Kotaro Uchikoshi | |
|---|---|
| 打越 鋼太郎 | |
 Uchikoshi at Anime Expo 2016 | |
| Born | November 17, 1973 Higashimurayama, Tokyo, Japan |
| Nationality | Japanese |
| Other names | Hagane Tsukishio[a] (pseudonym)[1] |
| Occupation(s) | Video game director, writer |
| Years active | 1998–present |
| Employers |
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| Notable work | |
Kotaro Uchikoshi (打越 鋼太郎, Uchikoshi Kōtarō, born November 17, 1973) is a Japanese video game director and writer. He is known for his work on visual novel games, including the Infinity and Zero Escape series. His writing style often incorporates elements of science fiction with various scientific and philosophical themes, and makes heavy use of plot twists.
Interested in narrative based games from a young age, Uchikoshi studied video game development at a vocational school. His first job in game development was at KID in 1998, where he primarily wrote scenarios for bishōjo games and other visual novels. These included Memories Off (1999) and Never 7: The End of Infinity (2000). In 2001, he left KID to become a freelance writer, and continued to work on visual novels. Uchikoshi joined Chunsoft in 2007, where he came up with the idea of integrating puzzles into a visual novel for the player to solve. He implemented this idea in Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (2009), the first game in which he served as the director.
Both Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors and its sequel Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward (2012) were commercial failures in Japan. When Chunsoft put the Zero Escape series on hiatus, Uchikoshi returned to freelance work, and wrote his first anime series, Punch Line (2015). He also worked on a manga and video game adaptation of Punch Line. A large fan presence helped revive the Zero Escape series, and Uchikoshi returned to write and direct the concluding installment, Zero Time Dilemma (2016). In 2017, he left Spike Chunsoft and formed the video game developer Too Kyo Games together with Danganronpa series staff members and his Infinity co-writer Takumi Nakazawa. Shortly after, he wrote the concept for the anime series The Girl in Twilight (2018), directed and wrote the adventure game AI: The Somnium Files (2019), and returned to write its sequel, AI: The Somnium Files – Nirvana Initiative (2022).
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