Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc is a visual novel adventure game developed and published by Spike. The first installment in the Danganronpa series, it was originally released for the PlayStation Portable in Japan in November 2010. NIS America localized and published the game internationally on PlayStation consoles, with the first release of the game in English occurring in 2014. The player controls a high school student named Makoto Naegi who finds himself involved in a battle royale in Hope's Peak Academy, where the robot bear Monokuma gives the students the chance to escape from the establishment if they murder another student and are not voted as the killer in a trial. The game sees Makoto interact with other students to solve "class trials" by shooting at arguments displayed on the screen. The game originated from writer Kazutaka Kodaka's idea to generate a new type of game, as he believed the original adventure games were no longer popular. As a result, he created a dark scenario that generated controversy within Spike due to the amount of violence displayed among students. Nevertheless, the company decided to develop it alongside the unique gameplay system which they thought was less derivative from other games. The cast was designed by Rui Komatsuzaki. Danganronpa was a commercial success and earned positive reviews for the handling of the cast and story. It won awards, though critics were divided on the lack of challenging difficulty in solving class trials and its mini games. A sequel, Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair, was released in 2012. A compilation of both games, titled Danganronpa 1・2 Reload, was released for PlayStation Vita in Japan in October 2013, and worldwide in March 2017. The game produced several adaptions and spin-offs: an anime television series, a stage show, two manga, and two novels.