We have a release date! And a new demo version. Beta testing is proceeding smoothly and the game build has been approved by Steam. If all goes well, Mysteries of Old Tokyo should be available on Steam on May 14. #steam #indiegames #solodev

Update on Steam Deck compatibility! (It's compatible) store.steampowered.com/news/app/378...

Demo v3.0 for Mysteries of Old Tokyo is now live! The demo returns to Steam with a new office, auto-save, and a much-improved UI. #indiegames #demos #steam

This mention from @buliaros.bsky.social really made my day. Thank you so much, I'm so happy you liked the demo! www.youtube.com/watch?v=u21t...

So, Next Fest is off to a good start. See, Steam algorithm, if you actually show my game to people, they may actually have a chance to wishlist it! #gamedev #indiedev #nextfest #steam

Hey. Tell people when they do good job. When you like the stuff they make. When you like the characters they’ve created. The stories they’ve told. Nobody hears it as often as you think bc everyone thinks everyone hears it all the time. Trust. They don’t. Tell. Them.

Mysteries of Old Tokyo, my debut game, is in Steam Next Fest, starting right now! It's a detective adventure puzzler set in Tokyo, with reams of historical research. Add to your wishlist! Try the demo! #indiegames #steam #demos

I think devs care about bugs way more than players. People are quite forgiving of demos, at least. #indiedev #solodev #gamedev

Made my Next Fest graphic! It's so tough to like ... sell my entire game with one image. Constantly questioning if I should add more, or less. I tried a split-screen then/now effect, but it just didn't work. Anyway, play the demo! And wishlist! #indiedev #solodev #gamedev

Deployed a tiny (2 line) hotfix for the demo. Stupid oversight, but the "evidence at station" trigger wouldn't trigger if you arrived by train (which you would, it being a train station and all!). Apologies for the error. #indiegames #gamedev #indiedev

Hopefully the real last update before Next Fest next week. store.steampowered.com/news/app/378...

It's kinda funny (but not funny) that every time I think my game is feature complete, I decide to add more features, and hence more bugs. I think I need to be pretty strict from now on, especially with Next Fest rapidly approaching. Ideally this should be the last demo release. #gamedev #indiedev

The all-new release trailer for MYSTERIES OF OLD TOKYO! Available April 2026 on Steam. Try the demo today. #indiegames #solodev #indiedev youtu.be/7nkPYb_s0G8

After 248 days on the store, I've reached my pre-Next Fest target of 3,000 Steam wishlists. Hard to believe I'm at this point. I remember when 300 wishlists was a crazy number. To once again quote LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy: "Thanks for supporting this weird thing!" #indiedev #gamedev

It's surprisingly hard to make a satisfying tutorial. You have to teach the player without them catching on. You have to give them freedom to do what they want, but also steer them away from anything they're not ready for. #gamedev #indiedev

I'm thinking I need to rework the tutorial for my demo before Next Fest. Needs more of a hook. At the moment it's a bit "ugh, first day at a new job, gotta do all this paperwork", which in retrospect is not the best way to keep players engaged. #gamedev #indiedev

MY GAME IN 4 WORDS: Acid Fantasy Barbarian Slasher #indiedev #indiegame #indiedrop

In the run-up to Next Fest, there's a new pre-release demo for MYSTERIES OF OLD TOKYO! V2.1.0 totally changes the way you explore new locations and discover evidence with an improved map of Tokyo. #indiegames #demos #steam #nextfest

New menu. I love this thing. I don't know why. It feels very personal to me. Like, years of messing around in image editors and learning to code and thinking about design have created this, #indiegames #indiedev #gamedev

All agents: Our equipment request dated July 1998 has been processed by Procurement and approved by Finance. Please look out for your updated CluesPDA in the next release. Additionally, we are excited to issue the new CluesPAGR to selected agents. #indiegames #gamedev

So I loaded a build of the finished game on my Steam Deck yesterday, and played about halfway. It works great. Easy to play on Steam Deck, and only minor bugs. But what's interesting is that the full game gets a bit repetitive in a way that the (short) demo doesn't. #gamedev #indiedev #steamdeck

New demo! New hint system! New satisfying little "plip" sound when you add a word! Play v2.0.3 right now! #indiegames #demos #steam store.steampowered.com/news/app/378...

Probably the most requested feature from ̷i̷n̷v̷e̷s̷t̷o̷r̷s̷ players of MYSTERIES OF OLD TOKYO is a hint system. So we've invested $10 million of vendor finance capital into Ria, our new AI assistant running on an enormous underwater datacenter in the Sargasso Sea. Coming soon to the demo! #indiegames

The game's finished! Well, the alpha version. Or maybe beta. Or somewhere in between. But in theory you can now load up the game, complete the tutorial, solve all puzzles across all ten chapters, finish the final chapter, and see this glorious end screen. (End screen WIP) #gamedev #indiedev

The death poem of Asano Naganori, the "villain" of the 47 Ronin story. (Translation by me) #indiegames #gamedev #indiedev

All 30 puzzles... COMPLETE! This feels great. A huge milestone for my game. Lots of polish and tidying left to do... but that can start tomorrow. One of the last puzzles got so complicated, it broke the interface 😹 #indiegames #gamedev #indiedev

