The Bear Detectives

Look for the bare necessities, the simple bare necessities
Forget about your worries and your strife

"The Bare Necessities" (Phil Harris, Bruce Reitherman) 

While I am not in direct contact with current members of the Kyoto University Mystery Club, as a former member I do still follow their social media. Personally speaking, my favorite activity at the club were the sessions with whodunnit/guess-the-culprit scenarios: these were short mystery stories written by club members which were clearly divided in a "problem" and "solution" part. The idea is that everyone is first handed the problem part, which traditionally ends with a Challenge to the Reader. The participants get about 45~60 minutes to read the story and (logically!) figure out who the culprit is of the story. If you think you know whodunnit, you can discuss that with the author and they'll tell you whether you got it right or wrong, and after the initial session is over, the author hands out the solution parts to everyone. In a way, the stories do tend to be a bit formulaistic in form, often following Queen-style deduction methods to prove who the culprit is (the culprit knew fact X. Y is proven to not have known fact X, therefore they can't be the killer), but it's exactly the type of mystery story I love, and it was great seeing different members using this form to tell different tales. And while these stories remain "private" for the club generally, I still liked seeing the KUMC social media account briefly tweeting about once in a while about how they did this or that story this week, and how it was received at the session.

Because of that, I still remember how last year, the KUMC account posted how one of their members had written a Danganronpa fanfic as a whodunnit scenario. As someone who enjoys the quirky mystery game series, I was of course intrigued by this concept, as at least in the year I was at the KUMC, people always opted for "original" settings (i.e. not based on existing IPs). But as with most of these stories, I assumed I'd never get a chance to ever read it as I wasn't an active member anymore, and you generally only get to read the story the time it's read at a club session. However, a few weeks ago, I learned the author, Kunou Junki, had actually self-published their fanfic late 2023, selling it at doujin markets. Which was cool, but again, I wasn't really in the position to visit those doujin fairs to pick the booklet up. It was apparently received pretty well though, and Atsukawa Tatsumi even mentioned the story in his ongoing column on mystery fiction, praising it as a whodunnit scenario and as a Danganronpa fanfic. But then.... a few days ago, Kunou announced they were finally selling the fanfic via Booth. So I finally got to read it.

Danganronpa FF - Ame no Kigou, Soshite Happy Birthday ("Danganronpa FF - Rain Code, and Happy Birthday", 2023) is set at the aptly Doujin Academy, where a group of students, each being extremely skilled in a very specific field, are held captured by Monokuma, a cute-looking, but horrifyingly sadistic robotic bear who has set up a game of death among the students. If a student kills a fellow student, a class trial will be held, in which the participants must decide (vote) on a culprit. If the students manage to identify the real culprit, the latter will receive "punishment" (be executed) and the game will continue (more of these rounds) until there are two survivors left, who are free to go. However, if the real culprit manages to elude suspicion at the trial, they are the one will be released, and all the rest of the students will receive "punishment". Monokuma has been feeding the fears and desires of the captured students, making some of them desperate enough to want to kill their fellow students in an attempt to escape Doujin Academy, but fortunately, up until now, the remaining students have been able to correctly identify the real culprit each time, allowing the rest to survive while the real culprits have been executed. At the start of Danganronpa FF, about half of the initial group of students is already dead, either having become a murder victim, or having been executed as a murderer.

The story is told from the POV of Yomikura Suzu, the Ultimate Narrator, who has been acting as a kind of Watson to Aizawa Seishun, the Ultimate Detective, who has been the MVP in the class trials until now: not only has he been solving most of the murders, he is also trying to figure out a way to escape from Monokuma's prison. After the latest execution, Aizawa hopes to set a plan in motion that will allow them to go against Monokuma, and he decides to rope in Yomikura as his accomplice. While the gymnasium is closed off during the night (22:00 - 08:00), all other rooms in the school are accessible, and Aizawa has found out the dressing rooms in the corner of the lecture hall, in front of the passage to the gymnasium, do have cameras, but no microphones, and are also completely soundproofed, so he spends the whole night discussing his plans with Yomikura there, assured Monokuma can't overhear them. When they leave the dressing room the following morning however, they are shocked to find two murdered bodies lying in the lecture hall and that they have been penetrated with a spear. There's also a bloody trail leading from the gymnasium, through the passage, to the lecture hall. A new game of life and death begins, as the remaining students need to figure out who the killer is, or else they themselves will be executed.

Save for the occasional pastiche, I generally don't read fanfics, so I have no real idea of what the standard is, but I sure found Danganronpa FF to be a very effective one. It starts already with the great cover art and the next page introduces you to the various school rules of Doujin Academy, which will be a familiar sight to those who have played the original Danganronpa games: there are the general rules that explain under what conditions a student can escape the school, but also rules about the night time, about ownership of student notebooks and even about how many people a killer may kill (as in: you can't just kill everyone and win the game in that way.). Most of the rules are exactly the same as the games, so it really feels like this is a story set in that world, even if we're now at Doujin Academy. While the characters are original, the characters have concepts that would seem to fit perfectly in the Danganronpa world, from the Ultimate Narrator, to characters like The Ultimate Twin, the Ultimate Ninja and the Ultimate Mountaineer. This story is set after half of the cast has already been wiped out, so it's a bit of a shame some characters are only mentioned briefly by name only, and I'd love to have seen more of them (I wonder of Kunou is planning more stories/"chapters" set in this world?). However, I do have to say that for the most part, you don't really need much prior knowledge of Danganronpa to enjoy this story as a tale of mystery: the essentials are explained adequately (especially with the rule book at the start of the booklet) and ultimately, the mystery really revolves around these specific murders, committed at this specific point in the ongoing story, so no knowledge is necessary about what happened before, or what happens later or about Danganronpa in a meta way. In Danganronpa terms: this is a specific chapter, with its own case.

As a pure whodunnit mystery, I have to say I was surprised how dense this was. It's been a while since I did a 'real run' of a whodunnit scenario, so I'll be the first to admit my deductive senses aren't what they used to be, but Danganronpa FF seems about a full step more complex than the usual KUMC whodunnit scenario, making it unlikely anyone could have gotten all the points within the usual session time (though perhaps they held a longer session than usual). So yeah, this is a really deep whodunnit story following the Queen format, where you can logically deduce who the killer is by identifying criteria the killer must answer to, and then figuring out who of the suspects answers to all of those criteria. Some of these criteria are relatively easy to notice, allowing you to cross off some names early, but others are really cleverly done, and I am the first to admit that I wasn't even close to the answer model provided by the detective at the end. There are quite a few (very devilish!) twists and turns in the long deduction process (which is why I think it would have been difficult for someone to solve all of the story during a normal club session), but for Ellery Queen logic-lovers, this is really great stuff  and I love a lot of the logical processes shown in this story (the initial step alone of the long elimination process is already really good!). What is even more commendable is how cleverly Kunou makes use of the Danganronpa setting. A lot of the things pulled off here in terms of logic only make sense in a Danganronpa-inspired world, with the school rules and Monokuma antics and stuff like that. So I really agree with Atsukawa here about Danganronpa FF is satisfying as both a mystery story, and a Danganronpa fanfic.

The third act of Danganronpa FF wasn't originally part of the scenario presented at the KUMC, as after the initial murder problem and the subsequent solution part, we are treated to what is basically an in-depth essay on the Danganronpa games as mystery games. If you have played the games (or you don't care for spoilers at all), there are some interesting points made (ha, I hadn't expected Kunou to quote Morooka's academic work on shin honkaku mystery and games!), but it is certainly a part that 'takes you out of the story', so your mileage on this closing part may vary. This part has no direct influence on the logical parts of the mystery, so you could choose to ignore it if you wish to do so.

