Tokyo Dark

These are some fine cats.
Oh ummm... the horror and the darkness are alright too.
I do, however, wish the developers invented a 'skip read' button. Going through the entire game four times takes a toll on the fingers.

The game's exactly my thing, so I'm surprised it appeared on my radar as late as in 2025. This is definitely something to play on a long Winter night so that you can really experience the descent.

I loved the anime horror vibes. The visuals are clean and stylish and the music is properly creepy in places. The story is good. I like how some conversations are different on the replay, and you can skip most (but not all) of the dialogue you've already seen. New Game+ adds some nice save points to make it easier to get the rest of the endings, and a single run is relatively short (around two hours) once you know what to do in each area.

I had some serious issues with the game crashing at points. The sewers were particularly prone to it. Luckily the autosaves are frequent, and with some perseverance I made it past the problem points.

This is a truncated review because of Steam's character count, to see the full review click here.
I liked this way more than I thought I was going to.
For one, though, it's not a detective story -- it's really a psychological thriller that just happens to star a policewoman. That's not a bad thing, but it is a materially different type of story, so something to keep in mind in terms of whether or not you'd like it.
It's also an urban fantasy story, about a woman who finds herself unsure whether she's experiencing supernatural events of just breaking under the stress of her life. One move it makes that I do like is that it doesn't try to sustain the "is the urban fantasy real?" thing for the whole game as some of these stories try to do; instead the question becomes, "What do the gods want from me, and I can I escape it?" which is a more interesting direction to go than just trying to pretend the reader hasn't figured out ghosts are real for the entire time.
I'm getting ahead of myself, though. Tokyo Dark is about Detective Ito Ayami, who is reeling after a hostage situation she and her partner were involved in results in the death of the perp, a teenage girl. Ito is dealing with an enormous amount of guilt, and ends up hospitalized for having a breakdown. In the wake of it, her partner Tanaka disappears under mysterious circumstances. As she pursues the truth of who the girl was and why her partner disappeared, she's drawn into the history of a mysterious Okame mask that seems to torture its possessor.
First of all, Ito's character design is great. She's cool and professional and not sexualized and I want to be her when I grow up. I realized that this game... may not pass the reverse-bechdel? The only instance I can think where it might is in the mid-to-late game where you can talk to the expat group outside the dojo. Even the end sequence where Collector and Teaman talk to each other, they're talking about Ito the whole time. Honestly it's pretty impressive how quietly the cast is mostly women; I hadn't thought about it until I started thinking about this post and how Tanaka's death is a very rare reverse-fridging. It's made me think again about that old Nasu bit about the absence of men vs. the presence of women.
I also thought the game handled its mental health themes pretty well, all things considered. While much of what's happening to Ito is supernatural, the game never lets go of just how exhausted and traumatized she is; to me, it read as "Yes, some of what she's seen and done was ghosts, but that doesn't account for all of it." I think having themes of trauma throughout the B cast also helped drive this home. I really liked the detail of Mai calling her brother every night crying after the hostage situation. I like that it's not as simple as "she wasn't hurt, so she's fine," and that it addressed that seeing her attacker killed was not like, justice, but was in and of itself horrible. I also liked the thread a lot about how Grandma not telling her the truth about her past was keeping her tied to it and preventing her from being free.
One of the game's major themes was definitely about if and how it's possible to escape traumatic experiences. I think Kawana's line about how the only way for him to heal was to leave his hometown and family behind was really interesting in general, but definitely extra so in a Japanese context. Daizo, too, needed to start over completely, dedicate himself to a dream that's his, to find a way to move forward. Indeed, it was Reina's inability to move forward -- that what was done to her was spiritually tying her to the past, preventing her from escaping, mirroring the way the producer literally prevents her from leaving, that drives her to give up on her life. The game is very much about a need to persevere, to try not to live in the past even when it's hard and the path forward is unclear, and I think that's a solid message and the game's engagement with trauma felt honest.
The supernatural side of things was interesting. The developer is based in Japan and while the staff seems a mix of locals and expats, the leads look to be Westerners. One of the results of this seems to be that this is a very Shinto story -- it's in at least some ways a retelling of the Izanami and Izanagi myth -- mixed with a kind of Christlike protagonist. The fatalism of Buddhist influence is both there -- Ito cannot avoid her fate -- but also subverted -- her fate is to give up her will so the human race can be given a chance to make its own choices. I find it to be a really interesting and rich contrast. It's a story both about the power of the individual and the need to put the good of the many first. I wouldn't even call it a tension -- I think it's totally cohesive and that's what I find so interesting about it.
In terms of actual gameplay.
It's worth noting that like many of the detective games, it lives somewhere between point-and-click and visual novel. I would say it's more toward the latter (no inventory system, no journal, etc), especially in terms of stylistics, but there are elements of p-a-c. This worked perfectly well for me, but there were definitely some UI things that could have been improved. For one, it desperately needed a 'speed through already seen text' option. This was so common even in 2017 that I'm baffled it's not here, but this may be because it seems to have been built in an adventure game engine and not a visual novel engine. Also part of the problem with the p-and-c sequences was that you couldn't really "skip to next decision point" like in a traditional VN, since it required going from one place to another in an order you chose and talking or not talking to different people. There's also a couple of fetch quests. I'm not sure if just skipping the gameplay sequences on replays is viable. It's an issue baked into combining these genres.
The second issue I had was that sometimes interaction points would fail to load, and I'd have to go in and out of the pause menu to prompt them to show. Not sure what was going on there. I never had to force-quit or and never got softlocked, but it was still something that should be ironed out.
In terms of horror, I think it's pretty accessible -- I'm a coward and I hate gore, but found the game to be pretty mild. There's blood and one instance of a rotted corpse, but no gore beyond that. And the horror elements are things like "lights flash, was that person really there" and beyond that mostly atmospheric.
I really liked the sound design. I usually play games muted for a bunch of reasons but just happened to have sound on when I started this and purposefully played it with sound on across play sessions. It reminded me a lot of Higurashi and the way the sound creates this subtle but pervasive unease about everything.
I liked the stat system (called "SPIN") but more hardcore players may be upset how easy it is to keep your stats up. For me it added a nice sense of stakes to otherwise meaningless decisions without making so I had to do certain things. I think making it more survival-y would have made it to hard to see everything, but YMMV.
I understand why they did the no-manual-saves-on-first-playthrough thing. You have to be forced into a second playthrough for the story to really work right. But I think it would have been better if after clearing NG+ there was a scene or decision-point selection to make cleaning up achievements and seeing all the endings more accessible. Doing an entire extra playthrough just to, say, see the other endings for Bartender and Janitor, is pretty brutal.
All of this being said, considering the playtime and how rough seeing all the endings is, I think $17.99 asking price is a bit much. For me I think 9.99 or even 12.99 would be fair, but according to ITAD it discounts down to $4.49 pretty regularly and I'd definitely rec it at that price.

