Remember, Remember

Remember, Remember was a game I first approached with apprehension. As a rule, i don't do well with horror, but I did enjoy the producer's other games- Seduce me and Seduce Me 2. Wanting to show my support, I did cave and buy it, hoping that I'd at least get a an hour of enjoyment out of it. I got way more than that. The story, first off, is really intriguing and I found myself trying to pick apart the mystery before i got to the end. Each character is really well written and I found myself wanting to learn more and more about their story and grow closer to them. Each choice made me stop and think, as i wanted to react the best way i could to each situation but each choice had its own merits. When i finally got to the gameplay and mazes, I found myself slightly scared, as each is pretty terrifying, but also determined to beat it. They were easy to get the hang of and, while it was sometimes hard to get through certain ones, it took dedication and memorization to get through them. None stumped me for more than 15 minutes at most. When i got to the ending, i wasn't expecting what i got. I won't go into detail but each path gives you a little more insight and, by the end, i found myself torn on what to do. The final maze is difficult, but ultimately i was satisfied by the ending i achieved. Moving on, the art style is really asthetically pleasing and each character is easy to differenchiate from the others. On top of that, the voice acting for everyone in the game was almost perfectly done, even for the villain themselves. Whether it was characters breaking down at certain points of the game or [spoiler] the villain screaming at you when they caught you in the maze [/spoiler], the voices really got the emotion and intensity of the scene across. Ultimately, i feel that the game is more of a psychological puzzle game than it is a horror game, but i understand what the creators were going for. I had a very satisfying experience with the game and I highly recommend purchasing it. Solving a mystery and heading through a maze was never so satisfying.

First off, I haven't completely finished the game as I still have quite a few achievements to go, but I wanted to leave a review of my first playthrough, and a few bits I've replayed. I may update this with more things when I've achieved everything. Pros: -The story is very interesting and gripping; a well written mystery that you find yourself trying to unravel throughout. -The characters are all multi-dimensional, which gives way to lots of interesting scenes. -The art (sprites, cgs, and bg art) is very nice and well done. -Full English voice acting which is really good and really helps bring emotion to scenes (and if you're not a fan of listening to voice acting as you play, you can turn this off!) -Multiple endings - [spoiler] I got the true ending on my first playthrough, which was pleasant. The bad and cruel ends though are pretty brutal.[/spoiler] -Replayability in order to discover dialogue and the whole mystery. [spoiler] There's three or four (I can't remember exactly) chances to talk to any of the 4 other characters. I talked to Peter every time, so you could replay several times in order to get each characters dialogue.[/spoiler] -The music fits well with the atmosphere and emotion of the scenes they're in. -The maze puzzle is pretty fun and makes you feel quite tense while playing it, [spoiler] due to the high stakes in game.[/spoiler] -Two romantic options (I believe): [spoiler]Peter and Rosa[/spoiler], if you wish to persue that or you have the option to remain friends. -The main villain of the game was just plain creepy - [spoiler] the laugh is just so horrifying, especially during minigames [/spoiler] Cons: -One playthrough of listening to all the dialogue took me about 2 hours. For some people, this may be disatisfying in terms of the price of the game, but honestly due to replayability this probably doesn't matter too much. -Sometimes the VA is quite quiet and soft at times [spoiler] mostly during emotional scenes near the end [/spoiler] which leads to the music overpowering it; so I'd recommend turning the music down quite a bit lower than the VA. Overall, I definitely enjoyed this game, and would reccommend it to those who enjoy the visual novel format as well as the psychological mystery and horror genres.

I really wanted to like this game. The premise is amazing and the vocals are great. The mazes KILL me! I really dont like them at all! They stop the game flow. Since I can't get past the maze I am on I probably wont get to finish this game and therefore the story line is wasted. If you do like runner style bit games then you'll probably love this game.

