Mysteries of Old Tokyo

That's the kind of history lesson in needed in my life! This game is sooo cool and the 90s aesthetic and the fact that it's based on real postcards makes it even better. I also very much appreciate the inclusion of the original Japanese texts and the links to Tokyo Metropolitan Library's website. There's some kind of eerie undertone with all the supernatural activity going on, but the game always manages to stay chill. It's gave me all the time I needed for exploring in my own pace, while keeping that mysterious atmosphere. Above me, the Sky God mocking me for my bad sense of direction. It would be interesting to have an additional "harder" game mode, where taking the shortest route or avoiding mistakes actually mattered. I've never been into history all that much, but Mysteries of Old Tokyo really managed to captivate me. Would love to see similar games set in different parts of Japan or even other parts of the world!

A classic edutainment program. Really could have lived on some classroom PC in the past. The tried and tested fill-in-the-blanks data entry and database browsing portions of each day are the heart of [i]Mysteries of Old Tokyo[/i] and the most developed. You have to dig through files, discern information, sometimes convert units, all on your own. These sections were great, and so were the optional "Spirit Reports", which force you to dive even deeper into the material. In other sections a certain "debut-ness" became apparent, where a game developer hasn't learned yet to OPTIMIZE every bit for FUN. For instance, I was surprised the postcards weren't used in more interesting ways. Finding the "parallels" between present and past mostly seemed trivial, small details in the main postcards rarely mattered. The data gathering (where you are out and about), too, could do with some tweaks: Currently you're picking a destination and the PDA marquee text will guide you step by step: Walk to this station, now use this train line, then change tracks... Sure, I could simply not look at the help text, but it wasn't framed as a hint mechanic, so I simply followed the directions, which was not super engaging. Maybe one could incentivize the successful memorization of each journey? In the 90s, if you were planning to head to an unknown destination, prep work was essential: Once you were out and OFFLINE, your A4 printouts were all you had. No GPS. No way to easily look things up on your phone while on the go. And you often noticed that the ideal route you had planned at home didn't quite match up with the reality of being outside.

Really enjoyed this! I love historical research, and Mysteries of Old Toyko gamifies it in a fun and satisfying way. I knew basically nothing about Tokyo's history going in, but I learned a ton through this game. Having to hunt for and verify facts myself was a very engaging way to learn, and I appreciated the author's commentary on the propaganda angle of the postcards that appear to have inspired the game. I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for future games from this developer!

Unique, fun, stylin retroeducation game

( full review with screenshots: https://gaming-parrot.com/post/mysteries-of-old-tokyo-review-the-more-you-know/ ) Mysteries of Old Tokyo is a good game made of a bunch of parts that don't necessarily combine well. It is ostensibly a mystery puzzle game in which you use a 90's computer interface to navigate around Tokyo, find documents, and then use information from those documents to complete reports about the locations you visited. That said, the mystery element is really barely there and the puzzles are generally very easy. It's best approached as an edutainment game for people who want to learn about some lesser-known parts of Tokyo. Luckily, that's fine for me. Mysteries of Old Tokyo takes place over 11 weeks, with each one tasking you with going to about three thematically linked locations. You always start from the Marunouchi Building next to Tokyo station, and you can use your handy PDA to plot a route on the train system to each of your assigned locations in turn. Once you arrive, you'll get a couple of short documents about the place, possibly be assigned a new place, possibly meet a spirit, and then need to take a photo. Confusingly, despite the retro interface, all the photos, train network, and documents all make it clear that the game is set in 2025. Once you've done that at all locations for the week, it's time to return to the office. You'll then need to match a few locations in your photographs to pieces of postcards of the same area about 100 years ago and fill in 5-10 blank spots in reports about the area with words from a word bank. This is the puzzle part of the game, but you should know that these are usually very easy. At least two of the blank spots are usually just the name of the location you're looking at, and even when the answers aren't completely obvious, there just aren't enough combinations for it to ever be very difficult. Thankfully, while it's not the greatest puzzle ever, the reports you unlock on the location afterward are genuinely interesting and full of fun trivia. Finally, there are those spirits you may have talked to. After you're done with your main report, you can optionally complete a spirit report, where you'll be presented with everything the spirit said and asked to determine the year its story was set and which of its 5-10 statements was a lie. I think these could be a good bit more challenging as puzzles if you're not very familiar with Tokyo, but if you are, a lot of the lies involve travel times or stations that you'll immediately recognize as impossible even before you have all the clues. The stories also reuse dates a lot, so once you know when the Great Kanto Earthquake or Ii Naosuke's assassination happened, that piece of future reports is basically free. Still, the writing comes to the rescue again. Even if these aren't amazing as puzzles, the stories you unlock for completing them are worth the small effort. Once you accept that this is really an edutainment game, you can appreciate a lot of otherwise pointless optional details scattered throughout. There are postcards with writeups and trivia for about a dozen locations you don't actually need to visit. There are 3D models with detailed articles about a similar number of pieces of technology you can buy with money you save from being efficient with your travel. Not only is the train network fully modeled, there's even a tool you can use to view its status in any year from 1860 to 2025 and plot a route between any two stations or postcards in any year. The postcards are from a real set someone made and include the original Japanese text alongside a translation. You can tell this was a labor of love.

Surprisingly fun and interesting game.

As someone who likes Obra Dinn (likes), history and Japan, this game was a delight! It was especially fun for me to recognize certain landmarks that I raw when I visited Tokyo years ago. Other things I liked was the nostalgic aspect of 90s esque gameplay and visuals, good old fashioned edutainment feel! I hope there'll be more games likes this in the future :D

I enjoyed it overall! It's a bit hard to classify. It's a mix of exploration, cross referencing, and Ace Attorney style statement disproving. It's not super challenging, but has a nice flow of things to discover.