Danganronpa Team’s Survival RPG Zanki Zero Explains How Dying Makes You Stronger

The Danganronpa team’s next title Zanki Zero is a survival RPG that will have you burn through clones that have a lifespan of 13 days and become stronger each time they die.

In Zanki Zero you become stronger by dying with the “Shigabane” system. This name is actually a little pun based on the word “Shikabane” which means dead body or corpse. The system actually stands for “Shi ga Bane” which basically means “death is spring” as in a spring to jump up and become stronger… or something like that.

The playable characters in Zanki Zero are basically all clones from the start, and they spring to new heights when they die.

For example, getting killed by a certain wild beast will make that character’s next clone stronger against said beast thanks to the Shigabane system that makes them stronger. If a character dies from poison, they become more resistant to poison attacks for the next clone. Basically, the more a clone is reborn, the stronger they’ll become.

This one is a Shigabane for a character that died with 80% item weight at the time of their death, thus resulting in the ability to carry more item weight. There are Shigabane bonuses for all kinds of deaths, including death from stress or death from dying at a dead-end.

Clones have a plus-shaped metallic part on their navel area. This is called the X-key, and it registers everything about the human clone’s internal storage including knowledge, experience, and memories.

When characters level up, they gain Skill Points (SP) that are used to learn skills. skills are split between battle, exploratory, and production. There are some skills that only activate at a younger age and some skills that can only be used when they’re older. Skills learned won’t be forgotten after death and will be available after the rebirth.

While there are differences in learnable skills for each character, they aren’t fixed skills and players will get to decide on which skills to learn for any character.

One thing worth noting is that in Zanki Zero a character doesn’t increase in stats when they level, but their basic stats are fixed on whatever age group they’re in. For this reason, it’ll be important to take advantage of the Shigabane Bonus and learning skills.

At the start of the start of the game you’ll only have a standpipe for the base camp. In order to improve survival abilities, you’ll need to acquire materials by exploring ruins and you’ll also need to build new facilities. There are all kinds of facilities for your home base, starting with the toilet, which will be super important to have and you can read why here, and the workshop to build and enhance weapons and armor. You’ll also need to build facilities such as a cookhouse to cook food and such.

Zanki Zero: Last Beginning will release in Japan on July 5, 2018 for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita. The game will release in the West for PS4 and PC. You can check out a character trailer in our previous report. In case you were wondering, Monokuma from the Danganronpa series will also make an appearance.