A game of the adventure genre that you can read and/or a piece of mystery fiction that you can play. On one hand you have your conventional point n’ click styled adventure with unconventional text-based scenarios, while on the other you have a very basic crime novel.
I don’t think unmemory knows what to call itself, and that’s probably because it claims to be standing at the intersection of literature and games with a new medium of storytelling to sell.
http://kck.st/2tXobUR
The thread picks up somewhere along the Mediterranean coast in the middle of the 1990s; you find yourself acquainted with a band of cat burglars of the Ocean’s Eleven kind. They’re classy, upper class, the subject of envy as it turns out and you, Leo, are the only one who knows where they stash their loot.
Except that you’re an amnesiac. So, a case of putting together the pieces in search of treasure then? Not really, because the other half of the synopsis speaks of a dead girlfriend, a Russian mobster, and a Red Notebook that is supposed to connect all these stray dots.
Never mind the fact that your brain’s barely functional, but what you’re offered are 8 distinct novella styled chapters to either of read, click, discover, solve and even listen to. Think of unmemory as a standard E-book that exploits your device’s scrolling, reading and writing functionality.
Slapped on top of these is a layer of interactive puzzles that put logic, comprehension, discovery and deductive skills to the test; picking locks, flipping and interpreting objects Leo picks up during the narrative and such other busy puzzles.
Over this is a final layer of visuals and sounds, from letting you hear the mixtape Leo claims to be listening to or the phone ringing, for instance, to being able to study in-depth the photobook he’s picked up.
That Daniel, the author, and his interdisciplinary team are going to great lengths to create an immersive experience I have no doubt; all the way from employing real world models and footage in their narrative, the promise of an authentic 90s soundtrack, situationism based artwork, to even the Phrenology posters, cassette tapes and caviar tins that crowd funders are promised.
Although from where I’m sitting, I don’t like the fact that the expletives and eroticism appear a tad bit forced, unnecessary even, when instead the previewed narrative text could use much editing. Currently eight days old on Kickstarter with a late 2018 IOS, Android and Steam release aimed for.
