen earlier than.
In response to on-line estimates of the sport’s complete size, on the level I noticed this scene, I had one other 90-120 hours to go till I may actually say that I would “completed” the sport, relying on my velocity and endurance. The identify The Hundred Line refers back to the variety of days the scholars of Final Protection Academy need to defend their college for as waves of invaders periodically drive them into tactical fight. However the identify really has one other that means that you simply uncover as soon as these 100 days move for the primary time, about 30 hours into the sport: This sport has 100 unlockable endings, and to get the complete image, you will need to see all of them.
The promise of 100 endings feels just like the form of advertising mistruth that pops up in a press launch to play up how a lot the sport is formed by your selections. A sport that claims to have 12 endings would possibly really imply 4 endings, every with a couple of minor potential variations. And sure, a few of the endings in The Hundred Line are sort of dishonest, or are similar to every other–not each ending is created equal. However there actually are 100 of them, consisting of 21 completely different “routes” that may all finish at varied completely different factors.
On the level that these two characters took within the dawn, I had seen eight endings; I used to be nonetheless an excellent 5 hours from getting my ninth (though endings 10-12 have been all unlocked inside an hour after that). Looking for out these endings had revealed new details about the sport world: The paths resulting in these endings had proven characters in a brand new mild, and a number of other of them had poked at new corners of this sport world or revealed new lore. They’d been foolish, unhappy, a bit scary, and alternately humorous and tragic. Completely different characters died every time, and the feelings I felt over every one have been completely different. As I wrapped up the pathway that, I imagine, is the closest factor the sport has to a “canon” ending, I knew that I would preserve going, and that understanding all the things I would discovered on my strategy to that ending would solely deepen my understanding and appreciation of the numerous paths I nonetheless needed to take.
The Hundred Line: Final Protection Academy is co-directed by Kazutaka Kodaka and Kotaro Uchikoshi, finest recognized, respectively, for the Danganronpa and Zero Escape video games: two sequence recognized for his or her enormous twists, hyperactive narratives, and penchant for killing off solid members. This new sport has all of that too, and it throws in a fairly competent Fireplace Emblem-style fight system on prime. That is to not point out the bonding stats with every particular person pupil, the board-game-like “exploration” mode, or the RPG-style character stats and loadouts you may steadily tweak as the sport progresses.
Normally, in video games that promise a narrative formed by the alternatives you have made, a significant enchantment is the notion of attending to the tip and experiencing the conclusion of the story that you’ve co-authored with the sport’s writers and designers, discovering the conclusion that represents the pathway you solid by means of the expertise. Perhaps you will play once more and make completely different selections to expertise some completely different scenes; extra possible you will merely take it as a provided that should you did, the story could be a bit completely different subsequent time.
The Hundred Line takes a special method: It is a choose-your-own journey story, however as an alternative of needing to maintain one finger again on the web page the place you made your final alternative in case it would not pan out, you’ve gotten a neat timeline that permits you to revisit each single alternative within the sport.
Essentially the most empowering factor about this sport is that your individual selections do not actually matter, as a result of one of the simplest ways to play the sport is to make all of them and see each end result. There are actually some pathways that provide you with extra info or a deeper story, endings that really feel “good” or “unhealthy” or some shade between, however there is not any sense of punishment, or of being denied sure story beats due to your selections.
There is a uncommon, thrilling feeling that I do not expertise usually with video games of this scale: the sense that the builders have been in a position to pursue their precise imaginative and prescient by means of to the tip. The Hundred Line is the sort of sport that no enterprise strategist or market professional would advise an organization to make and launch in 2025. A sport this enormous, with no extra monetization, with a pointed deal with storytelling, with a $60 price ticket and numerous unusual and difficult themes: It might be a possible recipe for catastrophe, particularly when it depends on 3D fashions for its tactical fight system and quite a few cutscenes. It is a sport that many media and influencers are going to be a bit scared to the touch, too, since it is so prolonged and text-heavy.
The Hundred Line took over 5 years to develop, and the script–which should include one thing within the ballpark of 1 million words–would have made localization terribly costly, particularly once you consider voice appearing. In a pre-release interview with Nintendo Life, Kodaka admitted that if the sport didn’t promote properly, the studio “could also be finished” after taking out loans to fund growth. Every week after the sport got here out, in response to a fan on Bluesky, Kokoda stated that the corporate was “nonetheless on the point of going underneath.”
And but, The Hundred Line has been successful. By July, three months after launch, the sport was promoting properly sufficient that Kodaka informed Bloomberg, “I do not see chapter as a critical future.” Actual gross sales figures haven’t been launched, however evidently the danger Too Kyo Video games took in spending a lot effort and time on growing this behemoth paid off.
A part of it, I believe, is that Kodaka and Uchikoshi have constructed up good will with their earlier sequence: the Danganronpa and Zero Escape sequence amassed world fanbases over a protracted interval. The Hundred Line can be audacious in a method that’s plain and unusual: the sheer dimension of the factor is thrilling, extra so than a sport that supplied, say, 30 completely different endings. It additionally helps that the tactical battles are fairly pleasurable, with simply sufficient depth and originality in order that going into battle by no means feels tedious.
Past all of that, although, the storytelling in The Hundred Line is–to boil down an immense amount of labor right into a simplistic sentiment–very good, with glorious character dialogue, improbable voice appearing, and an incredible many “what if” situations you may discover. The characters are all fascinating, growing and deepening over time, and seeing how they modify and adapt to the vastly completely different tales you may discover is fascinating–it’s spectacular to see the sport keep consistency throughout completely different paths.
As stories proceed to return in of builders tightening their belts because the trade shifts in direction of extra conservative, confirmed ways to show a revenue, seeing an organization taking an enormous danger to make one thing each monumental and strange, and having it repay, is heartening. Even with out that context, although, The Hundred Line would nonetheless be my favourite sport of 2025. It is a breathtaking achievement in narrative design, a very wild instance of simply how a lot you are able to do with participant alternative, and one of the formidable visible novels ever made.
