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

Apologies for the radio silence... A lot of refactoring. But that's done now, and it's starting to pay off! Alpha gameplay 2.0 where instead of being handed photos and text in the prep stage, you now visit each location and take the photo yourself. #gamedev

I spruced up the map screen with an all-new animated player icon, which changes to a train when using the railway. (Walk animation based on Seliel's Mana Seed collection.) #gamedev

Reworking the "spirit report". While writing the email text, wanting something that sounded like an affidavit, I found out about "kishōmon" which were these gnarly "self-curse" oaths in medieval Japan. I thought it'd be cool if internal RIA emails came with randomised kishōmon curses. #indiegames

I never realised Lucas Pope did the 3D modelling on "Return of the Obra Dinn" himself. What a legend. #indiegames #returnoftheobradinn www.youtube.com/watch?v=90vq...

Over time the data in my game had become this spaghetti mess of references and nested resources that constantly broke. For such a data-heavy game it was a nightmare. This week I've wrangled all data into one place, and converted some of the fragile Godot resources into nice robust JSON. #gamedev

In the middle of a massive refactor as I switch up the gameplay loop. I used Mermaid Chart to plot out all the scenes and I think I see a nice, elegant way forward, rather than the spaghetti that got me here... #gamedev

Final planned feature update for the demo... for now, anyway. Some small bug fixes, and you now have to identify the correct category for a location when selecting the inconsistency. #gamedev #indiegames store.steampowered.com/news/app/378...

This was a slog! But it's finally out. Hopefully I caught all the bugs. New "New" icon, better train map, and Free Roam mode. #gamedev #indiegames store.steampowered.com/news/app/378...

Wrapping up work on demo v1.2.2 and I noticed there are a lot more features than bug fixes. This is a good sign (I think). From now on I'm going to step back from demo updates and marketing, and focus on some of the more major changes I want to make: #gamedev

Something I find weirdly interesting about Tokyo is that, for a city with such intensely developed infrastructure, there are still these "dead zones" where transport has barely improved in centuries.

I love the puzzles in "Rise of the Golden Idol". I love how I start every puzzle thinking "what in god's name is happening here, I'm never going to figure this out"

Demo minor update v1.2.1: Adds 6 new achievements and fixes a weird bug when using OBS. Probably a good time to stream it, if any streamers see this and like Tokyo-themed deduction adventure games? #demos #indiegames

A horrible slog today as I realised the entire spaghetti-signal route-picker logic just had to go. However, in a more positive note, I have imported 38 of the planned 44 postcard landmarks (shown as red stars on the map)! In the finished game, you'll be able to visit all of them. #gamedev

Some of the games that caught my eye in Finnish Games Week: - Brainshell @brainshell.bsky.social - KAUNA @anttironkka.bsky.social - Frostrail - Brass Rain - and Sulo the Sidekick! @rubyursus.bsky.social Upcoming awesomeness from Finland: store.steampowered.com/sale/Finnish... #fgw25 #indiegames

I was browsing city builders/colony sims on Steam to see if anything could scratch that Dwarf Fortress itch, and then I realised I should just play Dwarf Fortress again. Strike the earth! (Side note: I really want to try making a city builder.) #indiegames #dwarffortress

I have found an interesting metric emerging for my demo stats on Steam: Out of every 1000 views... -> 100 people add the demo to their library -> 10 play the demo -> 1 leaves feedback. It's been remarkably consistent across the first week. #gamedev

Demo update v1.2 is out now! I've added achievements, new inconsistencies, and a new main menu. #indiegames #demos store.steampowered.com/news/app/378...

My new main menu. The idea for this appeared to me in a dream. #gamedev

Added Steam achievements with the GodotSteam extension: these will be in the next release. I don't know why, but somehow seeing the achievement icon pop up - and it's my own achievement that I just created! - suddenly makes this feel real. Like, it's a real game now! It has achievements! #gamedev

Great point by Joni Lappalainen from Dreamloop Games. "There were zero bugs" does not make a good game. "There were some bugs" does not make a bad game. #finnishgamesweek #fgw25 #fgwsteam25

Hard to believe this photo is 18 years old today. Day 3 of my first trip to Japan, 2007, showing the (old) Harajuku Station building. #japan #harajuku

This is so cool. I loved @eviltrout.com's "The Roottrees are Dead" so I'm so happy my game has snuck into that game's "More Like This" section (alongside some fine company) #indiegames #gamedev

It's the start of Finnish Games Week and I'm so excited to be included :) Link in comments. #finnishgamesweek #fgw25 #fgwsteam25

Demo update for Mysteries of Old Tokyo! Race from Shibuya to Oshiage in record time on the all-new Hanzōmon Line, and enjoy smoother puzzle-solving with the tabbed Similarity Finder. #indiegames #demos store.steampowered.com/news/app/378...

I loved Platform 8 and I'll soon be moving to an old log house in the Finnish countryside that looks almost exactly like this on the inside. I can't wait to play this in the dark. Alone. In winter.

Finnish Games Week starts tomorrow but the page is already up! Very excited to be part of this event. I think it's a testament to the sheer creativity of Finland that there are so many different genres and styles to see here #finnishgamesweek #fgw25 #fgwsteam25 store.steampowered.com/sale/Finnish...

Small post-launch demo update for Mysteries of Old Tokyo: thankfully no showstopper bugs so far, but a couple of minor fixes that should make it more fun to play (and less painful on the ears) #indiegames store.steampowered.com/news/app/378...

Huge, huge thank you to Fio for playing my demo! I had such a fun time watching, glad you enjoyed it! You were right - the statue didn't exist in 1868, that was a bug :D

How'd you like to visit Tokyo this weekend ... as a 90s CD-ROM detective? Well, you can in the demo for "Mysteries of Old Tokyo". I'm hoping to get 10 good reviews in time for Monday so please try it out and leave a Steam review! #indiegames #demos store.steampowered.com/news/app/378...

The demo is OUT! Research the past and unlock mysteries as a spirit detective in a meticulously detailed historical recreation of Tokyo. You can play it right now! (Or some time this weekend, that's fine.) s.team/a/3784300 #indiegames #steam #demos

Another fun thing you can do with A/B ad testing is sift through capsule image designs. I ran a bunch of ads using slightly different variations on the yellow strip idea, and the "wide text" variation was noticeably more popular. #gamedev #steam

A small quality of life update: you can now enter names into the database in either Japanese (family name-given name) or Western format (given name-family name). Partly because I kept forgetting if it was "Takauji Ashikaga" or "Ashikaga Takauji". #gamedev

In 2010, I came back from a year studying in Japan. Every year after that, I wanted to visit again. But it was expensive. And as the years passed, it somehow got harder, that emotional hurdle of returning somewhere so important to me after so many years. #japan

The next few weeks are gonna be interesting. - Steam Autumn Sale from tomorrow until Oct 6 - My demo releases Oct 3 - Finnish Games Week Oct 6 - Oct 12 - Steam Next Fest Oct 13 - Oct 20 Given the bump in wishlists I got last week, I wonder where we'll be in a month... #gamedev #steam

So, rather unexpectedly, I hit 500 wishlists this morning. You can see it took me 3 months to reach 300 wishlists. I'd get +5 on a good day, or 0. I started running Reddit ads on Monday. After some fine-tuning, on Wednesday I passed 400 wishlists and yesterday I got 45 in a day. #gamedev