Memoria Preview (PC)

Memoria will take you on the journeys of two people. Geron, a bird catcher whose fairy companion has been turned into a raven, needs powerful magic to transform her back. On his search, he finds himself caught up in the tale of Princess Sadja, who lived 450 years prior. Set in the continent of Aventuria, part of The Dark Eye role-playing system, Memoria follows on from Daedalic’s previous adventure game, Chains of Satinav.

Geron has the ability to break and repair fragile items with magic, while Sadja gets a staff that unlocks more and more abilities as you progress. Both use these powers to solve their puzzles, but not so often that it becomes your first port of call.

You’ll flip back and forth between Sadja’s story and Geron’s as both uncover the mystery behind an ancient burial chamber, a riddle and an artifact. Riddles are a key part of the game here. On top of the usual inventory puzzles, you’ll have to solve a number of brain-frazzling riddles. If wordplay isn’t really your thing, there’s a hints system that covers every puzzle.

I can’t really comment on the difficulty of the riddles, as the main one in this preview build hadn’t been completely translated from the original German and was, therefore, almost impossible. At least, I presume it was a translation issue. I’m fairly sure “humus” and “ore” shouldn’t be considered elements alongside earth, air and fire.

The other puzzles are all logical. It’s beautiful. In roughly two hours of playing, every single puzzle made perfect sense within real world logic and magical abilities of each character. That’s not to say they were easy. There were a few that took some thinking, but the sense of satisfaction is all the sweeter when you’ve worked through the whole thing yourself. Best of all, the dialogue responses to failed attempts are often enough to put you on the right track without telling you the solution.

On that basis alone I would heartily recommend checking out Memoria when it’s released. There are plenty more reasons. The game looks lovely, with forests, caves and cliff-face backgrounds melding with the foreground characters. Each character is a clearly defined person as well, with Sadja’s no-nonsense attitude contrasting nicely with Geron’s attempts at noble heroism. You get a sense of backstory for every character and, as you play through, you quickly learn how each relate to other people and how that affects the way people treat them in turn.

While the game does eventually recap Geron’s history from The Dark Eye: Chains of Satinav, you’ll probably feel a little lost at points. I’ve not played it myself but, based on how much I enjoyed Memoria, it might be worth checking out.

Memoria is being developed for PC.