Four views of Ochanomizu. Ochanomizu has always been one of my favourite places in Tokyo, and I think that first image (Meiji era) shows why. Even in the late 19th century it was a quite untamed patch of river. It still feels a little wild today. #tokyo #ochanomizu #japan

In my mind, the best way to play Mysteries of Old Tokyo is with a hot beverage, a pen and paper, and a browser window open with Wikipedia and a map of Tokyo. #indiegames #gamedev #tokyo

I try to love all my postcards equally, and some of them immediately lend themselves to interesting puzzles and exploring the fascinating history behind them, but others are just ... "it's a building. It doesn't exist any more because they built a taller, slightly uglier building." #gamedev

Demo update! Implemented some great feedback, fixed some pesky bugs, tweaked some puzzles and added the new year picker. Try it now on Steam, and keep the feedback coming! store.steampowered.com/news/app/378... #indiegames #indiedev #steam #demos

After the buzz around Forza Horizon 6, which also recreates Tokyo, a lot of people are asking me: How does Mysteries of Old Tokyo stack up in the crowded Q2 release period? Am I worried about the competition from the good folks at Playground Games? Here's the low-down: #indiegames

The new year-picker component in action. This was surprisingly simple - just duplicated the existing "word hole" and replaced the drag-and-drop functionality with the pop-up year entry. Everything else (display, validation) is the same, so I don't even have to change the puzzles. #gamedev

Added an integration with the Steam on-screen keyboard to make the game easier to play without a keyboard. On Steam Deck or Big Picture mode, it opens automatically whenever you click on a text input. Thanks to the excellent GodotSteam plugin, this was way easier than I anticipated! #gamedev

This could be one of those coding interview nightmares. "Implement a YYYY year picker." "No problem." "With support for Japanese era names, from Kaei to the present day." #gamedev

Demo v2.0.1 is live! A new, more accessible drag-and-drop option that's also convenient if you're playing on Steam Deck, or any device without a mouse. #indiegames

Well. Steam Detective Fest is going nicely. #gamedev

Lots of cool games in the Steam Detective Fest, but this one leapt out to me: Lost Wiki: Kozlovka by @yattytheman.bsky.social, another 90s-themed database puzzler. Feels like we both started with similar inspirations and took them in different directions! store.steampowered.com/app/4018950/...

It was the totally unexpected discovery of a set of antique postcards at a flea market in Shibuya that inspired MYSTERIES OF OLD TOKYO. #indiegames #tokyo #japan store.steampowered.com/news/app/378...

My game is number 1 in Popular Upcoming on Steam!!!* *(In the Steam Detective Fest under the "Historical" tag) Jokes aside, this is very, very cool. #steamdetectivefest #indiegames

Steam Detective Fest starts in 15 minutes! Super excited to have MYSTERIES OF OLD TOKYO included alongside a host of other great detective puzzlers. As a reminder, the new Demo 2.0 is available to play on Steam right now. #steam #steamdetectivefest #indiegames

A happy little accident, as I make the remaining puzzles: each week seems to lend itself naturally to a theme. For example, Chapter 4, with General Nogi's house and Gunjin-kaikan, seems like it'll be about the Russo-Japanese War. As well as an unrelated incident where a cow fell in a pond.

Japan and Finland have long been fascinated by one another. I found this neat book from the Finnish geographer J.G. Granö about his trip to Japan in 1911. #japan #finland

I updated my Steam page now that I have a firm idea of what the final game will be like. I think it's a lot more consistent now. It's also nice that Valve added embedded video a few months back, so no more headaches optimising GIFs! #indiegames #gamedev #steam

The wait is over: MYSTERIES OF OLD TOKYO DEMO 2.0 is LIVE on Steam! Visit Ginza, Asakusa, Hibiya Park, and 4 other iconic Tokyo locations in this updated pre-release teaser, available now on Steam. #indiegames #japan #tokyo #steam

Demo 2.0 is nearly ready for the Steam Detective Fest! I recorded some footage to update the trailer, and also got some new screenshots for the Steam page. This is probably more or less the final design for the game now. #indiegames #detectivefest #steam

Fixed the CRT filter shader for MYSTERIES OF OLD TOKYO! It's not too intense, but in certain places the shader really sells the "it's 1998 and you have an hour on the PC to play this new game" feeling. #indiegames #gamedev

Save money on expensive proprietary arrows by using Unicode arrows. They're free, easy to optimise and you can download them any time. ⥢ ⥤ ⥣ ⥥ #gamedev

2025 has been a big year. Last January, I put down Balatro and thought "Hey, this game dev thing can't be too hard. Could I make a game?" So I started. #gamedev #indiegames

MYSTERIES OF OLD TOKYO is in the upcoming Steam Detective Fest! Coming to a red-string-laced-corkboard near you, Jan 12-19. Hopefully, I'll have a brand new demo (2.0) available by then, so check that out with your little magnifying glass. #indiegames #steam #steamdetectivefest

I seem to have accidentally created a "it's 1997 and your CRT monitor has broken" shader #gamedev #indiegames