The Hundred Line: Last Defense academy’s 100 endings are all dense enough to be “true endings,” with no fillers or “easy” bad endings, says Kotaro Uchikoshi

Too Kyo Games and Aniplex’s upcoming TRPG The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy puts you through 100 days of survival, trapped in a school with 15 students and tasked with fighting off mysterious invaders. True to its name, the narrative-driven RPG offers a whopping one hundred endings. In a recent development blog update, The Hundred Line’s co-director Kotaro Uchikoshi talked about how he created this massive branching story and what players can expect from the endings.

The Hundred Line is a collaboration between Zero Escape creator Kotaro Uchikoshi and Danganronpa creator Kazutaka Kodaka. According to Uchikoshi, the main trunk of The Hundred Line’s story – its “true route,” was written by Kodaka, whereas Uchikoshi handled the daunting task of creating its branching storylines and additional 99 endings.

It seems Kodaka had some “extreme” conditions when it came to designing all these alternative endings, as Uchikoshi details the following instructions he received:

The 100 endings have to have meaning

They must not read like bonus scenarios or spin-offs

Avoid “easy” bad endings (for example, the player chooses “right” and this results in an ending like “you got caught in a trap and died. Ending No. XY”)

In fact, you do not even have to consider the main route the “true route” – all routes should be dense enough to be considered “true routes”

In addition, Uchikoshi was also tasked with writing the larger bundles of storylines so that they offer completely different genres for the player. So depending on how you play, you can naturally transition into an occult, sci-fi, teen drama, mystery or even romance storyline. Faced with this proposal, Uchikoshi says he found himself questioning Kodaka’s sanity.

In an attempt to demonstrate how “terrifying and insane” the idea was, Uchikoshi created and printed out an enormous flowchart for The Hundred Line, taking up the size of a tatami mat but still so densely packed that the letters on it looked like ants. But Kodaka was apparently even more convinced, believing that this kind of insane project was something only Too Kyo Games could pull off. As an aside, the origin of the name “Too Kyo Games” comes from “too 狂,” which appropriately translates to “too insane.”

Eventually, Uchikoshi decided to “ride the wave of madness” and take up the task of creating The Hundred Line’s branching system. He wrote the main plot and collaborated with an additional nine in-house writers, allowing each writer’s individuality to shine through while making revisions needed to keep the story consistent. “Thanks to that, the worldbuilding is organized, but the individuality of each writer is vivid and undiluted, and I think the overall work has depth and feels three-dimensional.”

Uchikoshi encourages hardcore players to try to “play through every corner” of The Hundred Line, which, given the huge volume of the game (which we already got a peek at through its long demo) is going to be an ambitious undertaking. As for which route/ending is the true one, the game’s creators want the player to feel free to consider their favorite one to be the “true” one.