I've followed Micheala Law's stuff for a long time, and I've been looking forward to this game for months. All that waiting paid off, and I wasn't disappointed; another game with fantastic writing, great characters, and a story that keeps you guessing the whole way through and packs a strong emotional punch. The game's artistic quality is also top-notch: all of the artwork is gorgeous and detailed, the music and sound design is beautiful and does a great job at setting the right tone, and the voice acting ranges from pretty good to absolutely fantastic. You can tell that the main actors are giving their all, and boy does it pay off at the right moments - the final act of the game really hits you like a truck because of their performances. The story had me on the edge of my seat the whole time - the constant tension of trying to figure out who was guilty and who wasn't played a large part in my enjoyment of the game on my first playthrough. I also had some fun trying to figure out ways they could escape or fight back against the kidnapper, though none of them played out. [spoiler] I'll admit that the final revelation wasn't as earth-shattering as I was anticipating, but it still allowed the game to remain in a relatively moral grey area - which is a hard balance to pull off, so I can respect that. [/spoiler] Subsequent playthroughs are also worth doing - each character has their own spotlight route, if you choose to focus on them in the cutscenes. Each one feels pretty unique and it allows for some really nice development of their personalities, backstories, and relationships. It also unlocks some really nice bonuses in the 'Extras' area, like the kidnapper's journals and some bloopers from the actors. That being said, the game isn't without some light criticisms. Particularly the maze portions: While the puzzles themselves are well thought-out and genuinely challenging, the technical limitations of the Ren'Py engine prevent them from working as well as they should. The controls lag occasionally, and the block-by-block movement can mess with players' timing when it comes to switching direction. Another thing to mention is that the maze will change every time you play: if you fail and reload, you won't get the same layout to navigate as you did before. While this does add another layer of challenge, it also messed with me quite a bit on my first playthrough; the Ladybug puzzle in particular took me around two hours to complete because I had no idea which map I would be dealing with and kept mixing them up at critical moments. Oh, and the game's background music can get a bit loud at times too, but that's hardly worth complaining about when it can easily be fixed by changing the audio settings. Overall, I would definitely recommend this game for anyone looking for a great thrill ride. 15$ might seem pricey at first, but trust me it's worth every penny and it's going towards supporting a pair of game developers that honestly deserve so much more recognition for what they do.

I really want to recommend this game but there are just enough problems with it that makes it hard to do so. The premise is really, really cool. While the overall setting takes heavy inspiration from the Saw films, the central conflict of the story is interesting and unique. The characters have voice actors, all of whom are surprisingly competent given the indie nature of the game. They're also reasonably well-written, although I was a little miffed at how wildly inconsistent the main character could be given you control his choices. All in all, the writing is good enough and this is, after all, a visual novel, so clearly that matters quite a bit. So why, then, can't I recommend it? There are a few faults with the game. First, the main "gameplay" element of the game is incredibly poorly optimized. I have a rig that can run games like For Honor and The Witcher 3 at max settings and the gameplay here chugs along like you're trying to walk through water, and given the nature of the gameplay it actually makes things rather frustrating. The "fix" the developers suggested - turning the animations off - actually somehow succeeded in making the problem worse, which is quite counter-intuitive. The length of the game bothered me too. I haven't even clocked two and a half hours and I've seen and done almost everything. There are a few more lines of dialogue that I've yet to see but I know all the twists and I know the big revelation at the end. But none of these things would matter if not for... ...The price tag. While this isn't No Man's Sky at launch levels, I find it incredibly difficult to justify the $15.99 price, especially in light of the fact that the far, far superior - in both content and story - VA-11 HALL-A is actually a dollar less. This isn't a bad VN by any means. But its problems combined with its price tag made me feel like it was not worth the money. If it drops below $10? Sure, give it a whirl. But at $16? Pass. If you have any love for visual novels, put your dollars on VA-11 HALL-A.

I love Michaela Laws, and I think she's a great game developer, but this game has some of the most poor gameplay I have ever seen. The mazes are utterly frustrating, and extremely difficult to navigate. The story, however, is extremely strong, and I WOULD recommend playing this game. I would love to own a copy where I'm able to pick which members of the cast I'm able to save, but don't have to play through the frustrating maze game. There were some instances where it took me hours (see THE SECOND MAZE IN THE GAME) to beat it. Even with my video settings set to low, the maze was extremely buggy and laggy. I want to see every ending in this game, I'm extremely invested, but I'm not sure if it's worth the headache to go through all of the mazes again. I never want to relive the nightmare that was the second maze.