At any rate, I did really enjoy Danganronpa FF - Ame no Kigou, Soshite Happy Birthday, as both a really well-plotted whodunnit scenario as well as a mystery story written with a lot of love for the Danganronpa franchise. Danganronpa FF was apparently also a reason why Kunou was asked to pen an original whodunnit story for the Mystery Carnival event of publisher Seikaisha held last week. I haven't read that story, but I do hope I get to read more of Kunou in the story, as what I have read here really makes me curious to what more they can come up with. Hopefully, we'll see more of them in the future!

Original Japanese title(s):　久納淳生 『ダンガンロンパFF　雨の記号、そしてハッピィバースデイ』

The Labyrinth Seduction

"There is no need to build a labyrinth when the entire universe is one."

"Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings"

I wasn't aware the full title of this book was so long until I started writing this review...

Shizuku is a detective. At least, she plays one, in the virtual reality MMORPG Alfheim Online. As "Spica", she has her own detective agency, with even her very own Watson (her childhood friend, and narrator Endou). In reality, she has never ever taken a case, and the two just hang out in the office every day after school, but don't say that out loud in front of Spica. One day, the narrator finds a mysterious object in his inventory: he has no memories of ever picking up such an item, so how could it have been added to his inventory? When the two take a look at the diary, they realize they have in their possession an impossible object. For this diary purports to be written by a player of the VR MMORPG Sword Art Online, and written within SAO. Which is impossible: Sword Art Online was the infamous brainchild of Kayaba Akihiko, who made a revolutionary virtual game system with a helmet that stimulates all 5 senses, but when the game launched, the players found themselves trapped inside Sword Art Online by Kayaba. Players were unable to log out and they were told that if they died in-game, the helmet would also kill them in real-life, which would also happen if someone tried to forcibly log them out by messing with the hardware. In the end, players did manage to beat the game and escape, but many of the players had suffered deaths in the meantime. After the game was beaten, most of the data of Sword Art Online and all the records of what happened within the world was deleted however. The in-game world was completely lost, though the very basics of the system survived, allowing the creation of the (safer) Alfheim Online as a spiritual successor. So how could Spica and the narrator now have a diary that was written by one of the players in Sword Art Online during that period, and how did it appear in Alfheim Online?

The diary itself is written by a player called Jason, who is the leader of a party called the Argonauts. While they are fairly powerful, they are not strong enough to be leading the attempt to clear all 100 floors of Sword Art Online. The Argonauts however do fulfill an important role. Because the frontline parties try to clear each floor as quickly as possible, they are not able to explore each floor completely. Parties like the Argonauts are active a few floors behind the frontline parties and help explore every corner of each floor, because they might find hidden equipment, items or hints that may help the frontline parties. It is during one of these exploration missions Jason, and his comrades Orpheus, Hercules, Asklepios, Atalanta and Caenis find themselves transported in an underground labyrinth. While they explore the place, they are suddenly attacked by a menacing Blind Minotaur. While the party display fantastic teamwork, they soon realize that the Blind Minotaur is faaaaar more powerful than they are, and they are hardly able to chip off even a little of his hit points. As a hopeless battle, all they can do is flee, and then soon learn that they are safe if they manage to stay inside one of the few rooms in the labyrinth and keep the door closed, as the Minotaur is not able to get inside "uninvited." The Argonauts try to find a way out, but run into a different party who just made it here: the Legendary Heroes consist of Arthur, Evelyn, Rocky, Azrael, Mark and Omega, but unlike the Argonauts, it's clear this party isn't really a team, and their whole strategy revolves around Arthur alone. The two parties don't really trust each other, and decide to try to find a way out on their own, while avoiding the Blind Minotaur, who seems to have a set pattern of appearing from an underground lair once in a while and then return again. However, the Argonauts are later contacted by the Legendary Heroes with shocking news: it appears Arthur had gone out into the labyrinth on his own during the night, and was killed by the Blind Minotaur (something his party members can see "on screen" happen, as you can always check a party member's hit points and status). There are however suspicious points to Arthur's death, as why did he sneak out in the night and why would he try to take on the Minotaur alone? The two parties agree to find a way out together, and they suspect this dungeon isn't about beating the Blind Minotaur, but finding some kind of secret that solves the dungeon, but while they are trying, more and more people are killed, and they soon start to realize some of these deaths weren't commited by the Minotaur, but one of their own. But why?

As long as it's a mystery, I'm interested, so I occasionally consume mystery media based on IPs I don't even know or have ever seen/read. In the past I have for example discussed the Fate/Grand Order mystery novels by Van Madoy, even though I don't play the game and have still not ever played any of the Fate games or seen any of the anime series. I also originally had no interest in watching Oppenheimer, until someone told me you could totally watch it as a mystery film, and... he was right. So when I learned Konno Tenryuu had written a mystery novel for Sword Art Online, the franchise based on the light novels by Kawahara Reki. I was immediately interested, even though I have not seen or read the series. Yes, I know it's really popular, but I'm from the generation where "an isekai series of a boy having to clear floors to beat a RPG-like world" equals Mashin Eiyuuden Wataru. Anyway, I have read a few of Konno's books too, many of them dealing with fantasy elements, and I like his work, so I knew I wanted to read Sword Art Online Alternative: Mystery Labyrinth - Meikyuukan no Satsujin (2023), or as the cover also says: Murder in the Labyrinth Pavillion.

I can at least say that even with zero prior knowledge of the Sword Art Online franchise, this was pretty accessible. It is, as far as I know, not directly connected to any events from the series, and is mostly a standalone story, though it is set after the original Sword Art Online was beaten, so the first series/book. The mystery plays at two levels, the series of murders that occur in the Labyrinth Pavillion dungeon and the parties' attempts at finding an exit out of the maze, and a meta-mystery where Spica and the narrator try to figure out how this diary could've made it out of Sword Art Online, a world that has been destroyed, and into Alfheim Online.

The murders in the Labyrinth Pavillion are of course the meat of the mystery and I found it highly entertaining. Konno does a great job at actually incorporating the game-element of Sword Art Online to create highly original mysteries, that are truly only possible in such a setting. For example, we have characters witnessing a murder and learning the exact time of a death not because they seeing the death with their own eyes, but because they can see their party member's HP bar dropping in the party member status screen: where else could you ever see such a way to establish a time of death and alibis for the suspects!? Other cool things are how there are no corpses in the world of Sword Art Online, with the player's body simply disappearing from the game world if they are killed, though they do leave whatever they have equiped at the time, again opening up possibilities for shenanigans as the murderer doesn't have to deal with hiding bodies. As a closed circle setting, the Labyrinth Pavillion is also interesting, as the rules of the game make it a place you can't easily get in or out to, making it a very convincing confined location. Add in the rules of how many people can stay in a room and how you have to invite people inside, and the characteristics of the Blind Minotaur (the players slowly learn its attack and reaction patterns through their various encounters, which again tells them how the Minotaur could've been used to faciliate the murders) and you end up with a novel that is just fun to read because you're constantly confronted with new ways to present a mystery due to the unique setting. Clever things are done here, and the fact the Blind Minotaur (a force of nature/a game enemy) is used as a "murder weapon" is of course also really interesting. The motive for the murders is also rather unique to this series: while I don't think it's completely convincing, I do think Konno did a great job at really making this a motive that works in Sword Art Online. The one thing that didn't really work for me was solution to beating the Labyrinth Pavillion: that part of the mystery is just too farfetched, and nobody would be ever able to solve such a puzzle...

Meanwhile, the meta-mystery at the Alfheim Online level is probably easier to guess, as Spica seems to know what the trick is from a very early stage and gives out hints. The answer might seem a bit predictable once you reach about the middle of the book, but overall, I think it provides a nice side-story to Sword Art Online, being completely seperate of the main story, but still firmly set within that world. It probably helps the book was based on an idea by series creator Kawahara, and also supervised by him!

