It’s been a busy few years for Too Kyo Games since it was formed as an independent offshoot of Spike Chunsoft back in 2017. Even with that whole global pandemic presumably slowing down production at least a little bit, the studio has managed to ship three games since 2020: FMV mystery Death Come True, kid-friendly(ish) action-adventure World’s End Club, and acclaimed visual novel Master Detective Archives: Rain Code.
Its next game, tactical RPG The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy, is expected to launch in April 2025; and on top of that the studio has plans in the works to try its hand at the mobile-led gacha market that’s all the rage these days with free-to-play action RPG Tribe Nine, an open beta for which is currently available at Steam Next Fest.
With the possible exception of Death Come True, one thing that all these games have in common is that they are, to some extent, spiritual successors to the Danganronpa franchise, the rights to which still reside with Spike Chunsoft; but this is hardly surprising when you consider that series creator Kazutaka Kodaka is one of Too Kyo’s founders and he definitely knows what kind of games he likes to make. Tribe Nine is not actually a new IP for the studio, either: the upcoming game is based on an anime written by Kodaka and co-produced between Too Kyo and publishers Akatsuki back in 2022.
Admittedly, Kodaka’s level of direct involvement with the Tribe Nine video game spin-off is unclear at this point. Marketing for the game leans hard on the fact that the distinctively Danganronpa-y character designs are indeed courtesy of the same art team, which suggests to me that maybe The Hundred Line (touted as the long-awaited narrative collaboration between Kodaka and Zero Escape creator Kotaro Uchikoshi) is where the studio’s lead writers are focussing most of their efforts right now. But whatever the case, fans of the Danganronpa franchise won’t have to squint too hard to see the whole creative team’s fingerprints on this game.
Aside from the familiar character art – which looks a bit less distinctive in the game itself than in the CGs, thanks to everyone being fully animated in 3D when they’re not running around the world as pixel art chibis – there’s tropes and in-jokes galore to delight and amuse long-time fans of the developers’ work.
Given that Tribe Nine takes baseball as its dystopian future blood sport of choice, I was counting down the seconds until a character turned up who was an obvious visual callback to Leon Kuwata, Danganronpa’s own Ultimate Baseball Star, and I was not disappointed. Ironically it’s hard to talk in too much detail about the subtler thematic nods without spoiling the hell out of Danganronpa, a series that really needs to be enjoyed with minimal spoilers, but I can promise you that those who know will know it when they see it.
As for how Tribe Nine’s monetisation is going to work, I’m not entirely sure of the details right now – at the time of writing I’ve not reached the point in the demo where you unlock the gacha, although as a veteran of the genre I can see what looks suspiciously like a pull currency counter currently sitting empty in the top right-hand corner of my screen. I’m aware that Tribe Nine’s monetisation model alone will be enough to put off some potential players, which is fair enough; but as someone who enjoys HoYoverse games almost as much as she loves Danganronpa, I’m well-positioned to observe these two worlds colliding.
The most immediately obvious difference between Tribe Nine and HoYoverse’s output is that Tribe Nine doesn’t try very hard to ingratiate itself with you. HoYoverse games tend to ease you in for a few dozen hours before things get tricky enough for you to realise that you will have to either drop off or start grinding for character levelling materials now. Tribe Nine’s approach seems to be the exact opposite: throw you into a dangerous world with a Level 1 character and force you to figure out how the game actually works before it’ll let you move on to invest in the story, the characters, or indeed the gacha.
One of the top tags for Tribe Nine on Steam following July’s closed beta is “difficult”, and it’s there for a reason. It plays similarly enough to Zenless Zone Zero that I wasn’t completely out of my depth, but all the same, it’s one of comparatively few games where I’ve died in the tutorial while trying to find my feet – primarily because, unlike ZZZ, you really have to manage your stamina and carefully observe enemy attack patterns right from the start, and can’t just spam the dodge button with very few consequences while you figure out your best angle of approach.
Still though, Tribe Nine’s adjacency to multiple studios, franchises, and genres that rank among my personal very-special-interests got me to push on through where otherwise I might have switched off and picked up a different game entirely. And sure enough, in the end I was thoroughly enjoying the satisfaction of working out how to trounce enemies who could down my frail anime boy protagonist in two or three hits if I wasn’t careful.
As an avowed Soulslike-disliker, it’s just too sickening, really, to think that a HoYoverse-style gacha RPG made by the creators of Danganronpa might be the thing that finally gets me invested enough to put on my tough girl boots and start actually enjoying a “difficult” action game. But I have to admit that it’d be very on-brand.
Tribe Nine doesn’t have a release date yet, but you can check out this open beta until Steam Next Fest ends on Monday, October 21. It’s just on PC at the moment, but the full release will also be available on Android and iOS devices.