When your "100% a fan game" Danganronpa idea ends up changing your life: "We were at a crossroads where we either have to go back to doing our real jobs, or we can change this just enough to be legally distinct"

What's better than a single murder mystery? Several in a row! That's the premise behind the killing game set-up that's fuelled some of my favorite detective games – and is one reason Danganronpa 2x2 remains one of my most anticipated of the year. Still, that's only a reshuffle, with many of the team that worked on it moving past the sub-genre towards new combinations, like with last year's excellent and super ambitious The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy. But what about fans like me that crave watching lovable, charming characters put through grim scenarios as they struggle to survive (with some hijinks along the way)?

Mango Factory, the development studio behind Kumitantei: Old-School Slaughter had the same question after playing through all of Danganronpa, but, unlike me, decided to do something about it. Taking cues from the popular series and adding plenty of fresh twists – from characters with inventive, quirky, and fresh backstories, to its alternate history setting – the upcoming murder mystery is shaping up to be a must-play for genre fans, and I loved playing through Kumitantei's opening hours last year. You can even check out the Kumitantei demo for yourself for free right now!

Taking a kill shot

The inspirations are obvious, but I have to ask how closely influenced by Danganronpa Mango Factory consider Kumitantei to be. "Oh, it absolutely is, unambiguously it is," says Selina Kibara, the game's creative director. "A very big component of Mango Factory's ideology is that we want to wear our inspirations on our sleeve. So many developers in these last few years seem very anxious and avoidant of wanting to actually be transparent about the things that inspired them, either for copyright reasons or just to not be called derivative, and I am of the opinion that I would rather make something that's derivative than something that's disingenuous."

The idea to develop Kumitantei came from putting down Danganronpa and realizing there were no more games left to play, but letting the creative juices pour freely as inspiration. "After I finished playing the Danganronpa series, all I could think about was like: Well, what if a character like this was in this kind of scenario? What if a character like that? What if this happened? I was just overflowing with ideas for a take on a similar premise," says Kibara.

Even before Danganronpa got an official English translation (and perhaps even because of the absence of one), the series has had a huge online fandom. "This was right before the pandemic started. We were all trapped inside anyway. [...] I found out about the massive fan game community that there is for [Danganronpa], so I started looking into a bunch of those, [and thinking] 'yeah, I can do this'," says Kibara. "So, me and a handful of friends that I made both through that community and just through my previous experience, [which] was modding Super Smash Bros for Wii U – that's where our development story began. It's kind of weird!"

Given that process, I have to ask – was Kumitantei always an original setting, or did it start out as a Danganronpa fan game? "Yeah, yes, it was 100% a fan game at the start. It was only like when the world started opening back up after Covid that we were at a crossroads where we either have to go back to doing our real jobs, or we can change this just enough to be legally distinct," Kibara laughs. "You can see what decision we made!"

Just because Kumitantei is so inspired by Danganronpa doesn't mean new ideas aren't brought to the table. One of the biggest that I've found the most appealing is the alternate history backdrop that serves as the setting for the Apathy Experiment in which the subjects are pressured into secretly committing murder. Not only is the main game set in The Empire of Japan in 1989, but there are frequent links to a similar event that happened many years before, incorporating a whole second large cast of characters.

"I'm a huge history nerd, especially with Japan and the 20th century. So this just kind of came very naturally to me, because I already know these things," says Kibara. Already used to getting lost in research rabbit holes and sharing details with friends, it was "a natural fit for us."

The flashback-style second experiment actually comes from scriptwriter AJ Morgan Garcia's own experience playing Danganronpa 2 out of order, in which the story makes allusions to the events of the first game. "It was just this very interesting thing where they had this experience trying to piece together what happened in the first game without any of the context," says Kibara. "We wanted to replicate that as an intentional thing with our game."

I love the idea of tapping into that experience and using it as a creative touchstone, especially as someone who grew up often buying whatever was discounted at the game store regardless of where it was in the series (shout out to my fellow 'played Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney first' gang). It's a super smart way to add some nuance.