I have never hated anything quite like I hate the third maze. I have been playing it for the past hour, and I have never raged so hard in my life. I resorted to restarting every time I got caught by the bee, because I knew I'd already lost too much time. And that smug little laugh that the Mask did nearly had me punching through my laptop screen in sheer rage. The rest of the game is good, very thought provoking and emotional, but that one maze was enough to make me decide not to play the game ever again. I'd definitely not recommend this game if you rage easily or if you're bad at puzzles/mazes.

I really enjoyed the overall concept, and storyline of the game. Great characters, great voice actors, and a great narrative! However, when I play a visual novel, I really enjoy being able to go through the story and see every possible bit of dialogue so I get the story from every angle. I didn't bother with this one because I could never get past the last game to save all 4 people no matter how hard I tried or how fast I got. I personally play visual novels to relax, and I ended up so frustrated after several hours, I just killed everyone and called it a day. I still highly recommend buying the visual novel though if you don't mind playing the games because like all of Michaela's content the story was well written and definitely enjoyable.

I'm a big fan of Michaela Laws and I really wanted to like this game. Her content is always high quality and generally a lot of fun to play. This game had a really good premise, an exciting story, and impressivve voice acting and artwork, as I've come to expect from this developer. However, I just couldn't get over the minigames in this one. About 90% of my playtime in the first runthrough was spent in the maze games or resetting for another try at the mazes. They're very frustrating and the repetivive sounds only made it worse. Maybe this was on purpose, as it fits with the theme of the game. [spoiler]It's mentioned several times that the antagonist wants the protagonist and friends to "go through hell," and this may be a method of involving the player in that frustration and tension that the characters are feeling. [/spoiler] Aside from the minigames, it's a great game and a lot of players will probably enjoy it anyway. It just didn't quite hit the mark for me.

Personally, I don't love the story, but it's not bad either. So I am not giving a thumbs-down for merely that. The one thing that bothers me is the 'mazes' you've seen other reviews probably mentioning. They aren't very difficult but some of them have certain 'dangerous spots' that move around on random moments. [spoiler] Think it's 3rd or 4th with those arms. The game uses these mazes to have some people die and uses it as a judging mechanism. I thought alright sure, bit tedious, but hey can roll with it. The last maze of the game is annoying since the time is quite short and in order to avoid the monsters you need to wait for the arms to move. Annoying, but in 4 tries I had the maze completely and saved all of them [/spoiler] On restart of the game however, you have to do all those mazes again, and again to look for different outcomes. Imho, this is what completely kills this game. That you have to do those mazes the first time, sure, not fun, but alright I'll do them for story's sake. But second time they are just outrageously tedious and I just stopped right then and there. There's no way to skip mazes. Worse, in the last maze [spoiler] it influences the story and ending and for different outcomes you [/spoiler] thus have to do it again, and again if you want to know what happens. I like visual novels with puzzles, riddles, psychological aspects and such, but this completely missed the mark for me.

At first I was ready to give it a negative review, but for some reason I just kept playing and playing. Honestly, it is hard for me to justify a negative review after sinking this many hours into it. It didn't really scratch the psychological horror itch I've have for a while now, but it still provided a decent story with a twist or two that caught me off guard.

Great plot, nice voice acting and alot of choices with each character, the only bad side is that the puzzles can be hard at time so save before hand, other than that this game is 10/10

Cliche but interesting horror thriller story (with hilarious and cute bits) with fun cast of characters and great voice acting as per usual of Michaela Laws and Company game. The only maybe negative is as others have mentioned, completing the maze games over and over in order to replay through the game for all achievements is a bit tedious. But they aren't too hard, just need to be patient.

