Hatoful Boyfriend was a great (though bizarre) text-based visual novel where you play as the only human attending an elite school for birds. Like I said, pretty strange. Fortunately for fans of that game, character designer Hato Moa is back with something almost as off-the-wall. Murder by Numbers is a murder mystery game where your cop partner is a robot and you find clues by solving picross puzzles. Check it out below.

Murder by Numbers looks absolutely bonkers. The art style strays away from the Hatoful Boyfriend style but is just as good in its own way. I'm a massive sucker for picross games, so seeing it get mashed into a wacky murder mystery visual novel is a dream come true. This would be enough to sell me on its own, but the team at Mediatonic shared even more news today.

Hatoful Boyfriend took some of its inspiration for Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, one of the best visual novels ever released. Which makes it super cool that Masakazu Sugimori is doing the music for Murder by Numbers. Sugimori is the composer behind Ace Attorney, Ghost Trick, and Viewtiful Joe. So, some of the best Capcom games from that era. It's a matchup that I didn't know I needed but I am very excited to see the two creators come together.

Murder by Numbers currently has a tentative release date of "Early 2020". When it does release, it will come to Nintendo Switch and PC. Do yourself a favor and play Hatoful Boyfriend before then. It's a great game.