Kotaro Uchikoshi, the scenario writer and director behind the Zero Escape series and AI: The Somnium Files, has announced his own company, CRASH KEYS Inc., after a game he had been working on for about a year and a half was cancelled. The company’s press release, published at 1:00 a.m. Japan time on 15 October 2026 (late on 14 October in Europe and the Americas), says it was founded in March 2025 and is based in Shibuya, Tokyo, with Uchikoshi as representative director.
Why the announcement came early
In a post on X on 14 October, reported by Automaton, Uchikoshi wrote that the game he and his staff had worked on had suddenly been cancelled, calling it a bolt from the blue and saying it left him suddenly out of work. According to gamebiz, he had intended to announce the company in 2027 together with that game, and brought the announcement forward after the cancellation. Neither the post nor the reports name the cancelled game or its publisher.
What Crash Keys will make
The press release lists two lines of business: game development, covering planning, direction and scenario, and story work for video and anime, covering structure, original concepts and scripts. It says the company will make original projects that draw on Uchikoshi’s experience and will announce each one when it is ready. No title, platform or date has been announced. The company’s tagline translates as “There are doors that only a broken key can open.”
Crash Keys is also looking for investment partners who share its vision, with business plans and terms discussed individually, and Uchikoshi is asking for new work, GAME Watch reports. That a writer-director whose games, including AI: The Somnium Files, have been published in the West as well as Japan is publicly seeking funding after a cancellation shows how hard original narrative games can be to finance.
Still part of Too Kyo Games
Uchikoshi co-founded Too Kyo Games with Danganronpa creator Kazutaka Kodaka and was scenario director on its 2025 game The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy. gamebiz reports that he has not left Too Kyo Games. He describes Crash Keys as a branch opened with the original house’s blessing, and says his relationship with Kodaka remains good.