I cannot recommend this game to anyone, which is honestly sad. It's writing is okay(I'm not gonna kick it for its writing, it's honestly not bad, just extremely short, with artificial game-time extended by the mini-game), the voice-acting is pretty good, the visuals are pretty good, but the actual gameplay of the forced mini-games are unreasonably difficult and you sink and waste so much time into them? Like? Literally. People have apparently had technical issues with them as well, which doesn't surprise me. If you like pretty pictures and good voice-acting, play a visual novel that's not locked behind an atrocius mini-game that doesn't even work. Honestly?? Not worth it. Especially not at asking price. I understand the intent behind the mini-game, but the time that was wasted on it could have been used to further the story instead. I'd recommend checking out Birth ME Code, Head AS Code, the Zodiac Trials(ESPECIALLY this one) or Quantum Suicide for better executions of the genre. If the mini-game WASN'T there I'd recommend it at like...a lower price but it'd still be a recommend then, cuz I really wanted to like this. Especially cuz this is like...My favorite genre of games? Or at the very least, not forcing it on replays, for those wanting to try to re-experience the story and make different choices. I'll probably come back and try to force my way through the mazes again but I just spent like...30 minutes doing pointless mazes which become impossible upon the slightest mistake. Even just increasing the time limit and decreasing the lock-out time would help. Idk, it just...Inhibits the game far too much. Anyway, if there is ever like an optionality to not do the mazes OR they're fixed to work better(they really shouldn't take an hour to complete, artificial game-time yo), I will probably come back, re-evaluate and make it a positive but until then...It's literally not fun. Games are meant to be fun, even if hard. And a lot of the time due to the random elements of some mazes, you just have to reset even when figuring it out. That's messed up

The story is fantastic. I love this game. Other than the puzzles which i found to be a bit infuriating, The game is amazing. The emotional manipulation by the story (Mainly via the flashbacks and the Antagonist) is expertly done; The stress I felt from the puzzles intensified those feelings for me. I would highly recommend this game to everyone.

I really liked the game for the first bit. But then it became less of a visual novel and more head-bashing against the mazes. The voice acting and art are amazing, and they're setting down a wonderful story that gripped you from the start. I think if it was a normal visual novel, I'd be really into it, but I played for 2 hours before rage quitting. Imagine rage-quitting a visual novel! Only about 15-20 minutes of my play time was actual story-plot material. The vast majority of it was me trying (and failing horribly) at the timed mazes. Apparently, I REALLY SUCK AT MAZES. The first real maze (not the tutorial one) was kinda cool, and then there was a bit of story telling, before the second maze hit. After that it felt like the game became: 5 minutes of dialogue, 10 minutes of maze-frustration. To the point where all I remember of my single play-through was mostly the mazes and not what was happening. It disjointed the story something fierce. 2 hours of playing, and I couldn't list off the 5 character names right now. I know there's Kris and there's Lisa, but that's all I can remember without looking it up. Honestly, it made it feel as though I was playing this game, and then stopped to play a whole separate (very frustrating) game for a bit, and then came back to this story. I tried the last maze for nearly a hour, constantly restarting over and over again, trying to JUST GET JUST TWO SAVED before I had to give up. It was leaving such a bad taste in my mouth I just couldn't stand to even look at it. In the end, I didn't care who lived, because frankly I was fed up with the whole game and just wanted it over with. Which made the Bad-Bad end all the more pointless as the game's justification of why I let everyone die didn't actually match what happened. The mazes made me so frustrated, that the game stopped moving me. I didn't care that I killed innocent people or why they died. I didn't care about Sara or who the Mask was. I didn't care about reading the Extra's or the listening to bloopers because after 2 hours of playing, I was just done. If the mazes didn't have a time limit (or were just removed completely) I'd give this game another go, but the very idea of having to do another one of those mazes just to see what the different dialog options turns me off. I feel like I let the developer down by not being good enough to play their game. I feel as though I gave up on it...and in all reality, I did. That final maze beat me.

Certainly an interesting premise, but rather short. 1.8hrs and that's with needing to restart some of the mazes multiple times.... maybe i just read the rest of the stuff quickly since i turned off the voices? *shrugs* would label it more as a thriller (even that's barely adequate as a description) it will mostly upset you with the random mobs wasndering the maze that seems to pop out of no where since you can only see 2-3 units in any given direction. overall it was okay and i (mostly) enjoyed my ~2hrs of gameplay but dont really feel like there's much point to continue with it.

I love the game, the only thing is that even with the preformance turned down the mazes are still quite laggy. But that could also be my laptop being a piece of shit. story very immersive, multiple endings and so on.. reminds me of the 999 series with an original Michaela/Ethan twist of course ^^ looking forward for more.

