Seasons of Books and Keys: Hyouka Author's Novel Gets a Demo

An upperclassman asks you to open the safe her late grandfather left behind. Following the clues he left, you solve the mystery yourself. A demo of Seasons of Books and Keys is on Steam for Steam Next Fest. The game, announced in July, is based on a novel by Honobu Yonezawa, author of Hyouka. The demo contains all of Chapter 1, “913,” which covers this request.

The source novel is the first volume of the Toshoiin Series. iMel Inc. developed the game, and SHUEISHA GAMES will publish it. The full game is planned for Steam (Windows), with a Nintendo Switch version also on the way. No release date has been announced.

Requests land in the library after school: a safe that won’t open, missing exam questions, the last book read by a student who died by suicide. Jiro Horikawa is on the library committee, a group of students who help run the school library on a rotating basis. Jiro works through these mysteries together with partner Shimon Matsukura.

The game’s genre is “Drama-like adventure.” The official site describes it as a mix of reading text and watching video: you read the text, watch the screen, listen to the voices and use the controls to move forward. It also says the story is fully voiced. The voice acting is in Japanese, with English available as text, according to Steam. It is a single-player game. Alongside the story based on the novel’s first volume, the full game includes “Vintage Strange Stories,” an episode written for the game.

Since the two take on each request together, solving the puzzles will likely mean following their back-and-forth. In the full game, even readers of the novel should find a new mystery waiting in “Vintage Strange Stories.”

Language: English
Players: Single-player
As of October 20, 2026