Kotaro Uchikoshi

Career Uchikoshi's first job in game development was in 1998 when he joined KID, a company known for bishōjo games. The first bishōjo game he worked on was the visual novel Memories Off (1999), followed by Never 7: The End of Infinity, Memories Off Pure and Memories Off 2nd (all 2000). this was the result of a need for independence, and the ability to work for other companies besides KID. its unexpected critical success in North America prompted Uchikoshi to continue the series.

The sequel to Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors was Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward (2012). Uchikoshi maintained his duties as the director, planner, and scenario writer.

After Virtue's Last Reward, Uchikoshi returned to freelance work. He wrote a scenario for Steins;Gate: Linear Bounded Phenogram (2013) Uchikoshi wrote the episode scripts, which he noted were more cinematic in tone than most of his previous projects. The series ran on Japanese television from April to June 2015. Uchikoshi also wrote a Punch Line manga, which began serialization in September, and a video game adaptation, released in 2016.

Meanwhile, fans of the Zero Escape series created an online campaign to raise awareness and support the development of a sequel to Virtue's Last Reward. Uchikoshi noted that the fan presence was a key factor for the sequel's reevaluation. With Zero Time Dilemma, Uchikoshi intended to resolve all mysteries left from the previous two games in the series, as well as those introduced in the third. Following the game's release, he remarked that having devoted the last decade of his life to the series, he was saddened to see it finally come to an end. His next two projects were announced in 2017: the escape room game The Pop Star's Room of Doom, Another anime project, The Girl in Twilight, was announced in 2018, for which Uchikoshi wrote the original concept. Other Danganronpa staff members, and Uchikoshi's fellow Infinity writer Takumi Nakazawa, also joined the company. At Too Kyo Games, Uchikoshi has the role of scenario writer and game director, and has written two video games: World's End Club, an action-adventure game involving children playing a death game, and The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, a tactical role-playing game co-written with Kodaka.

Writing style and philosophy

As a writer, Uchikoshi prioritizes storylines over characters, with the goal to write a story that people will remember regardless of the overall quality. He first writes the basic outline of a story. He also likes to work non-sequentially, writing multiple scenes in parallel. He purposefully does not give the main character of the story a strong personality in order for the player to more easily empathize with them.

Uchikoshi believes the most important aspect of writing visual novels is to envision what the player will think about in each scene,

2019

2020

Director, writer, original concept, designer

Series director, scenario supervisor Other + Uchikoshi's work on other media Year Title Role Notes 2015 Punch Line Writer Anime television series 2018 Original concept Anime television series