So even without ever having seen any Sword Art Online, I can safely say Sword Art Online Alternative: Mystery Labyrinth - Meikyuukan no Satsujin is a fun mystery novel, that makes great use of its VR MMORPG setting to present a mystery with elements you won't find in other mystery novels. It is a book that fully utilizes the fact it is based on an existing IP, building on the story and rules of the franchise, yet at the same time is not at all dependent on the main story. It's really impressive what Konno managed to do here in that sense.

Original Japanese title(s): 川原礫（草案・監修）、 紺野天龍『ソードアート・オンライン オルタナティブ ミステリ・ラビリンス 迷宮館の殺人』

The Laughing Policeman

"Smile, you're on Candid Camera!"

"Candid Camera"

This summer, Nintendo dropped a super eerie teaser video for a new project, which they would announce later on. Never could I have imagined it would be a brand new Famicom Detective Club title: while 2021 brought us Switch remakes of the first two Famicom Detective Club, originally released on the Famicom Disk System, I never expected those remakes to do well enough to warrant a new game, especially relatively so soon. 1997's BS Tantei Club: Yuki ni Kieta Kako was the latest title in the series and while Satellaview games are not likely to see any remakes,  I had actually sooner expected a remake of the third game, rather than a completely original game. But here we are in 2024, with a new Famicom Detective Club game, released on the Nintendo Switch.

Famicom Detective Club: Emio starts with a call from the police to the Utsugi Detective Agency, as Inspector Kamada is working on a case that might have ties to an old case he worked on in the past, and one Utsugi too knows about. The crime scene is a pumping station outside the town, where Eisuke, a 14-year old middle school student, was found strangled. However, what made this crime scene bizarre was the fact the boy was found with a paper bag covering his head, with a creepy smiling face drawn on it. The unnamed protagonist learns that 18 years ago, there was a serial murder case that followed the same pattern: all the three girls found murdered had been wearing such a paper bag with a smiling face on it. Because the police had kept this detail of those murders a secret, it is not likely it's a mere copycat who's behind Eisuke's death, and the people at the Utsugi Detective Agency are asked to look into the connection between the two cases. When fellow assistant Ayumi hears about the circumstances of the two cases, she's reminded of the urban legend of Emio, the Smiling Man, who looks for crying girls in the night, strangles them and puts a paper bag with a face over their heads. What is the connection between Eisuke's death, the series of murders 18 years ago and the story of Emio?

It probably helps the remakes of the first two Famicom Detective Club are relatively recent, but the moment you start with Emio, it feels exactly like a late 80s/early 90s command-based adventure game. The story itself is also still vaguely set in the late eighties like the original games (though with a few time anomalies), though I don't remember seeing something that put this game firmly before or after BS Tantei Club: Yuki ni Kieta Kako. Gameplay-wise, there are no real surprises: you use commands to guide the protagonist to for example talk with someone about certain topics, or to show them evidence you have obtained. Bringing up topic X to witness Y might allow you to move to location A to talk with Z about topic X, which leads to another story development. In the original Famicom games, finding the right commands to proceed in the story could be a bit frustrating because sometimes you have to ask a person the same question multiple times or sometimes a story flag is activated by finishing an action that seems completely unrelated, but fortunately, they introduced a QOL change from the Super Famicom remake of Part II where they highlight newly changed commands in the Switch remakes of Part I and II, and it's back again in Emio. And in order to suit modern gaming conventions even more, this gameplay loop is streamlined a lot more than in previous games, often locking you at a location until you have done everything there. I found this a bit disappointing, as it made the game more on rails than the previous games (and it wasn't like the previous games were offering you that much freedom in the first place), but I guess most modern players would find the old adventure conventions too cumbersome. While the 'detective' gameplay is fairly minimal and there's no real difficulty, as in, you can usually just advance in the story by talking to everyone about everything, the story occasionally asks you questions to check whether you have been paying attention, and at times, you have to manually input answers, so it's not a completely passive experience. But all in all, Emio is very similar to the Famicom Detective Club titles preceding it and in that sense it feels like a familiar place. 

On the audio and visual side of things, Emio is developed by the same team that worked on the Switch remakes of Part I and II, retaining the same art direction and once again, the game is fully voiced, which is a nice touch, with Ogata Megumi (Hinata from the Danganronpa games, Kyuu in the Tantei Gakuen Q anime) returning as the protagonist and Minaguchi Yuuko as Ayumi There's even a rather surprising something awaiting you at the very end of the game, something I honestly hadn't expected and it was a very welcome surprise indeed. The game might play like an old Famicom adventure game (though more streamlined), it certainly doesn't look or sound like one, and I mean that in a good way!

As a mystery story though, I think Emio has some nice moments, but for some reason, it didn't quite manage to capture me as much as previous games. With this being the first brand-new title in 35 years, and with all the developments we've seen in those three decades in game storytelling, especially when it comes to mystery games, and the scale of stories, I found it a bit disappointing the story is actually fairly compact in cast and overall scale. And I understand it's intentional, but I had hoped we'd see a 'bigger' world with a larger mystery, rather than the more human drama-focused approach Emio took. While the game starts out promising enough with the creepy circumstances surrounding Eisuke's mysterious death and the ties it might have with the series of murders committed eighteen years ago, as well as the urban legend of Emio, the first half of the game is very slow, with few story developments going on. There are moments where something interesting seems to come, especially when Ayumi first notices the connection between the urban legend and the murders and Utsugi starts musing about how real-life events could have led to the creation of the urban legend, but then Utsugi disappears to investigate this super fascinating 'reality and folklore' angle of the case, while the player is left to do other things. The game didn't have to go full Hayarigami on me, but it was here where I would have hoped that they'd play up both the horror angle of the urban legend, as well as allow you to dig into the rational background behind the urban legend, in a way for example the first Famicom Detective Club partially did with the curse of the Ayashiros: that game of course had the limitations of the hardware, so I had kinda hoped we'd see that fleshed out more here, but Emio intentionally moves away from that. You are mostly talking to a surprisingly small cast about the same topics for a long time but with little new developments: a lot of the dialogue is there to flesh out the characters, but as someone who's more into these games for the mystery, it feels like a lot of the story just moves around the mystery because there's not enough of that. It's only around 70% of the story, it finally feels like things are moving and a lot of that feels unearned: a few of the most crucial hints are obtained from persons who completely coincidentally happen to be in possession of those hints, and whom the narrator just happens to come across by chance. 

For people who are into the human drama behind a mystery story, or for example Higashino Keigo's work, I do think Emio might be exactly what they are looking for. It's the most dramatic Famicom Detective Club to be released, building on themes of previous games like the importance of friendship and family in the wake of tragic deaths, but in a way you wouldn't immediately expect of a Nintendo-published game. On a sidenote: while they did something different with the culprit this time and I can see why people find this memorable, I do have to admit I like the previous culprits more.

Overall though, I am more than grateful we finally got a new Famicom Detective Club after more than 35 years, and while it isn't my favorite one, it's still a very competently developed game that mostly succeeds in presenting itself as an eighties adventure game, while also being a game created for a 2024 audience. In that sense, I think this is a succesful product. Now I hope we finally get that BS Tantei Club remake...

Original Japanese title(s): 『ファミコン探偵倶楽部　笑み男』

The Message in the Haunted Mansion

"Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch."

Genesis 6:14 (KJV)

This reminds me, I still haven't finished Another Code: R in Another Code: Recolllection... I am a bit torn about the remake of the first game: I like the visuals a lot and how they reworked the mansion, but I do miss the darker vibe of the original manor, as well as the more memorable (but hardware-restricted) puzzles. I liked the original R a lot too so I really should get back to Recollection soon...

