55 hours later The Hundred Line: The Last Defense AcademyA turn-based strategy visual novel from Too Kyo Games, I came across a particularly touching scene. Two characters, having learned something particularly shocking a few days earlier (one of several moments in the game that recontextualizes the entire experience), rise early and end up watching the sun rise together. It's a small moment of calm where two people bond over natural beauty amidst a particularly harsh set of days, and it settles in beautifully. It felt like the game was touching on something deeper and more melancholy than what I had seen before.
According to online estimates of the game's total length, at the time I saw this scene, I still had 90-120 hours left before I could truly say I had “finished” the game, depending on my speed and patience. The title “Hundred Lines” refers to the number of days that the students of Last Defense Academy have to defend their school as waves of invaders periodically force them into tactical combat. But there's actually another meaning to the name, which you'll discover once those 100 days have passed for the first time, about 30 hours into the game: there are 100 unlockable endings in this game, and to get the full picture, you'll want to see them all.
The promise of 100 endings feels like the kind of marketing lie that's thrown in the press release to show how much the game depends on your choices. A game that claims to have 12 endings could actually mean four endings, each with a few minor potential variations. And yes, some of the endings in The Hundred Lines are kind of cheats or are very similar to each other – not all endings are created equal. But in reality there are 100 of them, consisting of 21 different “routes” that can end at different points.
The moment these two characters met the sunrise, I saw eight endings; I was still a good five hours away from finishing ninth (although all endings 10-12 were unlocked within an hour of that). Finding these endings revealed new information about the game world: the paths leading to these endings showed characters in a new light, and some of them opened up new corners of this game world or revealed new knowledge. They were stupid, sad, a little scary, sometimes funny, sometimes tragic. Different characters died each time, and the emotions I felt for each of them were different. Walking through what I felt was the game's closest approach to a “canonical” ending, I knew I would keep going, and that knowing everything I learned along the way to that ending would only deepen my understanding and understanding of the many paths I still had to take.
The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy is directed by Kazutaka Kodaka and Kotaro Uchikoshi, best known respectively for Danganronpa and Zero Escape: two series known for their huge twists, hyperactive storytelling, and penchant for murderous actors. This new game has all of that too, and includes a pretty competent Fire Emblem-style combat system. That's not to mention the bond stats with each individual student, the board game-style “exploration” mode, or the RPG-style character stats and equipment that you can gradually customize as you play.
Typically in games that promise a story shaped by your choices, the main attraction is the idea of reaching the end and experiencing the conclusion of the story you co-wrote with the game's writers and designers, finding a conclusion that represents the path you carved out through that experience. You might play it again and make different choices to see different scenes; most likely you will simply take it for granted that if you didnext time the story will be a little different.
The Hundred Line takes a different approach: it's a choose-your-own adventure story, but instead of keeping your finger on the page where you made your last choice in case it doesn't work out, you have a neat timeline that allows you to return to every choice in the game.
The most interesting thing about this game is that your own choices don't matter much because the best way to play the game is to make all of them and see every result. Sure, there are some paths that give you more information or a deeper story, endings that feel “good” or “bad” or some shade in between, but there's no sense of punishment or denial of certain plot points because of your choices.
There's a rare, exciting feeling that I don't often experience in games of this scale: the feeling that the developers were able to see their vision through to completion. The Hundred Line is a game that no business strategist or market expert would advise a company to make and release in 2025. A game this huge, with no additional monetization, an emphasis on storytelling, a $60 price tag and a lot of strange and complex themes: it could be a potential recipe for disaster, especially when it relies on 3D models for its tactical combat system and numerous cutscenes. This is a game that many media outlets and influencers will be a little afraid to touch as well since it's so long and text-heavy.
A Hundred Lines took over five years to develop, and the script, which would have been around a million words, would have made localization extremely expensive, especially when you factor in the voice acting. In a pre-release interview with the magazine Nintendo LifeKodaka admitted that if the game doesn't sell well, the studio “may kill itself” after taking out loans to finance development. A week after the game's release, a response to a Bluesky fan, Kokoda stated that the company was “still on the verge of bankruptcy.”
And yet “A Hundred Lines” was a success. By July, three months after launch, the game was selling quite well, Kodaka reported. Bloomberg“I don’t see bankruptcy as a serious future.” Exact sales figures have not been revealed, but it looks like the risk Too Kyo Games took in putting so much time and effort into developing this behemoth has paid off.
I think part of this is due to the fact that Kodaka and Uchikoshi have built a good reputation for their previous series, with the Danganronpa and Zero Escape series having amassed global fan bases over a long period of time. The Hundred Line is also bold in a way that's undeniable and unusual: the sheer size of this thing is more exciting than a game that offers, say, 30 different endings. It also helps that the tactical battles are quite enjoyable, with enough depth and originality that engaging in combat never feels tiring.
Beyond all of this, however, the storytelling in A Hundred Lines – when you boil down a huge body of work into simplistic sentiment – is very good, with excellent character dialogue, fantastic voice acting and plenty of 'what if' scenarios for you to explore. The characters are all interesting, developing and deepening over time, and watching them change and adapt to the vastly different stories you can explore is fascinating – it's impressive that the game maintains consistency throughout the different paths.
There continue to be reports of developers tightening their belts as the industry shifts toward more conservative, proven tactics for profit. Seeing a company take huge risks to create something both huge and different, and reap the rewards from it, is inspiring. However, even without that context, The Hundred Line will still be my favorite game of 2025. It's a stunning achievement in narrative design, a truly wild example of how much can be done with player choice, and one of the most ambitious visual novels ever made.