Vertical slice and dice

Building the demo, which covers meeting Kumitantei's cast of characters and being introduced to the death game, meant cutting some set-up in order to let the large personalities of each Apathy Experiment subject take center stage. "People want to get attached to the characters within it, the participants within the death game, and we wanted to make sure that they were front and center and easily accessible just as soon as possible for a demo," says Kibara.

The demo has definitely worked. Beyond the demo beginning to foster a community of fans looking forward to the full release of Kumitantei's first episode, it's caught the eye of new collaborators. The original September 2024 demo was self-published, and had typing sound effect beeps instead of voiced dialog (still selectable as a 'classic' mode if you prefer, a little like Ace Attorney). Now, Kumitantei has an excellent voice cast, and is being published by Akupara Games – who also released Repose, and the excellent Sorry We're Closed.

"We're a small team, we don't have a lot of money, so [voice acting] was something that we thought was going to be completely out of our wheelhouse without a publisher," says Kibara. But, after being a part of Two And a Half Games' Storyteller's Festival on Steam, "we got the interest of a voice actor and VO director named Mia Paige." Working with Paige as VO Director / Casting (who you may know from Fire Emblem Heroes, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, and others) meant that "within the span of only a few months, we went from having none at all to having this full star studded voice cast and being able to update the demo with full voice acting in time for Steam Next Fest."

Then after that demo, Mango Factory signed up with Akupara Games, giving the team more security and the ability to polish and add to the experience in order to make it as good as possible. "As an episodic project, there's inevitably a little bit of anxiety," says Kibara, sharing that the team was, for a long time, resigned to self-publishing at least the initial episodes. "What if the first episode doesn't do that well, then how are we going to finish the rest of it?" It's also meant that Akupara can assist with marketing, which was done on-team before, meaning more time can be focused on developing Kumitantei itself.

"A bunch of these people on the marketing team, including myself, were playing the game, and [messaging] back and forth on Slack DM, like: Oh my gosh. What's going to happen? Who is going to be this killer? Where is this going? I love this artwork. I love this writing," shares Fae Monique, marketing lead for Kumitantei at Akupara Games. The publisher is beginning to assemble quite the library of games with unique presentation, strong storytelling, and a real sense of style. "We're really focused on games that have a narrative thread," says Monique. "[And,] we do look for games that have at least a few avid advocates on the team, that are like hardcore lovers of that game, because we really believe that we can't do well by a game if we don't have people who are truly in love with it."

Kibara believes that Kumitantei's demo, and taking part in Steam festivals like Steam Next Fest has been vital in taking these steps. "The biggest thing on our side was just being able to prove that we had something here that was worth paying attention to and worth investing in," says Kibara. For a small studio, the run-up to release can be a difficult tightrope to walk, with Steam wishlists and engagement vital in getting eyes on an incredibly crowded marketplace. Quality is a big part of creating that appeal, too.

"A death game gives you the opportunity to dig into a group of characters, [...] forcing these characters that have no particular issue with each other into a situation where they have to completely give up their humanity to focus on their survival, while also managing to be likable and distinctive in their own way," says Kibara, "You're connected to the characters and invested in whether they live or die."

It also allows these bizarre and intriguing characters to really shine. While the main character is a hapless barista (perfect), others range from an obsessive conspiracy theorist to a master beekeeper, and even a seemingly undead paleontologist – a similar set-up to Danganronpa where each student has expert subject specialities.

"It just gives you such a wide range of emotional beats and storytelling capabilities," says Kibara. "If you make like a character, how are they going to kill somebody within their skill set? How are they going to cover it up? What would they say during a trial? How would they contribute? What do they know how to do that the others don't? What are they capable of that the others don't know? There's so many interesting questions," says Kibara. As for me, I'm looking forward to finding out for myself when the first episode of Kumitantei: Old-School Slaughter releases Early 2026.

Take a look at our best mystery games list for more chin-stroking!