Suzuki Rika is now best known for her writing work on games like the Another Code and Kyle Hyde series for Nintendo hardware, which she developed at Cing, the company she co-founded. However, before her jump to the consoles, she was best known as a game developer working on adventure games for the PC for developer Riverhillsoft. Her best known work from that period are probably the J.B. Harold games, as most of them she worked on, like Murder Club and Manhattan Requiem, have seen an English release. The other series she developed at Riverhillsoft is the 1920 series, which was later retitled the Toudou Ryuunosuke Detective Diaries series. As the title suggests, you take up the role of private detective Toudou Ryuunosuke in these games set in the 1920s and work on serial murder cases in settings you know from classic mystery fiction, like a country house or an ocean liner. Suzuki wrote and designed two games with Toudou: Kohakiiro no Yuigon (1988) and Ougon no Rashinban (1990), but afterwards, the series stopped. However, developer Althi acquired the rights to the series in the early 2000s and starting in 2003, they first release feature phone ports of the first two games, and then continued on releasing more games in this series (of course, by that time Suzuki Rika wasn't involved anymore in the development). These games were a moderate success on feature phones and later smartphones it appears, as they released nine full entries in the end!

While this series was mostly developed on feature phones in Japan, they did port two of them to the Nintendo DS at the time: Kohakuiro no Yuigon (the first game) got a port on the DS on 2008, and one year later, they released a port of Aen no Hakobune - Soumatei Renzoku Satsujin Jiken ("The Zinc Ark - The Serial Murder Case at the Souma Manor"), a game originally released in 2005 on phones. And let me tell you: this release is rare. These games are pretty niche on their own, but Aen no Hakobune in particular released in very small numbers, and you could only get it used in Japan for insane prices. The problem however that it was also the only way to play Aen no Hakobune this last decade: the feature phone and smartphone games have not been available for purchase for a decade, and the games themselves are also not supported anymore by modern firmware iterations, so you can't even run the games anymore even if you had purchased them in the past. Heck, I have the iOS versions of Kohakuiro no Yuigon (and D.C. Connection), and I can't even re-download them or access the store pages anymore unless I whip out an old iPhone! But Aen no Hakobune was one of the few mystery games on the DS I figured I wouldn't be able to play due to the insane prices and no other way to play it.

Until G-Mode started doing their ports of feature phones games a few years back, and in 2023, they actually got started on the Toudou Ryuunosuke series! Previously, I already reviewed Ougon no Rashinban, the Switch port of the feature phone port of the second game, and earlier this year, G-Mode released the feature phone port of Aen no Hakobune, so I finally got to play this unicorn of mystery adventure gaming for a normal price. While prices have dropped slightly on used DS copies, at one time I have seen them go for as much as fifty times more expensive than the port you can now buy on the Switch. Being a fan of mystery fiction can be expensive...

 

That said, it's not like Aen no Hakobune is a paragon of mystery adventure gaming: it is basically the exact same game like Kohaku no Yuigon, Ougon no Rashinban and the earlier J.B. Harold games. The game is set at the gloomy manor of the Souma family standing on the edge of a cliff. The men in the family have always studied medicine, and they are running a mental hospital attached directly to the manor. The story starts with Toudou being hired by Kimura Tetta, a medical researcher and friend to investigate the curious death of his childhood friend Souma Keiichirou,who is a military doctor. Kimura is one of the researchers attached to the mental hospital who live in the Souma manor with the Souma family. When he went to the bathroom in the night, he noticed blood seeping from beneath the door of a basement room which haven't been opened for years, as the key has been lost. When they break the door open, they find Souma Keiichirou lying dead on the floor. He has apparently stabbed himself with an ornamental dagger, but he's also been sliced with a scalpel, which has not been found inside the locked room. While the police decides this is just a weird suicide, Kimura thinks it might be murder and he and the butler decide to hire Toudou to investigate the case and as Toudou starts asking questions to all the curious people who live in the Souma manor, he learns everyone has a secret to hide, but which of them is actually involved with Keiichirou's death?

As I mentioned, if you have played any of the major adventures that follow the Riverhillsoft adventure game model, you will have played all of them, and Aen no Hakobune is exactly that. You are just dropped in the game, and given many, many locations to visit in the Souma manor, and you are required to talk to a large cast of characters (over a dozen) and question them about a large number of topics (20~30 depending on the character). They might have something interesting (compressed into two text boxes...) to tell you about character X or Y, or about related topic 1 or 2; they might not. But you are still required to ask them about everything. Multiple times sometimes. The underlying idea is cool: at the start you know absolutely nothing, but as you interview everyone, you slowly start to make connections between all these topics: character A and B might offer you insights about character C (or even allow you catch them lying). You are initially free to choose who to interview about what in any order you like, so in that sense, it allows you a kind of freedom you seldom have in mystery games. But in practice, it just means talking to everyone about everything, which activates certain story flags, so then you go ask everyone about everything again, because *someone* might tell you a bit more now you have learned more information, but you seldom actually know what changed, so you are forced to explore every option you have just to make sure you didn't miss out on something. Sometimes learning fact A from characters B and C simply activates the possibility to talk about D to character E, even though it's not related at all. 

That said: Aen no Hakobune is one of the nicest games following this design, with a more limited cast and smaller location. Earlier games had you interview like 30, 40 people about as many topics, now it's just over a dozen! And some of them die over the course of the game! It's definitely the least tedious entry of the series to play and I barely needed to use a walkthrough this time (Yeah, I needed help to find that piece of evidence suddenly spawning in the bathroom at a certain point of the game even though it hadn't been there before...).

These games are ones that really would benefit from a modern remake though, more so than the Another Code games I mentioned at the start. The game design of these games is so horribly outdated, even though the atmosphere in these games is usually really good, and there are genuinely interesting characters to be found here, but they are usually just confined to speaking two or three text boxes about each topic, and can't really speak freely. But in Aen no Hakobune specifically, there are glimpses of really interesting topics that could've been put in the front much better, also to make the mystery more enticing, like a female researcher who is not respected by her peers because she's a female doctor in 1920s Japan, the rising militarism in the country, musings about the Great War in Europe and its consequences for the people in Japan, the mental hospital and the secrets it holds and so much more, but because of the very limited speaking freedom of all the characters, it never feels like you get the full picture. The locked room mystery in Aen no Hakobune isn't really interesting, but there's a pretty gruesome second death, but you don't see enough of the people's reactions to that, and the investigation into the decapitation seems a bit.... dry, even though you can make that so much more interesting mystery-wise. The motive of the murderer and the underlying backstory is also very interesting, firmly set in the context of the 1920s setting, but it is presented to the player is such a disjointed manner, it never feels as impressive as it could've been. There's honestly a lot of potential to tell much more compelling mysteries in these games, if the presentation and design was just more player-friendly.

A huge problem of these games as they are is also the fact you can't actually re-read most dialogue. Unlike so many other mystery games, you barely collect evidence or testimony in this game. Especially the fact you can't gather testimonies (or at least have a kind of summary) really hurts these games. Character A will mention once they saw character B doing something, and that'll allow you to press on B on that, but you'll only see the dialogue once (and there's a small mark on the screen for a second to indicate this was a story flag), but there's no way to re-read that in any way, so if you decide to do something else first, there's a good chance you'll forget that. A more modern game would likely record the testimony in same way and then allow you to present that evidence to the corresponding character. Or if these games were made now, at the very least they would give some kind of screen that records what testimonies you have gathered about each person to guide your investigation.

By the way, while I was happy I could play this game for a normal price, the DS version and subsequent iOS version do have much nicer (and larger) art... I wonder why they never put out the iOS versions of this series on Switch; they did release the first three J.B. Harold games on the Switch, based on the iOS versions...

