Memoranda

Originally funded via Kickstarter as a PC title, BitByterz’ Memoranda is a game that flew under our radar until fairly recently, when the point-and-click adventure made its way to Xbox. With gameplay inspired by Haruki Murakami’s short stories, you’ll see plenty of surreal, otherworldly things going on in the world of Memoranda. As a point-and-click, there are tonnes of puzzles to be figured out in order to progress. Many of these are very out of the box, with answers to puzzles often in other rooms or locations, or are so obscure that they take a decent bit of thought.

You play as Mizuki, a girl with severe insomnia, as she tries to piece together strange events and mysterious occurrences around her. She also has another problem: she can’t remember her own name. Throughout the story, there are plenty of recurring themes from her loss of name - and some other characters’ placeholder names; lots of cats (a Murakami trope); and people taking on the form of animals.

Visually, Memoranda has this hauntingly beautiful appearance, with hand-drawn art that is reminiscent of a dark children’s book. As well as the main points of interest in each scene, there are plenty of other things to look at or interact with - from a motley crew of characters to nonsensical items. Many of the puzzles are hinted at with clues given in the nearby locations. Sometimes these will feel quite obvious, such as “find the solution on the bookshelf” whereas others will have you turning to Google after too many failed attempts. I’m usually pretty good at getting to the bottom of even the most bizarrely executed puzzles - but I did have a few struggles here and there that left me wondering what the hell I was missing.

With a varied score filled with eerie, melancholy tones as well as lighter, upbeat tracks, all combined with the atmospheric sounds of each of the locations - it totally immerses you in the story. Voice acting is well done, with Mizuki’s soothing voice narrating and frequent fourth-wall breaks adding a bit of humour into an otherwise serious, dreamlike game. There’s a sadness, a loneliness even, lurking beneath the surface of Memoranda. Mizuki’s interactions with other characters adds to this, with her always wishing to help other people and going to great lengths to do so - even with her struggles of losing her name and lack of sleep.

With a lot of really obscure puzzles, it takes quite a lot of going back and forward to try out new things to uncover everything going on. If you’ve played other games like this, ranging from Monkey Island to Leisure Suit Larry, you’ll know how frustrating this can be - so your best bet is to always be aware of everything around you, taking advantage of using the trigger controls to display a little pointer above any interactable objects.

At £12.49 on the Xbox Store, you’ll get yourself a good couple of hours of playtime with an enjoyable, if surreal, story. We played through Memoranda within the course of two days (after chipping away at it a bit at a time previously), and found that it was much easier to get into the swing of things over a shorter period of time. So if you’ve got a few hours to spare, I’d highly recommend doing it in a single sitting or two - this way all of the clues will be fresh in your mind.

In the end, we decided to give Memoranda the Collecting Asylum rating of 7.5/10.

Have you played Memoranda yet? What did you think of it?
Let us know in the comments below!

- V x

Thank you to Carbon Fire Studio for the Memoranda Xbox review code!