My Memory of Us is a puzzle game. It focuses on a shared story between a young girl and an old man who is telling her a story about his childhood, and the girl he was friends with back then. Turns out the old man was once a young thief. And he met the girl after getting chased by soldiers for his thieving ways. It’s an exaggerated and fairy-tale like story about Poland’s invasion by the Nazi war machine.
Most of the game is fairly lighthearted in things you see and do it’s a good game for children in that sense. However, as adults you can see the darkness of the game because you know what the embellished things actually are, you know the monstrous things that actually happened. As such the story doesn’t have a lot to ruin since most of us know what the Nazis did. Many embellishments to the story are now that Nazis are a machine army and instead of the Star of David the people are just forced to wear red, whereas everyone else is just shades. Real or robot, Hitler is a cunt; you know just in case you were wondering.
In nearly the entirety of the game, you play as the old man in his young boy form and the girl he was friends with. Near the start and end you play as the other young girl who the story is being told to. Most of the game the young boy and girl of the past are together. You can flip between them as they both have their own abilities. The boy can crouch and steal things and eventually gets two items specific to him. The girl can run and gets a slingshot fairly quickly. Many times you use the characters together by having them hold hands, doing this allows the one that’s in charge to use their ability for both characters, if you hold hands as the girl both of them run together, if as the boy they both crouch together. They also get separated to help each other usually to get back to each other. The concept and follow through of this is absolutely fucking superb. It reminded me a little of A Tale of Two Brothers because of how they’re together so often, but it’s a lot easier to manage in this game.
The only voice acting is the old man narrating at the start of every level, everyone else talks via voice bubbles that have pictures in them while making gibberish noises. There’s not a lot of active music in the game, instead it’s mostly ambient sounds, from people mulling about doing their work, soldiers looking for your characters, and vehicles moving around. Oh yeah did I mention that Patrick Stewart voices the old man, yeah that’s right, Patrick Stewart. If you don’t know who that is then… I just pity your entire existence.
There’s only one piece of combat in the game which is the last boss, beyond that it’s a puzzle and somewhat stealth game in some sections. For those of you who hate stealth don’t worry they’re not that hard I swear. The puzzles are usually pretty easy to solve but some of them are a pain in the ass because their solutions while right there in your face, are at the same time hard to see.
In the game there is something rather unique that I really liked, in almost every level there is a ‘memory’ to collect which in game is just a picture. After you obtain it though it unlocks in the memory main menu area. Each memory tells you about a real person and a basic explanation of their exploits during the war. Each one of these people even shows up in the game to varying extents. After I beat the game I read them all and I’ll admit it was rather touching.
My Memory of Us was developed by: Juggler Games
Point of Sale: Steam, X1, & PS4
$18, $20, $22 (multiple prices, how do I deal with this?):Love conquers all but maybe unending friendship does more.
A review copy was provided by (the publisher maybe? IMGN PRO or the dev Juggler Games, not sure waiting for Cathy).
darkmikasonfire has awarded My Memory of Us The Indie Gamer Team Seal of Approval
Chasm is a metroidvania type game which is quasi-procedural generated. In so much that there are rooms on the map that are in the same place no matter what but the paths to get to those rooms are changed with each game. Great thing is you can always play the same map as your friend if you want. The game gives you a ‘Seed” which is a code for that specific world’s map setup. When you start it gives you something random but you can always change the seed at the start to something else if you’d like including changing it to be the same map as your friend, or their map as yours. Now before I continue this let me dictate, I don’t like metriodvania games, I don’t like procedural generation, I don’t like platformers. As such this game is an entire bag of stuff I don’t really care for personally. As such I don’t play games like this often so some concepts that you might be familiar with or are common in these games, I… well I don’t know anything about them, so bare with me. Or don’t… it’s up to you.
Chasm was developed by: 
A review copy was provided by the developer Bit Kid, Inc.
Flipping Death is a platforming puzzle game. The game focuses Penny Doewood and her life or unlife as it were. She sorta dies and is trying to figure out how to get back into her body, but Death being a halfwit, doesn’t listen to her for even 3 seconds. He just assumes she’s a demon because of her outfit so he gives her his job so he can go on vacation because she must be the temp he requested over a thousand years ago. Why he wants this break… well I’m not sure because he’s never shown working or being even remotely useful. Regardless, you’re assumed to be the temp agent here to take over for him for a while and he forces it on you; then fucks off to the moon.
In the game, you’re trying to figure out how to get back into your body and back to living your life, in a very literal way. In order to figure this out, you need the help of the ghosts that inhabit the land. They all have unfinished business which is why they’re still there in the first place. The only way they’ll help you is if you fix their issues so that they can move on. This usually requires you to possess someone and solve little puzzles to get things moved around in the land of the dead to solve issues. A good example of this was in one of the chapters you scare a firefighter to death so that he can put out a fire in the land of the dead.
All the characters are quirky and attempt at humor though some of them fall flat to me. A good example of this was again, that same firefighter mentioned previously, he has a heart condition that he knows about. He also loves horror films and is a complete chicken shit. When you’re not possessing him he’s in the fire station watching a horror movie. The on the other side there’s individuals like the dentist who hates his job but does it with a smile acting like he does, beyond that he lacks any real personality.
Flipping Death was developed by: 
A review copy was provided by the developer Zoink! Games.