Anyway, Aen no Hakobune is not a remarkable mystery adventure game by any means. It follows the model of the Riverhillsoft adventure games very rigidly, though the slightly more limited scope does make it a much more easier game to play. You play these games more for the atmosphere and the potential for a good story/characters, rather than the actual game, I'm afraid, but I always end up playing one of them once every two years or so... But I really, really hope someone would try to do an extensive remake of either this series or the J.B. Harold series, implementing completely different gameplay mechanics but keeping the underlying story beats and character reveals the same while also fleshing everything out. But I guess that's an impossible dream...

Original Japanese title(s): 『亜鉛の匣舟～相馬邸連続殺人事件』

Mr. Monk and the Miracle

Stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus

"Il nome della rosa"

In a way, a game based on this particular book is kinda fitting, as a contextual framing story...

A few weeks back, I reviewed Umberto Eco's Il nome della rosa, which had a really memorable setting with its monastery harboring secrets and a labyrinth-like library. And I was obviously not the only one, as there are multiple games based on the impressive book. Murder in the Abbey is a 2008 game by Spanish studio Alcochofa Soft, based in turn on the 1987 game La Abadía del Crimen, a game which actually started out as an adaptation of Eco's work until they couldn't get the rights, and it was apparently quite popular in Spanish-speaking terrorities at the time. I haven't played La Abadía del Crimen myself, but as for Murder in the Abbey, it is certainly very, very clear it was also inspired by  Il nome della rosa. The game starts with the monk Leonardo of Toledo travelling with his apprentice Bruno: Bruno is to study at the Nuestra Señora de la Natividad Abbey, so once delivered there the two will part their ways, but on their way to the abbey, a boulder nearly falls on Bruno. When the two arrive at the abbey, they learn the abbot has need for Leonardo's abilities as a problem-solver: the gatekeeper has recently passed away in a tragic accident, but was it really an accident? The abbot even fears the death might perhaps be the devil's work. Leonardo sets out to investigate the curious death, but he is hindered by the fact he's not allowed in the famous library of the abbey, which is said to hold a wealth of knowledge, but only the abbot, librarian and his assistant are allowed to enter the library, and even copyists only get their materials supplied via the libarian. While Leonardo and Bruna poke around the abbey however, they learn the gatekeeper might have had information about the library that led to his death, and then more monks are murdered at the abbey. Can Leonardo solve the mystery of the murdered monks in Murder in the Abbey?

This game was re-released in 2019 as The Abbey: Director's Cut with apparently some puzzles changed/added, and that's the version I played. The Abbey: Director's Cut is a point and click adventure with a rather attractive visual style, using nicely designed 2D abbey backgrounds with cartoony 3D characters which have rather animated facial features. While Il nome della rosa could be quite funny, The Abbey: Director's Cut is a bit more comedy-focused, though it can be rather surprisingly dark like its inspiration, and it's at those times the art style can clash a bit with the topic of discussion. Discussions on burning heretics don't come across as serious the way these characters are designed and animated...

The atmosphere in this game in general is really good though, and you really feel like you're wandering around some kind of medieval abbey harboring a lot of dark secrets. While there's not that much variety in the locations within the abbey, and all the characters save for Bruno are middle-aged men (for obvious reasons), the game does a good job at characterizing all these monks. A lot of attention has gone to the character writing, with surprisingly in-depth conversations about the church, their views on their beliefs and all kinds of references to political on-goings outside the abbey: it's here where the game really feels very much like Il nome della rosa, presenting a rich world within the abbey, but outside it. This part is also elevated by some voice actors: the voice actor of Leonardo is particular is really good at the part. But there are also voice actors who do a pretty iffy job, with Leonardo's assistant Bruno being the one you'll have to listen to the most unfortunately (and it doesn't help that Bruno is written in a very vexing manner on purpose; and while that leads to an interesting twist near the end of the game, the manner in which this was brought still didn't help the impression Bruno was really irritating as a character).

As a mystery game however, it has the same problem a lot of point and click adventures have when tackling a mystery story, and that the gameplay mechanics don't really allow for the player to solve story-related mysteries, and you are often simply busy with inventory puzzles to overcome an obstacle, which then leads to the story-related mysteries being solved for you via cut-scenes. As a point and click adventure, you'll be walking around The Abbey, stealing borrowing objects and talking to other monks in the abbey to gain information, and often you'll have to engage in fetch quests in order to gain the trust of a monk or be allowed access to certain locations within the abbey. So then you have to use your inventory items to solve a puzzle so you can get the object you're supposed to get, and then.... you'll get cutscenes or dialogues where Leonardo will make deductions about the case without your help. There is no mechanic to allow the player to deduce anything about the mystery, all they have to do is help Leonardo get past the obstacles/fetch quests, and afterwards, he'll engage with the mystery alone. And that's kinda irritating in these kind of adventure games. I'd rather see the opposite: skip the fetch quests for me, just give me a mechanic that allows me to engage with the mystery mentally! I don't want to be copying keys or retrieve a book for a monk so they'll translate something for me, allow me to investigate the corpse, ask me questions that allow me to deduce the truth behind the case! Especially, as I mentioned before, I do really like the setting and atmosphere of the game. As a point and clock adventure, The Abbey: Director's Cut also has some pretty infuriating pixel hunt segments at times, with very fussy hotspots, so be prepared to use a walkthrough.

The mystery story itself is... certainly not Il nome della rosa, even if a lot of cues are taken directly from the book. A lot of moments and story developments will feel extremely familiar, though the exact details behind the mysterious deaths in the abbey are not the same as Eco's book. As so much time of the game is actually spent more on fetch quests rather than actually engaging with the mystery itself, I have to admit some parts of the denouement fell a bit flat for me: had we been given more time to talk with each character about motivations/backgrounds etc. instead of constantly asking them about whatever fetch quest you were busy with, the reveal of the culprit and their motive might have made more of an impact, but with most of the mystery being solved automatically for you during cutscenes, it felt a bit lacklustre. 

As an adventure game, The Abbey: Director's Cut has pretty nice production values and in terms of atmosphere, it's really good: though a lot of it is very very directly inspired by Umberto Eco's Il nome della rosa, it's cool you're able to explore a mysterious abbey yourself, the world depicted in the game is really interesting. While as a mystery game, I can't help but feel disappointed the player is mostly relegated to doing fetch quests, with the mystery being solved by Leonardo himself in the cutscenes and there are some annoying pixel hunting parts, I don't think The Abbey: Director's Cut is a bad game by any means, though I'd not immediately recommend it to people as a mystery game per se. But if you liked Umberto Eco's Il nome della rosa and was curious as to how it'd work as a game, sure, this is fun. That is definitely the reason why I decided to play it, and in that regard, it didn't disappoint.

The Stone Idol

"That belongs in a museum."

"Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade"

Most of the mystery games I play, place an emphasis on the story, and use game mechanics to allow the player to advance in the story. Most of them are of course adventure games where you closely follow the development of a tale of mystery, and the story is allowing the player to interact with the mystery by presenting them these puzzles in the form of questions, to see if you managed to solve them. Often, these games also offer an 'inventory' system in the form of a clue system, where you accumulate clues which you can use to for example answer the aforementioned puzzles ('showing evidence'). A game like Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney for example in fact mainly revolves around the exact same puzzle being fed to the player constantly, be it a highly context-senstive one (a contradiction between the evidence you gathered and a statement made by a witness), while other games like Detective Pikachu Returns might just present varying questions depending on the specific story part, ranging from "who is the culprit and what is the evidence that points to them" to "do we have some clues that could tell us how we could get past that guard?" or something like that. Still, most of the adventure games I play basically ask you context-specific questions that pertain to that specific part/scene of the story.

