Kumitantei: Old-School Slaughter looks like a promising indie successor to Danganronpa
Thrills! Chills! Kills!
It’s been almost seven years since Danganronpa V3 brought a close to the trilogy of gloriously twisted murder-mystery visual novels. With several of the series’ biggest names going on to release their next game as an exclusive for the Nintendo Switch, there’s room for a properly good successor on PC. Or why not successors? Last year’s exceptional Paranormasight is definitely in the running, and 2024 is already looking promising thanks to the reveal of Kumitantei: Old-School Slaughter.
Kumitantei is very much a love letter to Danganronpa, pitting a class of 16 gifted students against each other in a killing game - or rather, science experiment - under the encouragement of an antagonistic conjoined cat-like creature(s) with more than a hint of Monokuma about it. The player will have to investigate crime scenes to solve murders and uncover the mystery of the locked bunker of the Janus Institute in which the group find themselves trapped.
While it’s all very Danganronpa upfront, Kumitantei plans to mix in some ideas from further afield, too. As the player interacts with characters and gifts them items found around the world, they’ll be able to build up a level of trust similar to Persona’s social links, with that trust then seemingly playing an important role as you attempt to discover the truth behind the Apathy Experiment and its killer host.
Replacing Danganronpa’s bullet-based class debates are clinical trials and card battle debates, involving an element of deck-building and cardplay to overcome opponents using your influence. There’ll be other retro-inspired minigames, too, with the game citing the manga of legendary Ranma ½, Inuyasha and Urusei Yatsura creator Rumiko Takahashi as a key influence on the game’s horror-conspiracy tone alongside eighties anime and Japanese culture.
Kumitantei will be the debut release from Indonesia-centred indie developers Mango Factory, who have been working on the game since 2019 and previously created Danganronpa-inspired fan web series Heaven of Despair. A crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter is planned for early June ahead of a release on Steam.