- Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii released a free browser-based game on October 11, 2026, called Interrogation Room Komiya (取調室の小宮).
- Horii says the game was built using Claude AI and took “just about 30 minutes” from start to finish.
- He called the experience “truly astonishing” and said “AI these days is really smart, so it’s fun.”
- The game is a text-based mystery where players interrogate Komiya, a 72-year-old former locksmith suspected in a pawnshop safe robbery.
- The game is available for free via a Claude Artifact link shared on Horii’s X account.
- Horii drew parallels to his landmark 1983 game The Portopia Serial Murder Case, which he built entirely solo — and which is getting a full remake titled Next: The Portopia Serial Murder Case in 2027.
- Horii is also still working on Dragon Quest XII, the next mainline entry in one of gaming’s most iconic franchises.
Yuji Horii has been making games since 1983, and over the course of four decades built one of the most beloved RPG franchises in history. So when the co-creator of Dragon Quest says he made a game in 30 minutes and found the experience “truly astonishing,” it’s worth paying attention — even if the reaction from the gaming community has been decidedly mixed.
What Is Interrogation Room Komiya?
On October 11, 2026, Horii posted a link on X (formerly Twitter) to a new browser-based game called Interrogation Room Komiya (取調室の小宮). It’s a short text-based mystery adventure where the player takes on the role of a police detective interrogating a suspect named Komiya — a 72-year-old former locksmith who is under suspicion for a pawnshop safe robbery. The game is available for free via a Claude Artifact link, meaning it runs entirely in the browser with no download or account required.
Horii shared the game alongside a simple note: “By the way, the production time for the game below was just about 30 minutes.” He also added that “AI these days is really smart, so it’s fun,” and described the experience as “truly astonishing.” He noted that players should avoid using the boost button, which suggests some mild pacing mechanics are baked into the experience.
The game was created using Anthropic’s Claude AI, with Horii apparently directing Claude to build the experience by giving it prompts and instructions rather than writing any code or designing any assets by hand himself. The result is a brief, functional mystery — modest in scope but notable for who made it and how fast.
Why This Is More Than Just a Novelty
For most game developers, a quick AI prototype would be a footnote. For Yuji Horii, it carries significant historical weight. Interrogation Room Komiya is deliberately reminiscent of his first major work: The Portopia Serial Murder Case, a 1983 mystery adventure game that Horii developed solo on early personal computers, handling the story, art, and programming himself. That game is now widely considered one of the foundational works of the mystery and visual novel genre in Japan, and its influence on adventure games — and on Hideo Kojima, who cited it as a direct inspiration for Snatcher — is hard to overstate.
In recent interviews, Horii had spoken about how working on Portopia all those years ago required him to do everything himself from scratch. The parallel he drew with Interrogation Room Komiya is pointed: back then, solo development meant months of work. Today, simply giving instructions to an AI allowed him to create a “fairly decent game” in half an hour. He framed it not as a gimmick but as a genuine expansion of what’s possible for individual creators — noting that AI enables a single person to make something playable without needing artistic or coding skills.
Horii has been interested in AI’s potential in games for several years. He’s previously talked about wanting to build an adventure game where players can converse with AI characters — specifically imagining a murder mystery where an AI handles interrogation responses dynamically rather than through pre-scripted dialogue trees. Interrogation Room Komiya is essentially a real, playable version of that vision, even if it’s a small one.
Community Reaction — Not Everyone Is Impressed
The reaction from the gaming community has been predictably divided. The game landed the same week as the Epic Games/Disney AI development story, meaning it dropped into an already-heated conversation about AI’s role in the games industry. Some players have pointed out that describing Interrogation Room Komiya as something Horii “made” is semantically generous — the AI did the building, with Horii providing the direction. Others have noted that a 30-minute prototype is exactly that: a prototype, not a finished product.
At the same time, defenders of the experiment have pointed out that Horii isn’t claiming this is a commercial release or a replacement for traditional development. It’s a personal experiment shared openly and for free — closer in spirit to a game jam entry than a studio production. The more interesting takeaway, from a game design history perspective, is that one of the founding figures of the JRPG genre is actively exploring these tools and finding them genuinely exciting rather than dismissing them.
What Horii Is Actually Working On
While Interrogation Room Komiya is the kind of side project that takes an afternoon, Horii’s main professional commitments are considerably more substantial. He is still actively working as lead designer on Dragon Quest XII, the next mainline entry in the franchise he co-created in 1986. Dragon Quest XII has been in development for some time and has faced publicly acknowledged difficulties, though no release date has been announced.
He’s also involved as general director on Next: The Portopia Serial Murder Case, a full remake of his 1983 mystery game announced last September. The remake adds five entirely new stories, features character designs by Kyoji Asano from WIT Studio, and is currently scheduled to release in 2027 on Switch 2, Switch, and PC via Steam. Portopia’s connection to Interrogation Room Komiya is obvious — both are mystery interrogation games built around conversation — which suggests that Horii’s AI experiment wasn’t entirely disconnected from the work he’s doing on the remake.
The broader context for Horii’s AI interest is Square Enix’s own push into the space. Earlier in 2026, Square Enix partnered with Google to introduce a Gemini-powered chatbot called Chatty Slimey in Dragon Quest X. Horii commented approvingly on the initiative, noting the chatbot’s ability to have natural conversations with players — which aligns with his longer-standing interest in mystery games that react dynamically to player dialogue rather than pre-baked menu commands.
The AI in games conversation is clearly not going away, and it’s getting noisier by the week — the story of Epic Games mandating AI-first development on its delayed Marvel and Star Wars shooter landed the same day as Horii’s announcement, framing two very different uses of the same technology. For context on what else is happening in gaming right now, check out our coverage of No Man’s Sky coming to iOS on October 28 — another story about a veteran developer finding new ways to reach players with existing work. And for fighting game fans, Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls’ full Year 1 DLC roster is confirmed with Phoenix Cyclops leading the charge on November 2.
