Fifty-five hours into The Hundred Line: Final Protection Academy, Too Kyo Video games’ visible novel turn-based technique sport, I encountered a very shifting scene. Two characters who discovered one thing notably stunning a couple of days in the past (one in all a number of moments within the sport that recontextualizes your entire expertise) find yourself waking up early to observe the dawn collectively. It was a second of tranquility between two individuals who bonded over the great thing about nature throughout a very powerful day, and it landed fantastically. This sport felt prefer it tapped into one thing a bit deeper and a bit extra miserable than something I’ve seen earlier than.
Based on on-line estimates of the sport’s size, by the point I noticed this scene, I had one other 90 to 120 hours to go earlier than I might really say I used to be “completed” with the sport, relying on my pace and endurance. The title “Hundred Traces” refers back to the variety of days the scholars of the Final Protection Academy should defend their faculty as waves of invaders pressure them into common tactical battles. However the title really has a unique that means, which you solely discover out about 30 hours into the sport when 100 days have handed. The sport has 100 unlockable endings, and you will need to see all of them to get the complete image.
The promise of 100 completely different endings feels just like the sort of advertising misinformation that pops up in press releases to emphasise how a lot the sport is formed by participant decisions. A sport that claims to have 12 endings really means 4 endings, every of which can include some minor variations. And sure, a few of The Hundred Line’s endings are sort of dishonest or similar to one another. Not all endings are created equal. However there are literally 100 routes, made up of 21 completely different “routes”, all of which may finish at varied completely different factors.
I had seen eight endings by the point these two characters met the dawn. It nonetheless took me 5 hours to get the ninth (although endings 10-12 have been all unlocked throughout the subsequent hour). Searching for these endings revealed new details about the sport’s world. The paths to those endings provided new views on the characters, a few of which explored new corners of the sport’s world or revealed new lore. They have been foolish, unhappy, a bit scary, and alternately humorous and tragic. Totally different characters died every time, and the feelings felt for each have been completely different. When the sport completed what I believed was the closest path to a “canon” ending, I made a decision to maintain going and know that understanding the whole lot I had discovered main as much as that ending would give me a better understanding and appreciation of the various paths I nonetheless needed to stroll.
The Hundred Line: Final Protection Academy is co-directed by Kazutake Kodaka and Kotaro Uchikoshi, finest recognized for his or her work on the Danganronpa and Zero Escape video games, respectively. These two collection are recognized for his or her huge twists, hyperactive narratives, and penchant for killing off non-cast members. This new sport has all of that, and on high of that it has a really competent Fireplace Emblem type fight system. To not point out the bond stats with every scholar, the board game-like “discover” mode, and the RPG-style character stats and loadouts that may be adjusted over time as the sport progresses.
A giant draw for video games that sometimes promise a narrative formed by the alternatives you make is the idea of reaching the tip, experiencing the conclusion of a narrative co-authored with the sport’s writers and designers, and discovering a conclusion that represents the trail you’ve got constructed by means of that have. You may most likely play it once more, make completely different decisions, and expertise completely different scenes. Maybe then we are going to merely settle for without any consideration that the story might be a bit completely different subsequent time.
The Hundred Line takes a unique method. It is a choose-your-own-adventure story, however there is a neat timeline that permits you to rethink each alternative you make within the sport, relatively than having to stay a finger again to the web page the place you made your final alternative in case issues go unsuitable.
Probably the most empowering factor about this sport is that your decisions do not actually matter. As a result of one of the best ways to play the sport is to make all the alternatives and see all the outcomes. Positive, there are some paths that offer you extra data, a deeper story, an ending that feels “good” or “unhealthy”, or shades in between, however you do not really feel penalized or denied sure story beats due to your decisions.
There’s an thrilling feeling to it, a way that the builders have been capable of pursue their imaginative and prescient to the tip, one thing you do not typically get in video games of this scale. The Hundred Line isn’t the sort of sport that enterprise strategists and market specialists would advise corporations to create and launch in 2025. For a sport this huge, with no further monetization, a give attention to storytelling, a $60 price ticket, and quite a lot of bizarre and difficult themes. Particularly for those who’re utilizing 3D fashions for a tactical fight system or quite a lot of cutscenes, it may be a catastrophe. It is also a sport that quite a lot of media and influencers are a bit scared to the touch as a result of it is so lengthy and text-heavy.
The Hundred Line took greater than 5 years to develop. Scripts should include round 1 million phrases of content material, which suggests localization might be very costly, particularly whenever you consider voice actors. In an interview earlier than the discharge nintendo lifeKodaka acknowledged that if the sport would not promote, the studio “may find yourself” taking out loans to fund growth. Per week after the sport’s launch, in response to Bluesky’s followers, Kokoda stated The corporate “stays on the point of chapter,” he stated.
Nonetheless, The Hundred Line is successful. By July, three months after its launch, the sport had offered nicely sufficient that Kodaka instructed Bloomberg, “I do not see chapter as a critical future.” Though actual gross sales figures haven’t been launched, it seems that the chance that Too Kyo Video games took in creating this large sport has paid off.
I feel a part of the explanation for that’s that Kodaka and Uchikoshi have developed a friendship in earlier collection. The Danganronpa and Zero Escape collection have lengthy garnered a worldwide fan base. The Hundred Line can also be daring in methods which might be undeniably uncommon. Its enormity is extra thrilling than, say, a sport that provides 30 completely different endings. Additionally, the tactical fight is quite a lot of enjoyable, with sufficient depth and originality that partaking in fight by no means turns into boring.
However past all that, The Hundred Line’s storytelling is superb at boiling down an enormous physique of labor to easy emotion, with nice character dialogue, nice voice appearing, and so many “what if” eventualities to discover. The characters are all attention-grabbing and develop and deepen over time. It is fascinating to see how the characters change and adapt to the vastly completely different tales you may discover. It is spectacular to see the sport keep consistency throughout completely different passes.
As experiences proceed to return in that builders are tightening their grip because the trade strikes to extra conservative, tried-and-true ways to extend income, it is heartening to see corporations taking huge dangers to create one thing large and weird, and seeing it repay. However even with out that context, The Hundred Line would nonetheless be my favourite sport of 2025. It is a breathtaking achievement in narrative design, a really wild instance of how a lot might be completed with participant decisions, and one of the bold visible novels ever made.