2018's Return of the Obra Dinn was a huge surprise as a mystery game, as it focused much more on one core deduction-focused game mechanic, and it basically only asked you the same question again and again, without much change in the actual underlying context of the question. Investigating the body-filled ship the Obra Dinn which mysteriously returned to the harbor, your task is to 1) identify each dead body and 2) identify the cause of death (and culprit if applicable). This task remains the same from start to finish, and you could theoretically just fill in the crew list, connecting each name with a portrait and their cause of death right from the beginning. Of course, the game wasn't that easy, as identifying each corpse depended on reliving their final moments via a magical watch, and it was necessary to have a very keen eye for contextual details to deduce from each death scene what name belonged to each face: a man being called by his name is of course a very easy clue, but most of them weren't that easy, and had to be deduced from seeing in them in multiple scenes and connecting various clues together. That said, the core tasks remained the same, and in my review, I described Return of the Obra Dinn as in essence being "a gigantic sudoku puzzle: you know each face and each name, and now you have to determine what names and faces can or can not belong together by crossing off all the possibilities. If for example you know this person is either the carpenter or the carpenter's assistant, but you also heard somewhere that the assistant dies before the carpenter, than you can identify both once you know in what order the two nameless faces died." Because each person can only have one name, face and cause of death, and names and faces of course are not shared among multiple people, it really felt to me like sudoku, determining the characteristics for each "sudoku puzzle" and knowing how faces/names/ranks/etc. had a finite number of uses. Strangely enough, I've had multiple surprised reactions when I described Obra Dinn's gameplay as sudoku, even though in my mind it seemed not only so obvious, but I couldn't even imagine it was an original thought in any way. Earlier this year, I played Unheard, which had a similar feel (but audio-based) and it was quite fun!

When The Case of the Golden Idol released in 2022, I heard it had gameplay similar to Return of the Obra Dinn, and I also played the demo when it was released, which I enjoyed a lot. But for one reason or another, I didn't pick up the full game right away, but now we're more than a year later, and I finally played the game. * When you start up the game, you are immediately presented with a ghastly scene: one man pushes the other off a cliff. The problem? You don't know what the heck is going on. Who is the murderer? Who is the victim? Why is he murdering the other? Where are they? As you click around, you gather key terms (names, verbs, locations, etc.), and you slowly start to piece together the story behind this scene: set in the 18th century, we are looking at the two men  who obtained the titular golden idol during an expedition, and apparently one is killing the other in order to keep the idol for himself. But who is who? You find letters with names in their rucksacks, so you know the two men must be Albert Cloudsley and Oberon Geller, but who is the pusher, and who is the pushed? 

It's here we are treated to the gameplay similar to Return of the Obra Dinn: to get anywhere in this game, you must first use the names you have gathered, and assign them to the faces you see on the screen. At first, this is fairly easy, like seeing one character addressing the other by name, or for example you can guess by their uniforms, but later scenes are much trickier. Because Golden Idol's gameplay focuses mostly on determining who and what everything is on the scene, the murders you'll be solving are fairly straightforward: the focus is not on the how, but on figuring out the whole underlying context. While a lot of the scenes might seem rather baffling at first, that's often simply because you're dropped in a scene that is unfolding right now, and usually after collecting the first few key words, you'll quickly grasp the broad outline of the case, after which you can concentrate on figuring out who everyone exactly is and the order of events leading up to the murder. Unlike Return of the Obra Dinn however, The Case of the Golden Idol will also ask you other questions about the scene to answer, again using the key terms you have accumulated from the scene. You might be asked to determine whom certain letters you found on the scene belong to, or you find a floor diagram and must also determine who stays in what room. Once you figure out these secondary clues, you are usually tasked with one final mission: to determine exactly what happened. This is done by completing a short summary of the scene, which has a lot of blanks. You fill this summary in using all the key terms you found. You might for example see Character A killing Character B with something in their hand in a  unknown location. So first you have to use the clues to determine A is in fact Colonel Mustard, a name you found in a letter in the luggage in one of the rooms and you remember one character calling A by his title, and then based on the books in the background of the location you determine the room is in fact the library and not the kitchen, and finally, you can fill in the blanks in the summary by saying [Colonel Mustard] walked into the [library] and used the [candlestick] to kill [Miss Scarlet].

While not as difficult as Return of the Obra Dinn, The Case of the Golden Idol is certainly a detective game that will challenge your mind, as while the first few scenes you investigate are fairly small and straightforward, later scenes might involve several screens with a lot more going on. The story is surprisingly epic, spanning several decades and each "level" is a specific scene (usually moments after a mysterious violent death) revolving around the titular golden idol. You follow the golden idol's journey as men crave its powers, but because each scene is presented without any introduction, it's up to the player to guess how this scene might connect to the previous one, even if it might be a few decades since the last scene and it's set at a completely different location with perhaps only one face or name you recognize from a previous scene. That is one part I really enjoyed The Case of the Golden idol over Return of the Obra Dinn, as the latter was a great deduction game, but the story you uncovered behind the crew's mysterious deaths was not that one of deductive mystery. The Case of the Golden Idol however does present one and realizing how each scene is connected to the next is part of the mystery the player also needs to unravel in order to beat the game. At first though, the scenes might feel very disconnected and that might feel a bit disappointing, as you move from one confused state to another, but it does come together quite nicely once you're past a certain point, when more of the plot is revealed.  

I quite enjoyed the overall story too, though I do think some of the secondary puzzles you are required to solve in each level had too much of a "logic puzzle" sense to them. One of the later stages for example had you figure out something out to a degree that wasn't really relevant to the case at hand (do you really need to know those exact numbers?) and those parts I didn't enjoy. I liked Obra Dinn a lot because it used the same basic puzzle of face + name (+ cause), but some of the secondary puzzles in Golden Idol feel very contrived as puzzles (sometimes, it almost feels like people are for example only calling other people by codenames or nicknames just so the player can be presented with a puzzle).

The demo I played one year ago of The Case of the Golden Idol is basically the same as the full product, so I can't say I was really surprised by the game now I have played it, but it is a very fun mystery game that really puts an emphasis on deductive thinking. If you liked Return of the Obra Dinn, you're certainly going to like this, and because of the shorter playtime and the slightly easier difficulty, I'd say The Case of the Golden Idol might even be the better introduction to this style of deductive reasoning games. I haven't gotten around to the DLC yet, though I have heard it's more challenging than the base game, so I'll probably eventually get around to playing those two too sooner or later! Preferably before the recently announced sequel comes!

The Losing Game

「兄は兄。僕は僕ですから」

『内田康夫DSミステリー 名探偵・浅見光彦シリーズ「副都心連続殺人事件」』

"My brother is my brother. And I am myself."

"Uchida Yasuo DS Mystery - The Great Detective Asami Mitsuhiko Series: The Fukutoshin Serial Murder Case"

Last year, around this period, I had a short run of reviews of old Nintendo DS detective adventure games... I've only got one for this year though.

