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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Still a few more days to catch Mysteries of Old Tokyo in the Steam Summer Sale! Dive head-first into the real history of Tokyo, from prehistory to present, in this delightful detective puzzle adventure with over 40 real-life landmarks. #steam #steamsummersale #indiegames

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

The Steam Summer Sale is here, and it's coming for Mysteries of Old Tokyo! Enjoy a 16% discount until July 9. #indiegames #steam #steamsummersale

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

You have just under an hour to buy your very own Mysteries of Old Tokyo with the 10% launch discount! 27 reviews, 100% positive. Now Verified on Steam Deck!

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

Today's the day! MYSTERIES OF OLD TOKYO is out right now! Explore the real history of Tokyo across 30 real-life landmarks in a new detective adventure puzzler, available on Steam. #indiegames #steam

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

Demo v3.0 for Mysteries of Old Tokyo is now live! The demo returns to Steam with a new office, auto-save, and a much-improved UI. #indiegames #demos #steam

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

So, Next Fest is off to a good start. See, Steam algorithm, if you actually show my game to people, they may actually have a chance to wishlist it! #gamedev #indiedev #nextfest #steam

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

Mysteries of Old Tokyo, my debut game, is in Steam Next Fest, starting right now! It's a detective adventure puzzler set in Tokyo, with reams of historical research. Add to your wishlist! Try the demo! #indiegames #steam #demos

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

Made my Next Fest graphic! It's so tough to like ... sell my entire game with one image. Constantly questioning if I should add more, or less. I tried a split-screen then/now effect, but it just didn't work. Anyway, play the demo! And wishlist! #indiedev #solodev #gamedev

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

After 248 days on the store, I've reached my pre-Next Fest target of 3,000 Steam wishlists. Hard to believe I'm at this point. I remember when 300 wishlists was a crazy number. To once again quote LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy: "Thanks for supporting this weird thing!" #indiedev #gamedev

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

I think the Ace Attorney games do this really well.

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

In the run-up to Next Fest, there's a new pre-release demo for MYSTERIES OF OLD TOKYO! V2.1.0 totally changes the way you explore new locations and discover evidence with an improved map of Tokyo. #indiegames #demos #steam #nextfest

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

New menu. I love this thing. I don't know why. It feels very personal to me. Like, years of messing around in image editors and learning to code and thinking about design have created this, #indiegames #indiedev #gamedev

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

All agents: Our equipment request dated July 1998 has been processed by Procurement and approved by Finance. Please look out for your updated CluesPDA in the next release. Additionally, we are excited to issue the new CluesPAGR to selected agents. #indiegames #gamedev

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

So I loaded a build of the finished game on my Steam Deck yesterday, and played about halfway. It works great. Easy to play on Steam Deck, and only minor bugs. But what's interesting is that the full game gets a bit repetitive in a way that the (short) demo doesn't. #gamedev #indiedev #steamdeck

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 06/02/2026

Probably the most requested feature from ̷i̷n̷v̷e̷s̷t̷o̷r̷s̷ players of MYSTERIES OF OLD TOKYO is a hint system. So we've invested $10 million of vendor finance capital into Ria, our new AI assistant running on an enormous underwater datacenter in the Sargasso Sea. Coming soon to the demo! #indiegames

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

The game's finished! Well, the alpha version. Or maybe beta. Or somewhere in between. But in theory you can now load up the game, complete the tutorial, solve all puzzles across all ten chapters, finish the final chapter, and see this glorious end screen. (End screen WIP) #gamedev #indiedev

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

The death poem of Asano Naganori, the "villain" of the 47 Ronin story. (Translation by me) #indiegames #gamedev #indiedev

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

All 30 puzzles... COMPLETE! This feels great. A huge milestone for my game. Lots of polish and tidying left to do... but that can start tomorrow. One of the last puzzles got so complicated, it broke the interface 😹 #indiegames #gamedev #indiedev

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 30/01/2026

Four views of Ochanomizu. Ochanomizu has always been one of my favourite places in Tokyo, and I think that first image (Meiji era) shows why. Even in the late 19th century it was a quite untamed patch of river. It still feels a little wild today. #tokyo #ochanomizu #japan

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

In my mind, the best way to play Mysteries of Old Tokyo is with a hot beverage, a pen and paper, and a browser window open with Wikipedia and a map of Tokyo. #indiegames #gamedev #tokyo

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 24/01/2026

I try to love all my postcards equally, and some of them immediately lend themselves to interesting puzzles and exploring the fascinating history behind them, but others are just ... "it's a building. It doesn't exist any more because they built a taller, slightly uglier building." #gamedev

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 24/01/2026

After the buzz around Forza Horizon 6, which also recreates Tokyo, a lot of people are asking me: How does Mysteries of Old Tokyo stack up in the crowded Q2 release period? Am I worried about the competition from the good folks at Playground Games? Here's the low-down: #indiegames

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

The new year-picker component in action. This was surprisingly simple - just duplicated the existing "word hole" and replaced the drag-and-drop functionality with the pop-up year entry. Everything else (display, validation) is the same, so I don't even have to change the puzzles. #gamedev

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

Added an integration with the Steam on-screen keyboard to make the game easier to play without a keyboard. On Steam Deck or Big Picture mode, it opens automatically whenever you click on a text input. Thanks to the excellent GodotSteam plugin, this was way easier than I anticipated! #gamedev

