Operation Backlog Completion 2025
May 192025
 

Today we’re going to talk about D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die. It’s hard to know where to even begin.

Its full title is technically D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die – Season One. There will never be a Season Two.

D4 was directed and written by Hidetaka Suehiro, or Swery65, the man behind games like Deadly Premonition. It was developed by Access Games and published by Microsoft for Xbox One and PC. Season One contains the prologue and first two episodes, and Season Two was meant to continue it. But when Swery65 left Access Games, any chance of seeing Season Two vanished.

What’s left is a partial murder mystery with no solid answers and a cliffhanger ending, but while that means it doesn’t provide a lot of satisfaction plot-wise, it’s still worth playing for how utterly weird it is.

You play David Young, a detective whose wife was murdered under mysterious circumstances, leaving him with only her final words, “Look for D.” He can’t remember anything else that happened that night, but he gained the ability to travel back in time using certain key objects called mementos. By doing so, he hopes to learn the identity of “D” and possibly even undo his wife’s death.

The controls are very strange, most likely because it was designed for Kinect controls. You click certain areas to walk and click things in the environment to investigate them, but many actions are handled through motion – click a door and then swipe the cursor to the side to open it, grab a cup and swipe up to drink, click key spots during a fight to avoid taking damage, etc.

Everything you do costs stamina, which you can restore by eating food. Food you’ve eaten is recorded like a collectible, along with all the documents you can read and other interactions. If you really want every piece of lore and story, you’ll spend a lot of time in David’s house opening drawers, checking out books, and stumbling across memories of his wife, which gives it an almost slice-of-life feel when you aren’t back in time gathering clues. There are even small “side cases” that range from having dinner to taking a quiz on airplanes.

None of this is why I called it weird, by the way.

D4’s weirdness is hard to explain. If you’ve played Deadly Premonition, you probably have an idea of how weird it could be, but magnify that even further. Every second of D4 feels like insanity. It really is impossible to describe in words.

Fortunately, I’ve found some videos online.

I think that says it all.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time with D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die – Season One, a surreal adventure game experience where anything could happen and be treated as normal and you never quite know what to expect.

While I’ve highlighted the weirder aspects here, I should also mention that the overarching mystery was pretty intriguing and I’d love to know what it was building up to. It’s a shame we’ll likely never get to see Season Two, but at least Season One still exists as a curious relic of what could have been.

May 162025
 

Our next mystery game is a short, free PC game called Fonzi Fuddy: Ace Defective.

You play “a,” a detective intern whose first day on the job is marred when she accidentally stabs someone to death. Oops.

Now it’s time to investigate the case alongside your detective partner, Fonzi Fuddy, with the help of the Backwards Corruption Jump device.

This device lets you force a suspect to tell the truth when you find a contradiction. If someone makes a statement that contradicts the evidence, you present the evidence to them. Then you have to fight them in a simple RPG battle. Once you defeat them, time rewinds and they replace their lie with the truth.

On the other hand, if you have evidence that appears to incriminate someone else, you can always make an accusation and get them accused of the crime instead…

There are early endings if you choose to accuse someone, as well as one full ending if you pursue the truth all the way to the end to untangle the full mystery of what happened.

It’s cute and silly, and it’s full of charm. The gameplay is pretty simple, including the combat system, and it takes less than an hour to beat. It looks like it was made for a game jam originally, with a complete version that came out later.

It also ends on a note that suggests there could be a sequel, and I’d love to see a full game in this style. Fonzi Fuddy: Ace Defective is a short game, but it’s worth taking a look at.

May 142025
 

Tokyo Psychodemic caught my eye when it was first announced, and I ordered a physical Japanese copy for the Switch that came with a promise English would eventually be patched in.

That happened in November, so it joined my lineup of mystery games to review this May.

Although I played the Switch version, Tokyo Psychodemic is available on Steam and PlayStation as well. It’s an adventure game that uses both a 2D visual novel presentation and live action videos as you try to solve its cases.

Set in the aftermath of a viral epidemic that led to a lockdown, it follows two detectives trying to solve strange cases while searching for clues about a cult of psychics.

Tokyo Psychodemic begins with a message to the player that all of its cases can be solved with real-world science, which holds true for most of the game until the main plot actually comes into focus near the end, because the main plot is legitimately about people who developed psychic powers due to a cult’s unethical experiments. I’m not sure why they included the disclaimer, unless it’s meant to make sure players know they should be looking for realistic explanations for the cases.

This is a game that at once feels complicated and yet simple. You have a bunch of tools at your disposal – an image analysis machine that lets you compare videos and images, an audio analysis machine, documents to examine and find key words, and a computer where you can contact members of your secret network to ask for information and new data – and it can seem overwhelming. At the same time, it’s often a very guided experience that tells you exactly what you should analyze and what tools to use, with only a handful of times when you’re left on your own to figure out where to look for the information you need.

The result is a combination that might turn some players away, but I enjoyed it. It feels like you’re actually putting in real detective work to solve the case, without being so obtuse that it’s frustrating. For example, in one case you need to watch security camera footage (which is live action), scan the faces of passersby to see if they match the victim, and send that information to your contact to track the victim’s path across the city.

(Although there is one point where you need to figure out a password by recognizing a Japanese melody… if there’s a way to identify the melody in the game, I missed it.)

Most of your time will be spent on this sort of analysis, moving from one screen to another and searching for clues. When you aren’t locked in to a particular activity, you can move around the tiny area that serves as your base to feed your cat or go outside. Going outside at these points gives you a series of optional visual novel scenes that help to flesh out the characters and their relationships a bit.

Unfortunately, it’s not quite enough. The visual novel scenes are nice, but there weren’t enough of them for me to get attached to the characters or especially invested in the plot. The player character might as well not even exist; Tomona (the girl in the cover art pictured above) feels more like the protagonist in most scenes. And until near the end, the main story takes a backseat to the mystery solving.

But solving the cases is interesting, and I enjoyed its approach to analyzing evidence for clues. Tokyo Psychodemic ends on a sequel hook, and although it wasn’t an amazing storytelling experience, I’d be interested in trying the sequel if and when it’s made.