My Memory of Us

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.