Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls

Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls is an action-adventure and third-person shooter video game developed by Spike Chunsoft. It is a spin-off in the Danganronpa series, set in between the events of Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (2010) and Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair (2012). The game was originally published by Spike Chunsoft for the PlayStation Vita in Japan on September 25, 2014, and internationally by NIS America in September 2015. Ports for the PlayStation 4 and Windows were released in June 2017.

Although different in gameplay to its murder mystery visual novel predecessors, Ultra Despair Girls retains the series' visual style and focus on narrative. The player controls Komaru Naegi—the younger sister of the first game's protagonist, Makoto Naegi—and Toko Fukawa, a returning character with split personality disorder. Komaru is forced to participate in a death game within a city overtaken by murderous bear robots called Monokumas, and teams up with Toko to escape. Behind the Monokumas are the Warriors of Hope, a group of abused children who intend to massacre all adults and construct a safe haven for kids. In combat sections, the player uses a megaphone gun as Komaru to fight the robots; as Toko, they control her serial killer personality Genocide Jack, who fights using 2 pairs of scissors. Other sections feature visual novel, puzzle, and stealth game elements.

Ultra Despair Girls was conceived by series creator Kazutaka Kodaka and producer Yoshinori Terasawa shortly after the completion of Danganronpa 2, while they took time to prepare for a third mainline installment. They wanted to differentiate the spin-off from the main entries and considered multiple genres before they settled on action-adventure, since they thought the movement-based gameplay would compliment the story. Due to a difficult development process, Ultra Despair Girls became the most expensive Danganronpa game at the time; several staff members described the project as stressful in regards to budget and scheduling.

The game was met with mixed reviews. Critics were divided on the gameplay; some thought it was a strange direction for the series, but others enjoyed the dynamics provided by different bullet types available for the megaphone gun. Several critics thought the game retained a high level of writing quality from previous Danganronpa games, although some had issues with the story's pacing. It was considered the darkest Danganronpa game for its portrayal of themes such as child sexual abuse. Commercially, Ultra Despair Girls had sold about 500,000 copies by 2021. The game spawned manga adaptations and an anime continuation through an episode of the TV show Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School (2017). Kodaka and co-director Shun Sasaki have indicated the possibility of a video game sequel.