Tokyo Dark is a very good visual novel horror game, but anyway what is the story. In modern-day Tokyo, legend tells of a door deep in Tokyo’s sewers and all who enter are lost forever, it's one of the many old stories of this city who has seen wars, natural disasters and death for centuries, it’s just one of the colorful stories you hear, but to detective Ito the story becomes reality.
After her partner is missing the young homicide detective is forced into an unbelievable world of twisted paths and broken dreams, to an innocent little girl forced to undertake a ritual she was not meant for and were the very fabric of the world is at stake, so the detective marches on to uncover the truth, but can detective Ito do it, can she solve the mystery or will she lose it all.
Now let’s get into the likes, the story is very good I like how you get to learn a little bit about Tokyo as you play, I like games that take place in the real world settings that actually teach you a little bit about the place or facts about the time period. The story also has a little bit of a Silent Hill kind of feel to it with its twists and turns and how it can play with you psychologically. It’s also a choose your own adventure depending on your actions you can unlock a bunch of different endings and how your character will be, although the story does have a problem with it, but that's for the dislikes.
The gameplay is pretty good it's basically a visual novel/choose your own adventure, you are asked different questions and depending on your choices can affect the story and the ending, there is one puzzle in the game but that's for dislikes. But anyway there is also this SPIN basically it’s an acronym for sanity, professional, investigation and neurosis, basically you have to balance it and make sure it doesn't get to a negative 100 if it does, you're locked into a certain ending. The SPIN is a very interesting idea which can allow you to unlock different branches of dialogue and different ways to handle a problem although SPIN has a little problem but again for dislikes.
The graphic art style is really good with a good uses of colors that really highlight Tokyo, especially with bright pink cherry blossom trees in a local temple, to the neon lights of Tokyo, it also has a lot of eye-catching designs and scenery that's just a joy to look at. The levels are all very good and pretty diverse from a cherry blossom filled temple, to the electric part of Tokyo, to even the legendary suicide forest, you can tell a lot was put into the detail and designs put into the world and the backgrounds, it makes you really want to explore and just stop and appreciate all the little bits and bobs of everything.
The characters are very good each one is well made with interesting personalities and nice and sometimes very cute designs, to the point where it's hard to pick which ones were my favorite characters from the bad guy Rena and how you come to sympathize with her, to the two workers at the cat maid Cafe and the owner of the Cat Cafe to detective Ito herself, again it’s just hard to pick a favorite character.
The soundtrack is good with plenty of great music that really fits with the games themes. Now is this game scary, not really it's more disturbing and psychological like I said it reminds a little bit of Silent Hill, but a less scarier version of it, but for people who are veterans in the horror genre you won’t be scared at all, it's not bad because the story is what's really important I just wish they enhanced the horror a bit more.
Now let’s get into the dislikes, I did say there was a problem with the story, at the end there's this new game plus where we find out that we're stuck in a sort of Groundhog Day scenario and in order to get the true ending for the game is to becoming the mask bearer and basically take on the role of keeping this ancient monster at bay and every time we try and get a different ending it just loops around to the beginning of the game, so detective Ito is forced to sacrifice her humanity, her freedom and her life to become a warden in order to keep whatever monster that the dark is, imprisoned. I didn't really care for that I don't know as someone who believes in free will and who believes that destiny is bunk and I felt this true ending was kind of bullshit, I wish there was a better ending to give her.
Also the game has some bugs, but nothing really game breaking. Now there is this one puzzle that's really annoying. It’s this light puzzle you have to click these lights in this tunnel in a certain order or it'll just make you start from the beginning, it was quite frustrating and to the point where I basically gave up and just used a walkthrough, it's the only real puzzle in the game and it just feels out of place.
There's the SPIN like I said there's a problem with it which is I feel like more could have been done with it, like take sanity I feel like as your sanity depletes you start to see weird things and hear horrible sounds or when you're investigation skills is high you can unlock even more ways to solve problems you know basically stuff like that. Finally I do wish they up the horror a bit more, I'm not saying that things should jump out and go boo at you, but I feel like they could have up the psychological terror a bit more.
Now that I’ve told you all this Tokyo Dark is a very good visual novel horror game, with a very good story, good graphic art style and very good characters. Alright do I recommend this game actually yes I do, if you're looking for a very good visual novel horror game this could be for you, although for veteran horror fans don't expect to be really scared or anything.

Fantastic detective thriller with compelling writing and a brisk pace.

So much backtracking, but the old-school style varied branches are worth the slog.