Visual Novel / Tokyo Dark

1 Following

Tokyo Dark is a 2D point & click adventure game by Cherrymochi Game Studio and Square Enix Collective. It is a twisting detective story featuring a multitude of choices, non-linear puzzle-solving, and a deep branching narrative exploring the darker underbelly of Tokyo.

Detective Ayami Itō, a woman who has worked hard to get respected in the police force, goes on what seems like a routine assignment. But soon, her partner, Kazuki Tanaka, goes missing, and the culprit, Reina, is a woman who should be dead. What starts as a straightforward case soon spirals into a twisted nightmare that causes the detective to confront her past and question her own sanity. Is there really a lost door deep below Tokyo? Are there living shadows, lurking in the dark? Will the past come back to haunt her, or should she stand by her decisions?

This game is said to have been inspired by Life is Strange, and psychological thrillers like Se7en and Clock Tower.

Tokyo Dark was released on September 7, 2017. A version subtitled Remembrance was released for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 5 with a new engine and some additional content.

This visual novel contains examples of:

• Ambiguous Situation: Invoked in the Insanity ending: the entire game's events are supposedly Through the Eyes of Madness of Ayami, who was never a detective and believed Tanaka was her partner. She took his secret relationship with Reina — an ordinary pop idol — as being corrupted by Reina, and shot them both dead. However, given this ending is only obtainable after going insane, plus dialogue from The Collector and the Historian, it's implied it's The Collector letting her go crazy from her "desires" (finding Tanaka, etc) and shoving her into an Alternate Timeline where it looks like she's the crazy one. Of note is that Ayami's Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises turn to her normal, sane look when Yumi leaves. There's also the fact she somehow managed to get ahold of a service pistol... the same one she uses in the "real" timelines.
• Auto-Save: Unique in that it is used to make every decision final and prevent Save Scumming.
• Big Bad: Reina, aka Ruby, is the mysterious ghost girl who is the culprit behind several incidents and the kidnapping and death of Kazuki Tanaka, Detective Ayami Itō's Love Interest. Reina aims to steal the Mask from Ayami, who spends the game chasing her down, in order to reach her mother's spirit in the Door because the Collector told her to, and because her abuse at the hands of Higachi and Tokimassa had warped her.
• Bittersweet Ending: In the Becoming/True ending, Ayami willingly becomes the Mask Bearer by sacrificing Tanaka. On one hand, she is now immortal and has control over the Dark, and so mankind is no longer threatened by the Dark. But on the other hand, given what happened to Chikako, the first Mask Bearer, it's implied that she'll slowly lose her memories of her life and her humanity and thus become detached from mankind.
• But Thou Must!: The game will not progress at all if the player does not kill Reina at Kamakura and take a significant hit to their Sanity score^note the timer will randomize with each passing second until a choice is made, all of which reads "Kill Her".. Occurs at least twice more towards the end of the game, only less insanity-inducing.
• Creepy Crosses: Reina has a couple of crosses on her as well as part of her Elegant Gothic Lolita getup.
• Cuckoo Nest: One ending reveals Ayami was never a detective, but in fact a deluded stalker obsessed with Tanaka, who was in a forbidden relationship with Reina, an ordinary J-Pop idol. Reina being behind Tanaka's disappearance was, in fact, Ayami being convinced that she corrupted him, and Tanaka and Reina's "disappearance" were the result of her killing them in a fit of madness. It's heavily implied this was the Collector simply pushing her fraying sanity over the edge, and the events of the game actually did happen.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • If you keep taking the meds you're assigned way past the max dose, it becomes very clear Ayami is suicidal over Tanaka's loss, grieving that her life is empty now. Keep taking them and Ayami dies from an overdose, hoping to be Together in Death with Tanaka.
  • This happens to Daizo, if Ayami discourages him from continuing his bar at one point. If she goes to Shinjuku around the end and visits him, she finds his dead body along with a suicide note.
• Easter Egg: If Ayami picks up all the Maneko Neko that she finds, then instead of finding Tanaka at the other side of the Door, she finds herself in a cat shrine led by Lady Fluffington. At no point is it shown that the player can click on the cat toys in the background (the only sign that this Easter egg exists is when Ayami mentions that she should pick any new ones up if she should find any).
• Failure Is the Only Option: No matter how careful the player picks their dialogue options, there is no way to save Tanaka at the start of the game save for stop playing it altogether.
• Flash Sideways: New Game+ is this trope; Ito's hallucinations allow her to make lucid dreams of other timelines, i.e. other runs of the game. Also, the Collector and the Historian, both mysterious powerful characters, discuss the implications of multiple timelines after each ending and the results of that ending, all mentioning that they are side paths to the "inevitable end" (that being the Becoming ending).
• Fun with Acronyms: The main meters system is called SPIN: Sanity, Professionalism, Investigation, and Neurosis.
• Hate Sink: Reina is ultimately a tragic figure with a Freudian Excuse; but these four men, two of whom warped her into a monster, are the embodiment of misogyny and arrogance:
  • Goto is a fat, ugly, and perverted businessman who's hobby is pressuring teen girls into sexually servicing him in the sewer. When Detective Ayami Ito first encounters him, he hits on her; later he is discovered to have antagonized Akane to the point of making her cry. When Ayami returns to make him stop, he is seen with yet another girl whom is pleading with Ayami to save her. Ayami can choose to blackmail, threaten, or even kill him; taking the last option leads to the ending where Ayami is arrested.
