"I lost my job overnight."
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.
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