Danganronpa's creator Kazutaka Kodaka has said that a sequel to the high school killing game was initially turned down following the original game's poor release sales. The writer even considered quitting his job, until the opportunity arose to keep working on the series.
Posting on Twitter, and as translated by GamesRadar+, Kodaka recalls how studio Spike Chunsoft – then known as Spike – turned down a Danganronpa sequel when the first game didn't make much money. The visual novel was originally a PlayStation Portable exclusive and so it was reportedly difficult for it to make its development budget back.
"After Danganronpa launched it didn't generate much revenue, so at that time we were told something like, 'we're not making 2,'" Kodaka says. "The team was assigned to different projects and they were spread out across the company."
ダンガンロンパ発売後、当初そこまで売上が伸びずに「２は作らない」という事を告げられるのと同時に、チームはそれぞれ別のプロジェクトに割り振られてバラバラに。…July 26, 2026
Kodaka had previously worked on existing series like Clock Tower, Dragon Ball, and Detective Conan, and was eager to continue working on his own games. "My eyes were opened to the joy of working on something original and I didn't want to work on another project," he says. "I couldn't decide what to do and even considered quitting, but then I heard talk of a Danganronpa Zero light novel, so I went straight to my boss. That's how I continued working on the series."
Working on Danganronpa's prequel novel gave the series' first game time to generate more sales, and the beloved sequel was finally greenlit. "Danganronpa was selling steadily and at some point there was talk of making a second game," Kodaka says. "As I was writing Danganronpa Zero, I revisited [the series'] vague setting, so the foundation of the second game's story was easy to craft."
Kodaka continues to say he went from the "gloomy, claustrophobic" atmosphere of the first game to "shonen manga-esque steamy plotlines" for the second, before going into the weeds about how each murder mystery was crafted. Despite the fact that Danganronpa 2 almost never existed, it's many fans' favorite entry in the series, and will receive its own alternative timeline in Danganronpa 2x2 in 2027.