I think there's some kind of rule for licensed Nintendo DS games based on the works of famous mystery novelists to have insanely long titles, because after the Nishimura Kyoutarou and Yamamura Misa games, we also got Uchida Yasuo DS Mystery Meitantei Asami Mitsuhiko Series: Fukutoshin Renzoku Satsujin Jiken ("Uchida Yasuo DS Mystery - The Great Detective Asami Mitsuhiko Series: The Fukutoshin Serial Murder Case") in 2009. As the title tells you, the game is based on Uchida Yasuo's long-running Asami Mitsuhiko series: Mitsuhiko is a freelance writer for a travel magazine, who travels all across Japan to touristic destinations, and of course, he often ends up getting himself entangled in murder cases. Not rarely, he ends up being a suspect too, though the local cops usually regret detaining Mitsuhiko whenever they learn he's the younger brother of the current head of Criminal Affairs of Tokyo's Metropolitan Police Department. While the series is adapted quite often for the small screen, as far as I know, this Nintendo DS game is the first and only time the series got a game adaptation (with an original story). The story starts familiar enough: Mitsuhiko teams up with a new photographer (the player), but he also receives a letter from a girl, whose father recently passed away. This Senkawa Akihiko was one day found dead in his bed by his daughter Mafuyu, but while the police has deemed it a suicide, she can't believe her father would leave her all alone in the world. Senkawa worked in the sales department of the car manufacturer Y, so while working on his article, Asami also visits the Y headquarters along the Fukutoshin Metro Line to see whether there could be a different reason for Senkawa's death. He soon learns three months ago, Nakamori, a co-worker of Senkawa was murdered, which quickly puts a different light on Senkawa's death, and so Mitsuhiko starts digging in Senkawa and Nakamori's past.

I'll just refer to this game as Uchida Yasuo DS Mystery to keep it short. The game is, as you'd expect, an adventure mystery game of the command-style variety, where you use standard commands like "Talk" and "Go to" to visit various locations and talk with various characters to gather information. At key moments you'll be asked questions to show you're on the right track, or you have to solve small puzzles like figuring out a code. Nothing surprising here, though I must admit that right from the start, I was rather pleasantly surprised by the production values of this game. While it's not big AAA-title for the DS, I have to admit I had never expected it to be this good: there are official tie-ups with for example the Tokyo Metro Fukutoshin Line (which had only opened completely one year before the game's release) and Mercedes-Benz, there is a fair amount of animated characters and the voice work! Most characters are voiced, some by very big names like Ootsuka Akio and Tani Ikuko, and a staggering amount of scenes is voiced, not just some key scenes, but also minor scenes. The Nishimura Kyoutarou and Yamamura Misa games looked a lot cheaper than this and to be honest, I have seen enough non-licensed "for gamers" games that aren't produced with as much care as this game. Though, the music is quite... boring.

And as a mystery adventure game too, Uchida Yasuo DS Mystery is very, very boring. It's a shame the story and gameplay isn't as interesting as the production values would suggest. The story does hit all the usual Asami Mitsuhiko tropes, like Mitsuhiko being seen as a suspect by the police until they learn who his brother is, Mitsuhiko being scolded by his mother Shizue for loafing around and not marrying, we visit Karuizawa in a short segment to have our obligatory "tourist destination trip" and where we learn a bit about a local tourist spot and of course, the mystery plot focuses more on entangling human relationships and their motives, rather than solving tricks, so if you're an Asami Mitsuhiko fan, you might be satisfied with that alone (and yes, I do realize this game is of course also marketed to exactly those people, and not mystery gamers per se). I do have to say I am kinda disappointed the game is so Tokyo-centred. I get they got the Fukutoshin Line deal, but the way every location happens to be near around one of the Fukutoshin stations and one plot point was tied directly to the line felt a bit forced. But when translated to an actual interactive game, this story just doesn't really work in a way to be interesting. All you do is just go from one location to another and go through the conversations in order. The segments where you need to answer some questions correctly to show you've "deduced" something to proceed are just questions asking you repeat the little fact you learned five minutes ago, and the few puzzle segments where you solve a code aren't fun either. The game has multiple endings (bad endings), but as far as I know, they are all just directly choice-dependent, like choose to go to location A first means instant bad ending, location B first and you're fine. Which isn't really interesting either. 

The story itself I have to admit, was surprisingly on-par with other Asami Mitsuhiko books I have read. The game scenario is credited to the Asami Mitsuhiko Club by the way, the official fan club run by author Uchida Yasuo himself (it was disbanded in 2015 after 22 years). The books are not really the kind of puzzlers I prefer to read, but at least fans of the series will probably like this as it doesn't stray from the formula and feels like a genuine Mitsuhiko tale. At its core, the story does have things I do like, regarding how the whole series of murder is set up, though motive-wise, things feel a bit weak, and that way they tried to make the murderer feel symphathetic (because it's a human drama-focused mystery) didn't work at all for me. Not sure if the writers actually were trying to portray them as sympathetic, or were just overdoing the "explanation of the motive", but it was a really weird climax... Some parts felt a bit forced though, like the trip to Karuizawa, but at least we got to visit... Uchida Yasuo there.

Which was odd. In this game, Asami Mitsuhiko is actually well-known as the amateur detective, because the in-universe Uchida has written the books based on his adventures and those have been adapted for television too (like in the real world). He's at least famous enough for people to recognize him occassionally, and for Mafuyu to write him a letter in the first place. And yet there'd still be police detectives in Tokyo who don't know him? Or somehow Mitsuhiko's editor doesn't keep a better eye on him, considering Mitsuhiko's tendency to skip work to work on a case? The choice for the player being Mitsuhiko's photographer was also a bit weird. At the end of the game, you're actually being ranked for how good of an assistant you were to Mitsuhiko, but the rating system is a bit vague for that. You're ranked based on answering the questions correctly or doing the right suggestions to Mitsuhiko, but... "Mitsuhiko's assistant" isn't a character in the books, so you can't really know "how" you're supposed to act. I'm not sure why they didn't have you be Mitsuhiko himself...

But in short, the only thing Uchida Yasuo DS Mystery Meitantei Asami Mitsuhiko Series: Fukutoshin Renzoku Satsujin Jiken has going for it as basically its production values. As a mystery game, the story feels like an Asami Mitsuhiko tale, but it's not fun at all to play as a game, with too much hand-holding and not really requiring the player to ever think for themselves about the case and mysteries. Now I am starting to wonder whether there are actually games based on existing mystery novel series that are interesting on their merits as video games?  Perhaps I should try YAKATA Nightmare Project, based on Ayatsuji's House series one day...

Original Japanese title(s): 『内田康夫DSミステリー 名探偵・浅見光彦シリーズ「副都心連続殺人事件」』

The Adventure of the Secret Partner

Sparking!!

"CHA-LA HEAD-CHA-LA" (影山ヒロノブ）

 

Sparking!!

"CHA-LA HEAD-CHA-LA" (Kageyama Hironobu)

I do love my Detective Pikachu tote bag and mug I got with the game... I wish more mystery media had merchandise...

Two years ago, Tim Goodman moved to Ryme City in search of his father Harry, a private detective who went missing. Tim teamed up with his father's partner Pikachu, who turns out to be able to talk, though Tim is the only person who can understand him. The coffee-addicted Pikachu suffers from memory loss and can't quite remember how Harry disappeared, or explain why he can talk with Tim, but the two work together to find Harry and in their search for leads, they manage to protect the city from a nefarious plot involving "R", a drug that could make Pokémon go wild. Two years later, Tim and Pikachu still haven't managed to find Harry, but the city has finally recovered from the major incident: Tim and Pikachu are to be awarded for their efforts by the city, which is also launching a new campaign to promote itself as a city where humans and Pokémon live together. The ceremony however is disturbed by a Corviknight, a gigantic black raven-like Pokémon , swooping in on the podium. Is someone using R again to control Pokémon? As Tim and Pikachu investigate the case, they slowly learn this all is tied to Harry's disappearance, and with the first real lead in two years, they are determined to learn about Harry's fate in the Nintendo Switch game Kaette Kita Meitantei Pikachu (2023) or Detective Pikachu Returns.

