Some of the most dedicated fans of a game or movie will go a step further than just creating fan-fiction by making their own fan-game. Fan-games are games made by fans, usually either taking already existing characters and putting them into new situations to continue their stories or completely new characters just using the original concept as a base for the game.
However, many companies will draw the line at these games, often shutting them down due to copyright infringement after they are released or before they are even made public. Many of these properties are owned by companies such as Disney or Sega, who are much more strict when it comes to how their copyrighted works are being used. Despite this, people have not stopped making fan-games, and some have even reached the same levels of popularity as the original games.
Some good examples of this phenomenon are fanganronpas. Fanganronpas are fan-games based off of the original wildly popular Japanese visual novel series Danganronpa. Danganronpa is about a group of extremely talented teenagers who are trapped somewhere and told that the only way for them to escape is to kill one of their classmates. The games function as a joint between a murder mystery and a comedy, with each chapter of the game consisting of a murder and an execution of the murder, reducing the cast as time goes on.
There are many Fanganronpa that have been released over the years that are said to be just as good, if not better, than the original games. This includes titles such as the duology that started it all, Danganronpa Another and Super Danganronpa Another 2, Project: Eden’s Garden, a fangame that takes on a more serious and religious undertone, and Danganronpa: Kill/Cure, a fan-game that just released its prologue a month or so ago!
Even with the legal precedent that comes with fan-games, passionate people will continue to create fan-games to share their vision with the world.
Fandom Fun Fact V: Project: Eden’s Garden currently has almost 300,000 downloads on all of its available platforms with only its first chapter out!
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