Yukio Futatsugi’s studio Grounding are working on a game about… school children murdering each other.
However, Futatsugi’s team will only be providing the engineering talent, with the writing, direction, music, and art being done by a different team and creative vision. So it’s not really a Grounding game.
The game seems too weird for something that I would play, but maybe there’s some appeal here that I’ve overlooked? Battle Royale games are popular these days, so I assume it makes business sense for Grounding to participate in the development in order to keep the studio afloat.
Funny how that seems incredibly appropriate considering where Battle Royale came from. Is it actually going to be within the genre or are we talking about the concept from a story perspective? I haven’t played Danganronpa or the Zero Escape series, but it’s interesting seeing them approaching an edgy concept like this, especially considering how lots of developers are careful to play things safe. I’m definitely intrigued.
I do find it a bit amusing how they left Spike Chunsoft because they were doing “the same thing over and over again”, only for them to create… pretty much the same thing they’ve been doing before, just because that’s what fans want to see from them. This article has a lot more details:
http://www.siliconera.com/2018/10/03/too-kyo-games-announces-death-march-club-a-death-game-with-kids-coming-to-pc-in-2020/
Curiously, it’s apparently aimed at the overseas market.