Dragon Quest co-creator Yuji Horii released a browser-based interrogation game over the weekend. He said he built it in about 30 minutes using generative AI.
Yuji Horii is a 72-year-old designer who also created the 1983 murder-mystery classic The Portopia Serial Murder Case. He posted the new game to X on Sunday with a side-by-side reflection on his career. “I came up with the story myself, drew the pictures myself, did the programming myself, and created the game all by myself. And now, by using AI, even if I can’t draw pictures or program, I can just give instructions to the AI and create a decent game all by myself. It’s truly astonishing,” Horii wrote. “By the way, the production time for the game below was just about 30 minutes. Oh, and don’t press the boost button.”
The new game, Komiya in the Interrogation Room (取調室の小宮), is a short browser experience built around questioning a 72-year-old suspect over a possible safe robbery. Players pick from prompted lines of questioning to surface lies. Agitation and Resistance meters track how much pressure Komiya is under. If either meter hits 100, the suspect stops talking. The game itself is hosted as a Claude artifact, accessible via the link Horii shared on X. Claude is an AI assistant from Anthropic.
The release continues a year of public AI advocacy from Horii. Earlier in 2026, the Dragon Quest 10 MMO added a Gemini-powered NPC chatbot called Chatty Slimey. Horii defended the chatbot in an interview with Famitsu, translated by GamesRadar. He called AI “really smart” and “fun.” Horii is currently working on Dragon Quest XII and on a long-rumored Portopia sequel.
Our read: Horii’s 1983 Portopia Serial Murder Case was a one-person game credited with paving the way for Nintendo‘s Famicom Detective Club. His new browser experiment is, in some ways, the same argument thirty-plus years later. A single designer can still ship a complete game without a studio behind them. The 2023 Square Enix remake of Portopia was maligned for its AI use. Horii’s new game reads as a personal answer. A 30-minute AI-built experiment he stands behind, made in the same solo spirit as the original. He’s also still publicly defending AI in Dragon Quest 10’s Chatty Slimey chatbot. The contrast with Black Myth: Zhong Kui’s public rejection of AI is the AI-in-games debate playing out in two Japanese creators in the same month. For more Japan indie angles, see our SCREW IT party game reveal and our full release calendar.
Edited by Kerwin Stewart, Editor-in-Chief · How we report
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