Remember, Remember is a suspenseful visual novel that I really enjoyed playing. Its not often I can find a good visual novel with horror/thriller elements but this hits it on the head. The visual novel itself is short after the first play though, but it is worth it to replay to get to know each character individually. The mazes are laggy, but I think that might just be my computer. Another issue that I have is that no matter what I can’t unlock the “Masochistic Pleasure” achievement, and it seems like nobody else has. (Seriously, if somebody unlocks this achievement please tell me how to). EDIT: Review changed to negative cause despite a new laptop and having this game for a few years, the bugged achievement has STILL NOT been fixed. The mazes also still lag and bring the whole experience down

Remember Remember (the fifth of November?) is a VN based around a SAW like murdergame premise: there's five people in a bunker, captured by a mastermind who puts them through a high stress 'game'. I was drawn to this as a somewhat-fan of 999, I liked the concept of that game and its mechanics, but felt its story was pretty over the top and nonsensical, so an indie take on a similar idea was interesting to me. My big up front warning with this game: if the concept of having to play a minigame in your VN is a red flag to you, stay away from this title. 'Mask', your captor, has the protagonist play variants of a maze minigame repeatedly to try and get through the plot and discover the truth about the group's past. It's a pretty tough little game too: I took a fair few tries before beating this game, and I'd advocate saving each time Mask calls for a game (He gives a fair amount of warning.) That said, I enjoyed this game. The voice acting was solid, parts of the plot were quite surprising, the characters were pretty nice and believable, and the did a good job of balancing sympathy for the group and tension of a high stress environment. It's pretty short, even by indie VN standards, but there's replay value for the achievement hunters amongst us, as well as those who like seeing multiple sides of a story/exploring different characters, and I feel a single playthrough will be quite satisfying to those ok with an indie VN being on the short side. So yeah. Recommended! Though if I see another one of those damned shadow creatures again it'll be too soon.

Hamfisted story, forced-in "gameplay," and overdone voice acting. 4/10

I think that this is one of my top favorite visual novels that I've played thus far; and with how picky I am that is saying a lot. The artwork is great, the characters are diverse in personality, the writing is awesome and - the part I'm most picky about with visual novels - the voice acting is fantastic! Along with being a visual novel, there are pac-man type maze games that you play to save the characters. I really enjoyed them and they're hard enough to be a challenge but easy enough that I was able to get the Good Ending without any guides. A super awesome game that I highly recommend: 10/10!

**Slight Spoiler Warning** Remember, Remember practically had me sitting at the edge of my seat with the mazes, since things like that make me really nervous and slightly stressed. I had a lot of fun learning the dark story of what happened to Sara, and doing the five agonizing mazes. The mazes were challenging and fun, and once you got the hang of them they become easy enough to not freak out over. The game had great voice acting and it was story rich, even though it wasn't very long. Overall, I had fun with the game, and I haven't even done everything yet!

I am in love with the story of the game. I just keep wanting to know more ! But man, these mazes are so hard and they just get harder. I wish there was an option to make them easier because they get so frustarting so fast.

