Dragon Quest creator Yuji Horii gets surprise sequel to 1983 murder mystery The Portopia Serial Murder Case

Yuji Horii, the creator of Dragon Quest, is returning to his 1983 murder mystery The Portopia Serial Murder Case with a sequel announced in the Japanese version of this week's Nintendo Direct. The new game, titled in Japanese roughly as The Portopia Serial Murder Case 2: Burial of Oblivion, is set for a 2027 release on Switch 2 and PC, and it did not appear in the Western broadcasts of the show, which instead led with titles such as Kirby and the World Beyond, Metroid Ravenous and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

The original The Portopia Serial Murder Case launched 43 years ago, first on personal computers and later on the NES, and became a significant hit for its publisher Enix, now Square Enix. Its influence reached well beyond its own sales: Hideo Kojima has credited the game as one of the reasons he wanted to make games in the first place. The sequel keeps the text-based detective work and witness interrogations of the original while introducing a new string of murders.

Horii is supervising the project as executive director, according to the game's Steam page. The Steam description sets the sequel in 1980s Kobe, where players investigate alongside a new cast of characters to uncover secrets hidden behind the original murders. It describes the title as a menu-driven, command-selection text adventure game.

The announcement arrives during a week in which Nintendo packed its dual Direct presentations with major releases, making the Portopia sequel an easy one to miss for audiences outside Japan. The game's Steam page shows no sign of English-language support yet, which suggests the sequel may follow the original's path as a title aimed primarily at the Japanese market.

More details are expected as the game approaches its 2027 release window. What remains unclear is whether the sequel will eventually receive a Western release or English localization, and how closely it will tie its story to the events of the 1983 original beyond the shared setting and returning mechanics.