Tokyo Dark – Going deeper underground

Tokyo Dark is a spiraling descent into madness. It is a surreal, supernatural game that delves into Japanese myth and real locations alike and tries to capture the stress and anxiety that many real world detectives go through, as they uncover the most twisted and bizarre cases. Behind its colorful anime graphics lies a tale of terror and insanity, and just how deep down you’ll have to go to save someone you love.

Tokyo Dark is suitably dark, eerie, and more visual novel than actual point-and-click adventure, judging by the frequent and long dialogues that main character, detective Ayami Itō has to endure. There is no inventory at all, you can only count one actual puzzle to solve, and the rest is a matter of following the story and seeing where it leads you – you can’t even explore Tokyo as you wish, with the game locking out the regions where you shouldn’t go. You’ll get to explore Akihabara, Shinjuku and other real locations. Tokyo Dark is linear in its approach while still offering choice. Confused?

Tokyo Dark often offers different approaches to overcome an obstacle. Itō can use brute force or try to talk her way around whoever is blocking her progress, with the decisions ultimately impacting how she is regarded by colleagues from the police department and strangers. It’s a nice touch to see that a character reminds your actions or heard about it, but ultimately these decisions don’t have any influence in the actual ending. Out of the eleven possible conclusions, it’s mostly a matter of making your final decisions while completely forgetting about your previous actions. Sounds a lot like Life is Strange, right?

Your actions, however, influence the S.P.I.N. system, a nice touch that could be much more than a shallow gimmick. It stands for Sanity, Professionalism, Investigation, and Neurosis, and some of your choices alter the attributes – for example, drinking alcohol while on duty will bring the Professionalism attribute down a notch. Taking medication at home will increase your Sanity, but will decrease your Investigation (probably because it makes you lose focus, let’s go with that).

Sadly, the S.P.I.N. system’s potential isn’t fully explored, as it doesn’t open any true consequences or options – instead, you may get a couple of bad endings if you really hit the bottom, but nothing more. It would be nice to see it opening new dialogue options or interaction points based on your performance. For example, low sanity could make Itō see weird stuff happening in her surroundings, at least way more than what the regular campaign shows you.

In terms of horror and dread, Tokyo Dark shares some similarities with a recent visual novel, the creepy Doki Doki Literature Club. Sometimes it goes crazy and surreal, even breaking the fourth wall once or twice in surprising ways. I wish this happened way more often, as the effect is precisely what the tale told in this game needed to give it the extra fright. The disturbing soundtrack plays a part in building the scary atmosphere and can really make you tense, particularly in some of the few timed events where you need to hastily make a crucial decision. But once again, the design isn’t flawless and adding excruciatingly long dialogues or inner monologues to break these timed events results in an undesired loss of tension. Talk about giving with one hand and taking with the other.

Tokyo Dark also looks somewhat cheap in places. By ‘cheap’, I don’t mean that it looks bad, as it would be unfair for me to bash such a small indie team that had plenty of good ideas on display. But this doesn’t change the fact that the game felt unfinished in places, to the point of breaking the suspension of disbelief. For instance, most of the inner locations are empty and lifeless, and the design itself doesn’t help, as it shows us frozen persons or animals (such as the Cat Café). On the other hand, there is an excessive use of silhouettes to give the impression of populated streets, but the repetition and the contrast with the nice (yet static) anime visuals isn’t winning Tokyo Dark any favors. Itō is the only character that is properly animated in this game, apart from the close-ups where you get eye blinking and very few facial expressions from the entire cast. Praise goes to the animated cutscenes, but these are few and far between, and Tokyo Dark would feel much more complete if it had more of these mood-setting scenes.

When you reach the end of the decidedly intriguing story, picking one of the paths and ultimately reaching one of the eleven endings (there is no saving, only autosave, so choose carefully), you’ll be rewarded with a conclusion that probably won’t be of the “happily ever after” kind, as there is always something at stake. You can, however, start a New Game +, and while the experience is far from Oxenfree’s quality, it’s a good way to reach one of the other endings, especially as now, you can save! Why this isn’t available from the beginning is anyone’s guess. But it’s still odd that you can skip some of the text, but not all of it, for some reason, and the replay is far from being stuffed with fresh content.

I went into Tokyo Dark expecting something else, I have to admit. I expected an actual point-and-click horror adventure, but what I got was something closer to a visual novel where you can move your character around. It doesn’t quite live up to its full potential, and the story has all the elements to be a lot creepier than it turns out to be. Just like Reina, Tokyo Dark is just stuck there in the Dark, without moving forth or back. It could have been some much more, but it still remains a nice first achievement for a small indie team. Given more resources and time, perhaps we could see a S.P.I.N. system that fully influenced dialogue options, and a deeper exploration of the sanity aspect.

Tokyo Dark offers a chilling tale of fiction and Japanese myths, but the end result is ambiguous, and to enjoy it you must be aware that for most of the time you will be watching a story unfold, not playing it.

Final rating: 7.5 cursed pop idols out of 10

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