  • Detective Akira Taira is The Rival to Ayami and a haughty Jerkass. Constantly deriding Ayami at every opportunity and treating her as incompetent simply for being a woman, Taira is introduced mocking Ayami for failing her mission, an event which had traumatized her due to the death of her Love Interest. When she gets demoted as a result, he takes her spot, and repeatedly antagonizes her whenever he finds her, treating her like a criminal. In the Arrested ending, he gleefully arrests Ayami for killing Goto, gloating the whole time, while ignoring her protests that Goto deserved to die for victimizing innocent girls.
  • Eiichi Higashi was the Human Trafficker who abused Reina and directly turned her into an evil spirit. As the head of the talent agency Omega, he would recruit girls to be his idols while pimping and sexually abusing them behind doors, with Reina, his adopted daughter, as his latest victim. He would put her through horrible abuse until she finally snapped and killed herself, then came for him as a spirit. Everyone who mentions Higashi describes him as a monster, and even Ayami feels that he fully deserved his fate.
  • Tokimassa, real name Shinji Umezawa, was the deranged leader of the second Kamenkai cult. Despising humanity and modern society, he turned down-on-their-luck people into his followers, fleeing with them to Aokigahara. He world emotionally abuse a young Reina and eventually make her into the Mask Bearer by killing everyone in a mass Murder-Suicide, including her mom, traumatizing her.
• He Knows About Timed Hits: In the beginning of the game you are told to check your SPIN attributes and to press 'Esc'.
• Interface Screw: If any of your meters get too low or if Neurosis gets too high, the way you will see the world will change for the negative.
• It's a Wonderful Failure: Letting your Sanity run out results in an extended Game Over/bad ending where it's revealed Ayami was never a detective — she was stalking Kazuki out of the belief they were partners, and snapped when he began dating Reina, who is just an ordinary celebrity. She killed them both, and the entire game (supposedly) is her living out a schizophrenic fantasy of being a detective rescuing her lover.
• Jump Scare: The image of an uncanny and unsettling Noh mask may suddenly pop up on the screen and vanish when you least expect it.
• Karma Meter: Low professionalism gives you options that are not entirely legal, for example breaking and entering; high professionalism makes others respect you more.
• Laughing Mad: Reaching -100 Sanity triggers a cutscene where Ayami snaps and devolves into deranged laughter.
• Multiple Endings: 11 of them:
  • Revenge: If Ayami's sanity is low, but not -100, she gets the option when confronting Reina to push her into the Door and render her Deader than Dead.
  • Only a Child: If Ayami reaches Reina with enough sanity, she gets the option to forgive her and bring her to the Door so she can reunite with her mother.
  • The End Of The Mask: If Ayami lets Goto live and decides to go to Kamakura after Aokigahara, then she will engage in the ritual to destroy the Mask; unfortunately, this causes the Dark to go out of control, causing mass crime which Ayami is brought back on the force to combat.
  • Reap What You Sow: Unlocked by killing Goto in the sewer, then going to Kamakura to purify the mask after going to Aokigahara; in it, Ayami gets arrested for killing Goto.
  • Goodbye, I Love You: Ayami abandons Reina and reaches Kazuki, but decides to leave him in the Dark and save herself.
  • I'll Remember How You Were: If Ayami has enough sanity when she reaches Kazuki, she can pull him out of the Dark; but he is rendered comatose, and it looks like he may never wake up, so Ayami promises to remember how he used to be when awake.
  • Alone Together: Ayami abandons Reina and reaches Kazuki, and decides to vanish into the Dark with him.
  • Lost: Unlocked by overdosing on antipsychotics in Ito's apartment; Ayami dies from the overdose.
  • Nothing is Real: Unlocked by having -100 sanity when leaving Aokigahara; Ayami goes insane and is committed to a mental asylum, where it's revealed she actually killed her "partner" and Reina, with the events of the game and the Dark being a delusion.
  • Becoming: The True Ending, which can only be unlocked on a New Game Plus. Ayami decides to show Reina the Door and free her from her suffering, then sacrifices the soul of Kazuki to the Mask, so Ayami can become the Mask Bearer and stop the Dark from consuming the world.
  • The Cat God's Blessing: The Secret ending. To get this ending, Ayami must find the 20 cat toys hidden around the areas of the game. Finding them all and abandoning Reina to find Kazuki will instead result in Ayami being pulled away by her cat, Lady Fluffington, who reveals that she is a goddess of sorts who wanted to save Ayami from her fate, and kindly imprisons her in a dimension full of cats to keep her out of Eldritch terror.
• New Game Plus: After completing the game once, this option is unlocked. It allows the player to save at certain intervals and unlocks the 11th ending.
• Point of No Return: Every choice you make, thanks to Auto-Save, is impossible to take back.
• Sanity Meter: Two of Ito's four meters are Sanity, and Neuroticism; if the latter gets too high, the former will decrease faster and become harder to regain. Letting it run out results in a lengthy bad ending where Ayumi snaps, cackles hysterically, and is revealed to be a delusional stalker who killed Tanaka and Reina and has hallucinated the entire story.
• Shoot Out the Lock: Ayami can choose to do so at the beginning of the game, but takes a hit to professionalism if she does.
• Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises: Twice in the Insanity ending: one for the cutscene where she completely snaps and goes Laughing Mad, and one for when her (possibly) true self is revealed: an insane, disheveled maniac locked up in an insane asylum for murdering Tanaka and Reina, an ordinary detective and an ordinary pop idol.