Komiya in the Interrogation Room: Horii’s AI Detective Game Explained

Komiya in the Interrogation Room (取調室の小宮) is a free browser game that Yuji Horii, the 72-year-old co-creator of Dragon Quest and the 1983 detective classic The Portopia Serial Murder Case, built in about 30 minutes using Anthropic’s Claude. He shared it on X on October 11, 2026, and the post has since racked up 3.1 million views. The game is hosted as a Claude artifact, so you don’t download anything; you click the link and play. The official source is Horii’s October 11, 2026 X post, and our original news coverage of the release has the full story.

This is the explainer for people who have seen the post and want to know what they’re clicking on. It also links our Komiya in the Interrogation Room game page so the catalog page is current.

What Komiya in the Interrogation Room actually is

You play a detective interrogating Komiya, a 72-year-old suspect in a possible safe robbery. The whole game takes place inside the Claude artifact’s text window: there are no graphics beyond the Claude interface itself. The suspect lies by default, and you pick from prompted lines of questioning to surface the truth. The game tracks two meters:

• Agitation: how rattled Komiya is by your approach.
• Resistance: how much he’s digging in.

If either meter hits 100, the suspect stops talking and the run is over. You have to balance the meters while pulling the story out of him. Per the Kotaku write-up, the experience is closer to a short text adventure than a visual novel: the prompt you choose changes both the story reveal and which meter ticks up.

The game is short by design. Horii said the production time was about 30 minutes, and the resulting artifact runs roughly 10 to 15 minutes per playthrough, depending on how long you spend on each prompt and whether you finish the conversation or trigger a meter lockout first.

Quick answer: how to play in five steps

1. Open the official Claude artifact link. Horii shared the game as a public Claude artifact at claude.ai/artifact/HgsUQQywVPG8X87dp1NWHu, linked from his October 11 X post. No download.
2. Sign in or stay logged out. Anthropic lets you view Claude artifacts without a paid account, though signing in to a free Claude account gives you the full interactive version rather than a read-only preview.
3. Read the brief setup. The first Claude message frames the case and the two meters. Skim it; the prompts only make sense once you know what each meter does.
4. Pick a line of questioning. Claude offers a few buttons or typed options. Each one changes the story and moves the meters. Read the meter change before you click the next one.
5. Watch the Agitation and Resistance meters. If either hits 100, the suspect clams up and your run ends. The win condition is to extract the truth before that happens, and there’s no single right path through the conversation.

Horii’s one warning, in his original X post: don’t press the boost button (the in-game button that escalates the suspect’s agitation). Pressing boost is the fastest way to a meter lockout.

Platforms, price, and English availability

• Platforms: any modern web browser. It runs as a Claude artifact, so the only requirement is a browser that can load the Anthropic Claude interface (Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari, and mobile browsers all work). There is no Steam, console, or downloadable client version.
• Price: free. The artifact is publicly accessible, and the game is a Claude experiment, not a commercial release.
• English availability: the interface is fully in Japanese (the game title is 取調室の小宮, the suspect’s dialogue is Japanese), but the Agitation and Resistance labels are also Japanese. Two options: if you read Japanese, play it as Horii wrote it. If you don’t, the artifact should still translate through Claude’s chat sidebar in real time, and the Eurogamer article gives a full English summary of the framing and the prompts.
• Account requirement: a free Claude account unlocks the full interactive version. Logged-out users get a preview rather than the playable artifact.
• Length: roughly 10 to 15 minutes per playthrough, depending on the meter play and the number of prompts you choose before hitting the win or lockout state.

Who made it (and why)

The game is by Yuji Horii, who co-created Dragon Quest in 1986 with Akira Toriyama and Koichi Sugiyama, and who earlier created The Portopia Serial Murder Case in 1983 for the NEC PC-6001 / PC-8801. Portopia is the game credited with paving the way for Nintendo’s Famicom Detective Club. Horii is also publicly working on Dragon Quest XII and a Portopia sequel at G-Mode.

Horii’s post on October 11 explicitly contrasts Portopia (which he made alone, drawing and coding it himself) with the new artifact (which he made in 30 minutes with Claude). The full quote from his X post:

“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. By the way, the production time for the game below was just about 30 minutes. Oh, and don’t press the boost button.”

The release sits inside a longer Horii public push for generative AI in games. Earlier in 2026, Dragon Quest X added a Gemini-powered NPC chatbot called Chatty Slimey that Horii defended in a Famitsu interview translated by GamesRadar. VGC has also reported Horii is toying with adding an AI chatbot to a future game.

What you actually do as a player

There is no controller, no inventory, no map. You read, you pick a prompt, you watch the meters, you read again. The closest comparison is a text-based adventure or a short Twine game, but the lines of dialogue are generated by Claude in response to the prompt you choose, so two playthroughs can run differently depending on how the model rolls.

The art is whatever Anthropic’s Claude interface shows in the artifact view. There are no characters, no scenes, and no music. If you go in expecting a Dragon Quest production, you’ll be surprised; if you go in expecting a five-minute experiment from a veteran designer, you’ll be about right.

Horii’s solo game development: 1983 vs 2026

FAQ

Is Komiya in the Interrogation Room free?

Yes. The game is a public Claude artifact shared by Yuji Horii on X. There is no paid tier, no in-game purchases, and no subscription. You may want a free Claude account to play the full version, but the artifact itself is free to access.

How long is Komiya in the Interrogation Room?

A single playthrough runs roughly 10 to 15 minutes, depending on the prompts you choose and whether you hit a meter lockout. The game is not built for replay value beyond experimenting with different lines of questioning to see how the meters and the suspect’s answers change.

Do I need a Claude account to play?

A free Anthropic account lets you interact with the full artifact. Logged-out users may see a read-only preview. There is no paid requirement.

Is it available in English?

The game text is in Japanese. The artifact itself can be translated in real time through the Claude chat sidebar, and English coverage of the framing and the prompts is in the Eurogamer article and our news write-up.

Does it work on mobile?

The Claude artifact works in any modern mobile browser, so yes, you can play it on a phone. The experience is the same as on desktop: a text window, a few buttons, and the two meters. Touch controls work as expected for a web page.

Is there a downloadable version?

No. The game is a Claude artifact, not a standalone application. There is no Steam page, no iOS app, no console version, and no installer.

Komiya in the Interrogation Room is a small thing, but it’s a useful one for anyone who has followed the AI-in-games debate. Horii is one of the most famous living Japanese designers; he made the same argument forty years ago with Portopia, that a single person can still ship a complete game without a studio behind them. The 2023 Square Enix Portopia remake was broadly panned for its AI use; Horii’s new 30-minute AI-built experiment is, in some ways, the personal answer. The game is a curiosity more than a must-play, but it is free, it is short, and it is a real artifact from a real designer with a real public track record.

If you came here because someone linked you Horii’s post: yes, it really is a 30-minute AI-built game, yes, you can play it in your browser right now, and yes, the boost button really does end the run. The game page has the link and the catalog entry, and our original news story has the context if you want the full AI-in-Japanese-games picture.

Edited by the Pixel Herald newsroom · How we report

Edited by Kerwin Stewart, Editor-in-Chief · How we report