I’m constantly on the quest for indie game psychological thrillers, especially of the trapped-in-one-setting variety, so [i]Remember, Remember[/i], a new game about five university students trying to escape an abandoned laboratory, was an exciting find. [i]Remember, Remember[/i] is part visual novel, part horror maze game, and is the collaborative effort of writer Michaela Laws and programmer Ethan Nakashima. Kris [insert last name here] and his four best friends, Lisa, Rosa, Xavier, and Peter, are running late to their college graduation ceremony. Because none of them majored in basic street smarts, they accept a ride from a stranger in a van claiming to be a student. The next thing they know, they are trapped in some kind of scientific facility, with the only exit barred by lasers. The friends recognize each other, but find themselves unable to recall anything of their past life. Their kidnapper appears and tells Kris that his friends have been keeping secrets. In order to reveal their guilt, Kris must play a game in which he delivers protective halos to save his friends from drowning in glass tubes. It... makes more sense when you see it. As Kris will later find out, at least one of them was implicitly in the abduction of his little sister Sara, five years before the events of the game. No one can leave until the truth has been revealed, and ultimately Kris will decide who lives and who dies. The maze segments are the game’s central horror conceit; you play as a helpless butterfly with limited visibility, avoiding the monsters in each level. Ultimately, it's not very scary (although the creative sound design is ON. POINT.), because bees and owls are not very scary, and also Ren’Py is the token save-scumming engine. There’s no need to act with caution when you can just pop a squat in one of the 47 save slots available a line of dialogue or two beforehand and make as many mistakes as necessary. That’s not to say the mazes aren’t intriguing, especially once the designs veer into darker and more abstract territory. I especially loved the [spoiler]Maze of True Fear, which opted for ominous shadow people on a crosswalk over familiar insects in a forest setting and opens with a jarring carnival riff.[/spoiler] A longer game could have explored making the mazes more unnatural and disturbing as they progressed (in the style of [i]Eversion[/i], perhaps), but as is, [i]Remember, Remember[/i] evokes guilt and a weighted sense of responsibility better than it does terror. There are 9 full endings depending on how you perform in the final maze. The story is by Michaela Laws, so of course you also have the option of a romantic relationship with two of the characters, allowing for more ending variations. Rosa, Peter, Xavier, and Lisa are all well-rounded and likable enough that in the end I felt compelled to save them every time. If your opinion differs from mine, however, the bloodthirsty approach unlocks just as much bonus content as the merciful one, so there’s no unsubtle developer prodding to go in one direction or the other. You can save any combination of characters based on how you view the scenario and whether or not you want to spite the antagonist. Speaking of the antagonist, wow. He sucks. The Mask, or so he's called, is your supermarket escape-room villain, self-important without being very smart or likable and decidedly very much an idiot. I take offense on behalf of science whenever this guy waves his bone saw around and uses the term “experiment” like he heard it in a magazine. The Mask believes that the stress induced by the maze game, coupled with an "emotional" allegory about a butterfly, will cause his subjects to remember the incident and confess to their crimes. It doesn't, probably [url=https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306453008002692]the positive effects of stress on emotional recall are blocked by propranolol, the drug he used to kidnap them in the first place[/url]. The question is, is the Mask the world's worst scientist, or is Michaela Laws the world's best writer? [i]Remember, Remember[/i] is fully voice acted and has a variety of unlockable extras, including the ability to replay the game's 5 mazes, in case you... really like mazes. Also, the developers laugh at you on the splash screen, which I consider a feature. The total playtime is probably less than six hours. If you're interested in [i]Remember, Remember[/i], I would highly recommend downloading the demo first to see if your computer can run the maze segments without any issues. Unfortunately I have to give this game a 0/10, however. There's no achievement called "sense of irony" for [spoiler]killing only Rosa in the last game[/spoiler]. Will amend review if this is patched in.

A criminally underrated horror game gem. Now I've played this game before on a different account so the time should be wayyyyyy longer. Brunt of it, this game is great, it's a feelings trip, it knows how to f you up in the right ways. The voice acting is top notch, the art is fantastic, the writing, the characters, everything about this game is amazing, and it makes my heart ache that not many people have played it. So yes, I recommend this game 100% Like, do yourself a favor and play this game.

Bugged achievement and developers don't care.

Its... absolutely ridiculous to have a laggy maze game be mandatory to play even in replays of the main story to progress the game. My computer can handle a lot, but the maze's lagginess and the time limits both kill any enjoyment. If you absolutely must have the mazes every negative review addresses, then one of the first things done in the game post release should have been making them less laggy, or longer times, in addition to not mandating their replay.

This visual novel has decent voice acting, good looking art and a story that may turn out to be compelling if you get to experience it. So why did I give it a negative review? The damn maze mini game! This game forces you to play a maze game in order to progress the story. It isn't skipable, I was unable to complete the 3rd one and I died. If I wanted to play a maze game I would have bought a maze game. Heck the first time I didn't even have a keyboard handy since I was playing from my couch. I wont be revisiting this game unless they let you skip the mazes in a later patch.

I like the characters, it's interesting, well drawn and the story is surprisingly emotional. The voiceacting is nice and I really like the CG's I've managed to get. I reccomend it and there is reason to do multiple playthroughs for CGs and see every aspect of the story through the relationships with the four friends. There is only one problem and honestly, it's more a personal one - I can't beat it. I just can't beat the final maze. Obviously others have been able to, maybe I'm just really bad at the mazes. I love the creator, I've played Michaela's games and they've brought me hours of entertainment, so I'm very happy to support her... but I can't finish this game. Maybe a "if you're horrible at mazes" option will be added in the future that gives you more time or something. If it is, I'll happily play through all of the routes.

Very intriguing, defiantly intense but a good compelling game.

Intresting Visual Novel.

Go fuск yourself