Zero Escape creator Kotaro Uchikoshi launches studio CRASH KEYS

Kotaro Uchikoshi, the writer and director behind the Zero Escape trilogy and AI: The Somnium Files, has established an independent game studio called CRASH KEYS. While the Shibuya-based company was quietly registered in March 2025, Uchikoshi took it public today to begin recruiting investment partners for an original project after an unannounced game he had been developing for 18 months was abruptly canceled.

Uchikoshi had originally planned to keep the company under wraps until 2027 to coincide with the formal reveal of that debut title. With external partners pulling the plug on the project after a year and a half of work, the studio found itself without an active production contract, prompting an early announcement and an open call for new funding, development partnerships, and scenario-writing commissions. Even with the rough start, the plan for CRASH KEYS remains focused on channeling Uchikoshi's past experience and unorthodox ideas into a brand-new original game.

Why the website looks like a Nonary Game

Nothing says normal corporate business outreach quite like a webpage full of substitution ciphers and moon-base passwords. Even the studio's name is pulled straight from Zero Escape lore, where Crash Keys is the clandestine organization led by Akane Kurashiki.

Visiting the studio's homepage right now doesn't just give you a standard corporate mission statement. The landing page greets visitors with a block of encrypted gibberish ("GE YZW PYJPY IVMK, SR GLNCUPMLHNEE KEXAVW..") alongside the plaintext phrase: "RHIZOME-9 MEMENTO MORI, IF THE NIN"e"TH LION ATE THE SUN."

That line isn't random. Rhizome-9 is the lunar habitat where the 2012 Nintendo 3DS and PlayStation Vita sequel Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward takes place, and the Memento Mori line is one of the game's central password riddles, intentional misspelling of "nineth" and all. It is not entirely clear where the genuine business pitch ends and the alternate reality game begins, which is standard operating procedure for an Uchikoshi project. In 2015, a similarly cryptic teaser site called 4infinity.co ran for months before eventually revealing Zero Time Dilemma, the third entry in the series that had previously been put on indefinite hold due to poor domestic sales in Japan.

From KID to Too Kyo Games

Uchikoshi has spent more than two decades building adventure games and visual novels that mess with player expectations and narrative structure. He first gained a following in the early 2000s writing for the now-defunct developer KID on the Infinity series, including Never7, Ever17: The Out of Infinity, and Remember11. In 2009, working with Chunsoft, he directed Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (999) for the Nintendo DS, combining escape-room puzzles with a branching story about nine strangers trapped on a sinking ship that cleverely used the handheld's dual screens as a plot device.

After wrapping up the Zero Escape trilogy and directing the sci-fi detective adventure AI: The Somnium Files at Spike Chunsoft, he co-founded Too Kyo Games in 2018 alongside Danganronpa creator Kazutaka Kodaka and several other veteran developers. At Too Kyo, Uchikoshi most recently handled scenario direction for HUNDRED LINE -Final Defense Academy-, a tactical RPG and adventure hybrid developed with Media.Vision that launched in 2025.

Whether the encrypted text on the CRASH KEYS site is teasing the themes of his pitched original project or just acting as a calling card for prospective publishers who grew up solving his DS and Vita puzzles, the studio is officially open for business. Now it just needs someone to help pay for whatever timeline-jumping madness he wants to build next.