Koutarou Uchikoshi

Kotaro Uchikoshi is a Japanese video game director and writer. He is known for his work on visual novel games, including the Infinity and Zero Escape series. His writing style often incorporates elements of science fiction with various scientific and philosophical themes, and makes heavy use of plot twists.

Interested in narrative based games from a young age, Uchikoshi studied video game development at a vocational school. His first job in game development was at KID in 1998, where he primarily wrote scenarios for bishoujo games and other visual novels. These included Memories Off (1999) and Never 7: The End of Infinity (2000). In 2001, he left KID to become a freelance writer, and continued to work on visual novels. Uchikoshi joined Chunsoft in 2007, where he came up with the idea of integrating puzzles into a visual novel for the player to solve. He implemented this idea in Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (2009), the first game in which he served as the director.