Jiro Ishii, a talented writer and creator behind games like the visual novel 428, has left his formal position at Level-5, to go freelance.

Like many other veteran Japanese creators these days, going freelance gives them the opportunity to work on games/series they love. This gives him the opportunity to explore new avenues for entirely new projects, like his more recent venue, the Kickstarter-funded anime series, Under the Dog, alongside Yusuke Kozaki and Masahiro Ando.

While at Level-5 he worked on the aforementioned visual novel 428, as well as the story driven Time Travelers. It’s worth mentioning that most of his games tend to have a thriller aspect to them, although the only games of his to come west include the Zero Escape series, as he was the producer on Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors.