Tokyo Dark – Collective Memories

Will the past come back to haunt you, or will you stand by your decisions?
By Jakub "Koobs" Klitenik

With this week’s Collective Memories, we delve into Tokyo Dark, a mashup of Western and Eastern culture and popular genres - mixing Point-and-Click Adventures with Visual Novels. Before we move on, we want to place a quick warning about the topics found within Tokyo Dark. They cover mature themes such as suicide, mental health and abuse. While we will not be covering these topics in this post, we wanted you to be aware of the possible triggers you may encounter when playing Tokyo Dark.


The darkest hour is just before the dawn

There is a legend that deep beneath the streets and sewers below Tokyo there is a door. Anyone who enters this doorway, is lost forever. On the trail of her missing partner, both professionally and romantically, Detective Ayami Itō is led to the dingy back alleys of Shinjuku. What should have been a straightforward investigation morphs into a twisted and horrible nightmare. To be able to find the truth Itō will need to face her past. She will need to walk the fine line of maintaining her sanity while diving into the shadowy underbelly of Tokyo, exploring environments based on real world locations. Will Itō’s past haunt her or will she be able to stand by her decisions? Will she be able to face the horrors presented by Tokyo and escape the grasp of insanity?


Make Your Head Spin

When Cherrymochi created Tokyo Dark they wanted to celebrate the heritage of its international team, with members from five different countries. With inspiration from Japanese pop culture, western adventure games and anime visuals they created the Point-and-Click Adventure/Visual Novel hybrid. As you progress through Itō’s story you will be presented with multiple choices, both in terms of dialogue and how you will solve various puzzles that present themselves along the way. How will you open the locked bin to explore what’s inside? Shoot off the lock, or search for the key? To get the information you need, will you threaten bar patrons or flirt with them? Your choices and actions will affect your S.P.I.N. - a system that measures your Sanity, Professionalism, Investigation and Neurosis levels. Depending on your S.P.I.N. levels others may interact and react to you in different ways, as well as different options becoming available for you to use. Even the world around you can change. Depending on how you choose to go about Itō’s investigations the story can branch and lead you to one of eleven different possible endings. But do not worry about each choice being permanent, once you have completed one playthrough of the game you unlock NewGame+ which allows you to position yourself at each narrative fork in the road allowing you to discover the other conclusions that Itō can face.


Collective Memories

Once a week we look back at previous titles published by Square Enix Collective. You can purchase Tokyo Dark on Steam. Share with us your Collective memories of Tokyo Dark using #CollectiveMemories

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