For my Thanksgiving week column, I decided to go back and write about Memoria.
I don’t feel like I’ve done the game justice here. I really liked it and I really would like others to share in my joy. Daedalic Entertainment’s output and I have not really gotten along. For all the praise they seem to get all I see are mediocre to downright awful point and click adventure games. Given the size of their output I can only assume they have multiple teams and that Memoria was made by a different team than Deponia, A New Beginning and The Night of the Rabbit.
Memoria still has its quirks, but for once it seems like they’ve marshaled their storytelling chops instead of their ‘look I’m smarter than you’ puzzle making skills. This is the first game of theirs I’ve played that I can say I not only enjoyed, but enthusiastically like. It’s a wonderful fantasy world and story about stories.
I was looking up details on the game when I came across the fact that ‘memoria’ is a real word. In finding what it meant I was impressed with how much it had to do with the core of the story and the game. We live and experience stories and speeches differently in the modern era than to how they were once told. The audience used to be an active participant in the process and wouldn’t just let the speaker get away with something they didn’t like. Nowadays you get tased for doing that. The more I thought on it the more I realize how much of the game is listening and then challenging the stories we hear.
Memoria is a game about stories and storytelling, but not just about their power or magic. It is about their culture of existence. Just wished I felt a better job explaining myself.