I wanted to love Memoranda. It comes across as a quirky, slightly dark, and fun little point-and-click game. While the story was a little strange, it was also fun and interesting without being too long. The graphics and sound design were spot-on for the tone of the game, instilling a subtle sense of unease all the way through. Unfortunately, the obscure nature of the puzzle solutions lowered my enjoyment a lot. They were just too bizarre, and as a lover of logic puzzles this went completely against what I enjoy in a puzzle. All in all, a nice little experience, but expect to be scratching your head more often than not!
There are a few necessary elements for a good RPG: easy to understand mechanics, interesting characters, and an engaging story. Unfortunately, Please the Gods failed to impress in 2 of the three categories. Please the Gods is an odd combination of outstanding graphics and mechanics, brought down by lacklustre story and sound, make this one a difficult one to judge. So unfortunately we find the turn-based RNG-reliant combat was too frustrating for the game to be enjoyable. But for someone who enjoys that type of game and is capable of looking past the lacking story elements it’d be good fun.
I went into this wanting to like it. Unfortunately, while the graphics are nice, the game is just too difficult and navigationally awkward to enjoy for me. I think with a couple of navigation tweaks and more complete numbering this would be a very fun and challenging puzzler, but for me it was bit too frustrating.
In the world of puzzle games, the picross/nonogram is as classic as a Sudoku or a Kakuro. The basic premise is always the same; you have a grid, with numbers assigned to each row and column that designate how many squares are filled in. Once you’ve completed the puzzle you end up with a pretty picture. The classic simplicity makes it easy to develop a nonogram game, but hard to do it in a way that impresses.
I also managed to pick up all but one of the collectable objects on my first pass without really looking for them, so they can’t be that difficult to complete. Some of the puzzles made me pause for a while, which was nice, but the majority I just breezed through. This isn’t unusual in this type of game, but I’m sure someone less accustomed could get quite a bit more time out of each puzzle. I spent most of my time playing annoyed at either the off-track story, dodgy controls, or lacklustre animations, which is a shame because with a refresh (which really, should be done as standard when porting such an old game to such a new system) it could be a pretty decent bit of fun. As it is, I’d have been sadly disappointed at paying for this short, badly-ported adventure. However, if you’re looking for a game to sink a few hours in to and exercise your brain while you’re at it, it’ll fill that need nicely.
The Last Days was a huge disappointment. A sorely lacklustre story, complete lack of characters, sadly limited variation of puzzles, and utterly average graphics and sound resulted in a very neutral experience. It also only lasted an hour, and while I normally hate to make this statement, I have to call the price too high considering the length and enjoyability. I’m a huge fan of the point-and-click puzzle genre, but The Last Days was just an unfortunate waste of time as far as I’m concerned.