It's quite the dramatic and shocking series about hope and despair. I currently watch the WeebyNews YouTube channel playing the fangame "Danganronpa Another: Despair Academy". I admittedly don't know if I could really enjoy such specific kinds of novels without the visual anime side to them. I don't like violence, mind control and generally horror scenarios all too much from the get-go but I have a fair interest in investigation and solving crime stuff in shows. Grew up with stuff like "Columbo", "Quincy", "Murder She Wrote", "Magnum", etc. and also became a vivid watcher of "Detective Conan" and listener to audio plays like "The ???", "The Famous Five" or "TKKG". People solving mysteries is pretty cool.

I doubt though I'd enjoy a "Danganronpa" with other peoples' OCs or even my dear mascot Shiny as an actual scenario. The idea alone of any of them meeting their demise at any point just makes me sad. <:3

Gotta play the Decadence collection at some point. Last visual novel that I played was "Steins; Gate Elite" which had that impressive use of anime footage built into it. Made the experience so much cooler, like having a mix of anime and manga in there. Also played the "Ace Attorney" HD trilogy again.
People keep recommending that game called "13 Sentinels" that comes out soon. Something about young people and large robots that sometimes has sections of strategy gameplay inbetween teh visual novel part. Honestly scares me because I'm terrible with strategy games. Always struggled with the same when playing "Fire Emblem: Awakening".
Some things I can apparently only enjoy as an anime adaption that doesn't require me to be all tactical and simulating Dungeons and Dragons. <X3

To feed two birds with one massive bag of bird food, I can also change it up a bit so that those who were killed are still alive but are pretending to be dead as if they were in a movie or theatrical production. I haven't seen much investigation shows, aside of Scooby Doo, and a few police shows I forgot the name of.

Four of my favourite characters were killed right off the bat, so... I'm a bit sad, but I will push on because I have no reason to quit the games.

Ah, you can always write how you prefer things personally. I simply find any form of story with a large cast of characters quite difficult because you need to balance things out, make plans for all characters in each situation and the sorts. I don't wanna know how long the writers in the games had to sit at all the designs.

Yeah, it always is sad when you like a character and see them run into their demise. Danganronpa has a rather cool style. A bunch of interesting color combinations and ian interesting idea to most of the time showing characters like 2D cutouts and playing around with that graphically.
I watched "Scooby-Doo" of course as well. Especially liked the iteration called "Mystery Incorporated" which had a lengthier interconnected narrative and was more plotdriven rather then the more episodic shows before.

If you like "Danganronpa" Try also to look for "Zero Escape" or "The Nonary Games" That series is also pretty exciting.

I sure can write how I prefer things. Hmmm. You also have a point about having a large cast because you gotta keep them from being carbon copies of one another or lacking personality, and you gotta keep who likes what and such. A lot of stuff, but it does mean I'd get to use Diji in my notebook.

I have two characters I don't like so far, and a bit of a spoiler for myself... well, the two characters I don't like survive the experience. It's been a while since I've seen Scooby-Doo, to be honest. I'm not familiar with the specific series you mentioned. That does sound interesting, though.

I'll give your two suggestions a look and see if I like them as well.