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

Started planning out the remaining postcard puzzles, and it's a delicate balance between several factors. #gamedev #indiegames #puzzles

Added the Tōyoko Line to the game, allowing the player easy access to the River Tama from Shibuya. In the 1930s, the banks of the Tama were a popular spot for picnics, walking, golfing and swimming. The expanding railways made it much easier for residents of Tokyo to escape the city. #indiegames

Boxing Day is a good day to optimise code while eating chocolate. I noticed my little 2D game is somehow using 700 MB+ of VRAM...

Feeling pretty optimistic about progress as we head towards the end of the year. I think the trickest thing left is to re-do the tutorial with the new gameplay loop. After that, it's just adding content and fixing bugs. #gamedev #indiegames

Excited to announce that, for the duration of the Steam Winter Sale, the MYSTERIES OF OLD TOKYO demo is 100% FREE! Yes, it was free before, but it's free for the duration of the sale too. #indiegames #demos #steam store.steampowered.com/app/3929680/...

Something I've noticed with game dev is that you'll be grappling with a problem for days, and then the solution will appear in your mind, and it will be so clear and simple you'll wonder how you ever missed it. #gamedev #indiegames

A milestone today, even if it doesn't quite feel like it. I finished the gameplay 2.0 loop, so a whole vertical slice is ready. I just need to add a tutorial, add the rest of the characters and the puzzle resources, and fix all the bugs, and it's technically a full game. #gamedev #indiegames

Created a 90s-style "prerendered 3D menu-blob-thing" in Bryce/Krita using Godot's TextureButtons for the first time. It's so cool. It's so uncool. I want to use it, but I need to find some middle-ground between this glorious monstrosity and the more conservative design everywhere else. #gamedev

8 bugs fixed... 7 more found. That's progress! #indiegames #gamedev

A few previously unseen (I think?) postcards from Mysteries of Old Tokyo, plus a train ride on the Oedo Line from Ryogoku to Yoyogi. I had to clamber up a fire escape to get the Ryogoku Bridge photo. Hope that's OK. #indiegames #tokyo #japan

A little blast from the past. Back in April I was working on this monorail simulator thing: I'd forgotten how cool it actually looked. I ought to go back and finish it... maybe next year. #indiegames #railsim

All-new 2D encyclopedia action! 世界初だそうです‼ A first look at Gameplay 2.0 for MYSTERIES OF OLD TOKYO! #indiegames #detectivegames #gamedev

Game progress has stalled in recent weeks. Still... feeling good that the postcard translations are done, images are in game, and the new gameplay loop is slowly improving. Once gameplay 2.0 is done, I can start filling out the puzzles, adding more NPCs and more treasures. #gamedev #indiegames

I like this theory, especially the "laziness" part. For a long time, I thought success (in any field) was only achieved by suffering and hard grind. Then I discovered that, instead of making yourself miserable, it's way more productive to just do stuff you enjoy which you find easy to do.

All game development cycles seem to reach the point where the proverbial "one horse-sized duck" is completed, but the "100 duck-sized horses" still have to be tackled, and somehow that's worse. #indiegames #gamedev

The last of my 90s magazine-style ads for "Mysteries of Old Tokyo". #retrogaming #indiegames

Three views of the site of the Nippon Gekijo theatre: 1978, 1935, and 2025. #tokyo

Mysteries of Old Tokyo" retro ad series, part 3/4. Designing these has been so much fun. I just love everything about this one particular era of game advertising! #indiegames #retrogaming

Enjoyed my last 90s-style ad for MYSTERIES OF OLD TOKYO so much that I "found" another one. Mask: Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum Floppy disks: author's own #retrogaming #90s #indiegames

Last month I had a demo launch/4-week ad blitz and I averaged 400+ wishlists/week, which was great. Since the ad spend ended, it's like it never happened. I have been averaging 22 wishlists/week. Some days have even been in the negative. #gamedev

Happy birthday Kevin! :)

Recently rediscovered print ad for "Mysteries of Old Tokyo" from PC MANIAC magazine, October 1997. #indiegames #retrogames #90s

Nijubashi, the twin bridge of the Imperial Palace. Apart from the trees, I think this is the view that has changed the least over the last 90 years. Even individual bricks are the same as they were in 1935. #japan #tokyo #indiegames

This weekend I plan to match/overlay the remaining photos that I took back in May on top of the postcards - there's only a few left to do now! Today I was finally able to firmly geolocate this view. #gamedev #indiegames #tokyo #ginza

This is amazing. I found an incredible web map of Japan by a student at NIT with aerial photography covering major cities from 1947, 1963, 1975, 1980, 1985 and 1990, as well as older paper maps. See how Tokyo DisneySea was once just a marshy island. #japan user.numazu-ct.ac.jp/~tsato/webma...

Big milestone today... I finished translating the Japanese text for all 44 postcards in the game! This was a really interesting task and a ton of fun to dust off my rusty Japanese skills (with a lot of help from the dictionary). #indiegames #gamedev

All these postcards have a short description on the back in Japanese. Some are quite clunky, but others have a real poetry to them. I like this one: #tokyo #postcards