When I first wrote about Detective Pikachu in 2016, I honestly didn't expect it would take so many years for us to finally get the whole story. It was in 2016 when the Japan-exclusive, download-only Meitantei Pikachu ~ Shin Combi Tanjou ("Detective Pikachu ~ Birth of a New Duo") was released on the Nintendo 3DS, which first introduced us to Tim and Pikachu, and brought us the first detective game within the Pokémon franchise. I truly hope I don't have to explain what Pokémon is, but in short: Pokémon is a gigantic media franchise that started with videogames, but also features animated series, theatrical releases and muuuuuuch more. The games are about the titular Pokémon (Pocket Monsters), about 1000 different species of creatures with special powers. People use them for a variety of activities, from pets to using them for Pokémon fights and having them help with work. Pikachu, the best known Pokémon for example, is a yellow mouse species of the Electric type, capable of generating electricity for attacks. Meitantei Pikachu ~ Shin Combi Tanjou ("Detective Pikachu ~ Birth of a New Duo") was the first time a mystery adventure game had been made with Pokémon, but this release was basically only a preview: it was about three chapters long, and stopped just after Tim and Pikachu got their very first lead. It would take another two years before the first full game was released on the 3DS. It turned out the 2016 release was really just the first third of the final product Meitantei Pikachu (Detective Pikachu), a game which I quite enjoyed as a detective game set in the Pokémon world, as it actually did interesting things by combining the concept of Pokémon (creatures with unique powers) with puzzles and a mystery plot. But while the game did provide a full story, the disappearance of Harry was not resolved yet at the end of the game, so we had to wait for a sequel. Which took a long time to come. A live-action film of Detective Pikachu was released in 2019, which did provide a full story, but of course, it didn't follow the game exactly, so I always wanted to see how the story would be resolved in the games. And now it's 2023, and we finally have our answers!

Detective Pikachu Returns is a direct sequel to the 3DS game, with many references to events and characters from the first game. While not absolute necessary, it is recommended to play that one first as the two games do form one single narrative. Going back to my own reviews of the 3DS releases, I would say that this new release is still very similar to the previous release in terms of gameplay. During their hunt for answers, Tim and Pikachu constantly come across problems they have to solve or mysteries that need to be explained, ranging from identifying a thief to finding a way through a hidden temple. After collecting both physical evidence and witness testimony at the scene, Pikachu will lead Tim through some questions to see if they can solve their conundrum (= testing the player). Once the problem is solved, the story progresses, bringing new locales and new challenges for the duo. Rinse and repeat. This was how it worked in the 3DS games, and how it works now. It is not a very challenging game by any means, though that is also because it is clear this is aimed at a younger audience, and it works perfectly fine as a "first mystery adventure game". You usually just find all the necessary evidence and testimony, and then Pikachu will condense that information in usually three or four "hypotheses" based on everything you know. Of course, only one of them will be correct, while the others wrong. A game for an older audience would probably implement a step between that, where the player themselves has to use the evidence first to create a hypothesis, and then have those hypotheses as possible solutions, but again, this is for children, and thus I don't really see a problem with the game condensing this process a bit, as the proposed solutions by Pikachu are still logically based on the evidence you collected, both the correct and false solutions, and at least the questions and their related answers make sense, unlike Detective Conan: The Mirapolis Investigation, which for some reason always had questions that didn't precisely match up with the correct answers, leading to frustrating gameplay. This game adds some moments not found in the first game, where Pikachu teams up with other Pokémon to solve puzzles, like having to shove boxes to clear a way like Sokoban, but these moments don't really add very much in terms of gameplay.

Detective Pikachu is unique in the sense we get Pikachu as a partner, who can communicate with other Pokémon. Mystery-wise, you can just think of Pokémon as intelligent animals with specific powers, or perhaps even as yokai and this opens up possibilities for interesting mysteries. In a "normal" detective story, you can't really have people ask random animals whether they saw the culprit pass by, or whether they themselves were part of a criminal plot, but in this game, it is possible. Pokémon all have unique special powers, which allow for unique mystery plots a we have Pokémon who can fly, turn invisible, can see through walls and all of that, but at the same time, for basically all people who know Pokémon, this still results in a fair play detective story, as this is all shared knowledge: we all know Pikachu can use electric attacks, we all know Gengar is a ghost. It's not secret I love mystery fiction with supernatural/magical elements in them, and Detective Pikachu is really no different from that, heck, I'd say it even feels fairer to a lot of people, because players know the world of Pokémon and their position in the fictional society very well.

That is also why however I was a bit disappointed this game had so many chapters that focused less on providing such mystery plots. The second and fourth chapter don't really have a clear main mystery, and are also set in locations further away from society, resulting in not very interesting plots mystery-wise, and the way Pokémon are involved with them. The second chapter in particular is a bit more puzzle-focused, where you are just exploring a ruin, and constantly solving minor puzzles to clear the way so you can move deeper in. In the original 3DS game too, the best parts were those where Pokémon were used in human crimes, set in very human-filled locations, and that's the same case here, only it's a minority of the cases in Detective Pikachu Returns that deal with that. The first case is probably the case that adhers to this preferred model the most, dealing with a jewel theft from a large mansion, with Tim and Pikachu having to deal with both human and Pokémon suspects, and investigate who'd have the opportunity and means to pull off the crime. A later chapter involves a gigantic wave of Pokémon causing trouble in Ryme City, leading to them being detained by the Pokémon Protection Bureau, the police-equivalent for Pokémon. These Pokémon however claim they are innocent of the crimes they are accused of, and Tim and Pikachu work slowly to verify their alibis and try to figure out whether someone is setting these Pokémon up and why. These plots are the most fun, as you see a lot more of how Pokémon are integrated in human society and how their powers could be used for crimes, or for solving crimes, which is something you sometimes see depicted in the anime, but less so in other Pokémon games (which focus for example more on trainer battles, or collecting Pokémon etc.). But I have to say, on the whole, I do think the 3DS game was better in terms of balance, as Detective Pikachu Returns just dedicates less time of its playtime to these mystery plots, as the more story-drived episodes are more about solving minor obstacles on Tim and Pikachu's way, rather than about solving things like impossible crimes.

It's also a missed opportunity the side quest mechanic wasn't used more extensively. You can now help other people and Pokémon who have their own problems while you're working on a case, but besides them mostly being (cute) fetch quests, each chapter usually confines you to a certain location (with several sublocations), and you don't really get to revisit locations from previous chapters. Which I don't really understand, as many locations are actually interconnected, so making the game a bit more "open-world"-esque would really not have changed much, but for example, you can enter certain streets in the first chapter, but which are closed off in the third chapter. Just keeping everything open would have made for a more lively setting, and also allowed for more interesting side-quests spanning chapters, or for example still offer minor human-crime mysteries even if the chapter's main focus is on a human-lite setting.

Story-wise, the game does finally provide a conclusion to the quest of Tim and Pikachu looking for Harry, so in that sense, I'd definitely still recommend this game to anyone who played the 3DS game. People who have seen the live-action film will probably recognize a lot of the cues in Detective Pikachu Returns, and it seems likely the producers of that film already had access to a rough outline of the events of this game, but still, the games are their own world, and I still had fun playing the game. Also, the game is cute. Really cute. I took soooo many screenshots of this game, just of Pikachu babbling, making funny comments or simply walking around.

Detective Pikachu Returns is undeniably a very simple mystery adventure game, but I don't ever think it ever aspired to be anything but that, and while I do think the 3DS game was the better mystery game overall, I did have fun playing this game and finally finding out what happened to Harry together with Tim and Pikachu. While I can't deny I would have wanted to see more of the human-Pokémon society-focused crimes in this game as they are by far the best moments of the series, I did enjoy my time in Ryme City again. It would be fun to see another Detective Pikachu game that would explore the potential of these supernatural-themed mysteries more, and perhaps aimed at a slightly older audience, but I can only hope! For now, I'm just glad we finally have closure after seven years!

Original Japanese title(s): 『帰ってきた　名探偵ピカチュウ』