A creative telling of the Nazi occupation of Poland from a child's perspective that doesn't quite pay off. Still, the gameplay is varied & fun, & art style often stunning. Patrick Stewart narrates!

To be so short-sighted you mustn't have had literal binocular vision.

I can't help but come away somewhat divided on My Memory of Us. Going into it, it was already cursed to carry the semblance of 'Valiant Hearts: The Great War' - both in its core gameplay mechanics and in having a central depiction of World War events. Whilst it couldn't live up to the lofty heights of that comparison, it does have its own altogether different approach that lends it a unique identity. Just one that might split the room.

The game employs the unreliable narrator in the form of the voice of Sir Patrick Stewart no less, as he tells the story of the Nazi occupation of Poland through a child-safe and fantastical filter to a young girl in his bookshop. Nazis are allegorically translated to robots, planes and missiles have Mario Chain Chomp faces and bathtubs can be flown in a shmup capacity. It's a stretch of a justification for sure, but as a means of providing exciting and varied adventures for the two young playable characters, it works well enough. Patrick Stewart, limited to the cutscenes, delivers his lines well. In-game characters are a bit more limited to speaking in an in-game mumble and have a somewhat limited emotional register. It can grate when the same crying sound is triggered over and over again for one of the playable characters.

One consequence of the framing is a dedication in the environmental design increasingly throughout to 'Machinarium' robot-like spaces. It feels like a loss to pitch up in a specific period of history and have it invaded by generic sci-fi. That's not to discount the presentation entirely. My Memory of Us has a superb monochrome art style with the use of red for emphasis of objects in the environment and as its shorthand for marked Polish Jews. At times the detail paid to the look and animation - especially in the individual robots - is again reminiscent of 'Machinarium' in a very good way. The music too is very solid - punctuating emotional moments incredibly well and otherwise serving as an appropriate background for puzzles.

How romantic!

Gameplay is very Valiant-fare with 2.5D stealth sections wherein you time hiding behind/in obstacles to progress, and 'walk and click' puzzles wherein retrieving items for use elsewhere and sometimes more literal puzzle variants are the order of the day with the use of the boy and girl's unique abilities. You can switch freely between the two for their abilities in slingshotting, running, shining a light in someone's eyes, and sneaking. At the press of a button you can have the two characters hold hands, which isn't just the cutest thing but also brilliantly confers the characters' running and sneaking abilities to both of them. It all works wonderfully well to enforce the feeling of friendship shown in the plot through gameplay. Although it's often very casual, the gameplay does try its hand at everything. In amongst the more literal puzzles you have 'rotate the ball in the maze,' 'slide plates in the right order on the table with no friction using obstacles,' and calculate the number problem on the blackboard according to the number of birds on the roof, etc. It may sound more on the childish side, but at the very least they act as little minigames to add variation to proceedings. You also have linear track obstacle-avoidance vehicle sections, shmup shooting and dancing rhythm games. It's an incredible amount of variation and all good fun - if not excelling anywhere in particular.

There are only some minor issues I faced throughout. Getting caught halfway through a lengthy puzzle section will reset you clumsily to the very beginning. The excellent handholding mechanic is foregone every time either of them climbs an object. This makes for a particularly awful chase sequence towards the beginning wherein you're forced to rapidly switch character and move them individually for a time. Thankfully, it avoids any such issues for the rest of its duration.

Mixed messages.

The only other issues I take are tonal. Befitting the often whimsical tone throughout, the two often have great big smiles on their faces throughout. These actually do diminish as the story progresses, but I couldn't help but notice the two beaming away as the bombs first fell. Probably a missed detail. Moreover, the framing won't be for everyone. I think you have to be in the correct mindset of fully accepting it - either written through the narrator's eyes as a child or also more reasonably as filtered by the adult narrator to tell to the child - as just being the approach the developers wanted to take. When marked Jew/red people are simply laughed at by fully grown adults, for instance, you can process that as a child's perception of events rather than an oversimplification. With the plot weaving real people with full histories provided in the menu, though, it seems like the game is trying to walk an impossible line between respectful and engaging fully in a child's adventure fantasy of saving everyone on a vehicle bound for a concentration camp. It results in a plot that for me benefitted from neither side. It neither goes a fully believable child's contextualization of events for the player to glean anything from, nor historical enough in the endless robot constructions to glean anything there. Perhaps it was always going to be an inherent issue with indulging a childish perspective of such a period. It's a fine pitch idea but it isn't used to any real end. The story is at its best when it simply reinforces the friendship between our two leads.

I enjoyed my time with My Memory of Us, even if I was often distracted by its translation of historical events into the much less interesting robot king version of proceedings. It's a short, but extremely varied casual puzzler with solid mechanics and excellent presentation. Whilst the approach to the storytelling didn't quite resonate with me, perhaps for others, it will be a more complete package.