Discover The Creators is a PlayStation Store curation program in which we’ve asked some of the biggest names in the biz to pick their favorite PS4 games in order to help your find your next game to play.

Hello, I’m Kodaka Kazutaka.

I am the game creator and the person in charge of the scenarios for the Danganronpa series.

Lately, I wake up and play games, and play games before I go to bed. My days begin with games and end with games.

On that note, here are my favorite picks for PS4 games.

Life is Strange

The pure entertainment of walking around in an American school is fun in itself! I’ve seen plenty of American schools in movies and dramas, but those were purely backgrounds in a movie. By being able to walk around the school environment, it made me realize once more how different American schools are structured from Japan. Of course, the story and effects were wonderful. As these types of works that don’t exclusively involve intense action get more popular, I feel that the game genre as a whole has steadily gotten larger. On a tangent, Danganronpa is set inside a school too, but those sorts of schools do not exist in Japan so please don’t misunderstand.

Until Dawn

Back in the day, there was a genre called “Sound Novels” in Japan. Unlike visual novels, such as Danganronpa for example, these were much simpler. The most renowned entry in this genre is a title called “Banshee’s Last Cry” —a suspense game where the main character starts off stuck in a blizzard on top of a snow-covered mountain. When playing Until Dawn, I felt that this was an evolution of the Sound Novel genre. I would love to make a game like this!

Nier: Automata

I’ve been a big fan of the Nier series from its previous entries. In my opinion, it’s the most violent and bloody work available, and to think that a game like this has sold so much, it must be the end of this world. We live in such a nice time. The PS3 version, Nier Replicant, portrayed the relationship between siblings, and the Xbox 360 version, Nier Gestalt, described the relationship between father and daughter. The unraveling of these stories always fascinated me.

But since this is a Sony blog I shouldn’t dig much deeper into this topic.

A fun fact, I go out on drinks with the director Yoko Taro a lot, but we always end up losing our memory.

Gravity Rush 2

In Japan, the release date was very close to Danganronpa V3 and it’s actually a game that I was very conscious about. The directions of the two games are different, but I think that both Danganronpa and Gravity Rush have a very Japanese-like game system. It takes a while to get used to the game, but once you get the hang of it, it feels so good to play. It has a slightly high hurdle, but I believe that you need a little bit of a hurdle for entertainment, this gives a good impression. Another fun fact, I also go drinking with the director, Toyama, but we always end up losing our memories, too.

Everybody’s Golf

This title has been a long running series in the PlayStation lineups, but this was actually the first time I played it. I personally don’t play a lot of games that are heartwarming, but this one I catch myself playing again and again. The detailed character creation is one thing, but whenever I find some free time, I find myself with this game in my hands. What’s intended to be a little break from work ends up being something I find more absorbing than work… it’s such a scary game!

Inside

Although it’s mentioned everywhere, the artwork for this game is awesome. I think the game does a superb job in conveying the game in 2D and surpasses 3D in its sense of conveying the environment.

Also in regards to storytelling, while playing the game, it stirred my imagination. For example, it made me want to make a visual novel that has absolutely no words. I’m not sure how to make this, but if I can come up with this, I’ll have less work to do, and that will be awesome.

Persona 5

Everyone has been talking about how good this game is, and I, with my warped personality obviously would want to say it’s boring but, unfortunately I can’t find a single thing that’s boring in it. I’m hoping that people will get bored with this game and want something that‘s more exciting so they play Danganronpa, but they don’t seem to be getting bored of the game, which puts me in a fix.

But! I think Danganronpa still wins in the number of people dying in the game.

This game gets me so jealous and worked up that even though I’m supposed to be writing a recommendation on this game I keep writing about Danganronpa.

Head over to PlayStation Store to browse Kodaka-san’s list as well as picks curated by Tim Schafer, Yoko Taro, the team behind Inside, and more.