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

This could be one of those coding interview nightmares. "Implement a YYYY year picker." "No problem." "With support for Japanese era names, from Kaei to the present day." #gamedev

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Demo v2.0.1 is live! A new, more accessible drag-and-drop option that's also convenient if you're playing on Steam Deck, or any device without a mouse. #indiegames

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 14/01/2026

Well. Steam Detective Fest is going nicely. #gamedev

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

My game is number 1 in Popular Upcoming on Steam!!!* *(In the Steam Detective Fest under the "Historical" tag) Jokes aside, this is very, very cool. #steamdetectivefest #indiegames

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 11/01/2026

A happy little accident, as I make the remaining puzzles: each week seems to lend itself naturally to a theme. For example, Chapter 4, with General Nogi's house and Gunjin-kaikan, seems like it'll be about the Russo-Japanese War. As well as an unrelated incident where a cow fell in a pond.

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 10/01/2026

Japan and Finland have long been fascinated by one another. I found this neat book from the Finnish geographer J.G. Granö about his trip to Japan in 1911. #japan #finland

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

I updated my Steam page now that I have a firm idea of what the final game will be like. I think it's a lot more consistent now. It's also nice that Valve added embedded video a few months back, so no more headaches optimising GIFs! #indiegames #gamedev #steam

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 07/01/2026

The wait is over: MYSTERIES OF OLD TOKYO DEMO 2.0 is LIVE on Steam! Visit Ginza, Asakusa, Hibiya Park, and 4 other iconic Tokyo locations in this updated pre-release teaser, available now on Steam. #indiegames #japan #tokyo #steam

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

Demo 2.0 is nearly ready for the Steam Detective Fest! I recorded some footage to update the trailer, and also got some new screenshots for the Steam page. This is probably more or less the final design for the game now. #indiegames #detectivefest #steam

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

Fixed the CRT filter shader for MYSTERIES OF OLD TOKYO! It's not too intense, but in certain places the shader really sells the "it's 1998 and you have an hour on the PC to play this new game" feeling. #indiegames #gamedev

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

A few experiments later, suddenly I have 2,250 wishlists, a demo on Steam, and my first finished game releasing in a few months. What will 2026 bring?

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

2025 has been a big year. Last January, I put down Balatro and thought "Hey, this game dev thing can't be too hard. Could I make a game?" So I started. #gamedev #indiegames

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 31/12/2025

MYSTERIES OF OLD TOKYO is in the upcoming Steam Detective Fest! Coming to a red-string-laced-corkboard near you, Jan 12-19. Hopefully, I'll have a brand new demo (2.0) available by then, so check that out with your little magnifying glass. #indiegames #steam #steamdetectivefest

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 30/12/2025

I seem to have accidentally created a "it's 1997 and your CRT monitor has broken" shader #gamedev #indiegames

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

Started planning out the remaining postcard puzzles, and it's a delicate balance between several factors. #gamedev #indiegames #puzzles

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 28/12/2025

Added the Tōyoko Line to the game, allowing the player easy access to the River Tama from Shibuya. In the 1930s, the banks of the Tama were a popular spot for picnics, walking, golfing and swimming. The expanding railways made it much easier for residents of Tokyo to escape the city. #indiegames

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

768 MB -> 17 MB. Very satisfying. #gamedev

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

Boxing Day is a good day to optimise code while eating chocolate. I noticed my little 2D game is somehow using 700 MB+ of VRAM...

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

Feeling pretty optimistic about progress as we head towards the end of the year. I think the trickest thing left is to re-do the tutorial with the new gameplay loop. After that, it's just adding content and fixing bugs. #gamedev #indiegames

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 18/12/2025

See, I've been struggling with the "spirit report" part of the game, where you have to find inconsistencies in what the spirit tells you. It's fun and cool but it has the potential to be really frustrating.

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

A milestone today, even if it doesn't quite feel like it. I finished the gameplay 2.0 loop, so a whole vertical slice is ready. I just need to add a tutorial, add the rest of the characters and the puzzle resources, and fix all the bugs, and it's technically a full game. #gamedev #indiegames

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

Created a 90s-style "prerendered 3D menu-blob-thing" in Bryce/Krita using Godot's TextureButtons for the first time. It's so cool. It's so uncool. I want to use it, but I need to find some middle-ground between this glorious monstrosity and the more conservative design everywhere else. #gamedev

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 08/12/2025

8 bugs fixed... 7 more found. That's progress! #indiegames #gamedev

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 07/12/2025

A few previously unseen (I think?) postcards from Mysteries of Old Tokyo, plus a train ride on the Oedo Line from Ryogoku to Yoyogi. I had to clamber up a fire escape to get the Ryogoku Bridge photo. Hope that's OK. #indiegames #tokyo #japan

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 05/12/2025

A little blast from the past. Back in April I was working on this monorail simulator thing: I'd forgotten how cool it actually looked. I ought to go back and finish it... maybe next year. #indiegames #railsim

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Bolerosoft @bolerosoft.bsky.social · 04/12/2025

All-new 2D encyclopedia action! 世界初だそうです‼ A first look at Gameplay 2.0 for MYSTERIES OF OLD TOKYO! #indiegames #detectivegames #gamedev

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