Rock, Paper, Shotgun

By The Tiny World Forgot: Memento

By Adam Smith on April 24th, 2012 at 6:30 pm.

Games with a 'remember' action are too few

I’m playing as many of the Ludum Dare games as I can before I do a full roundup of my favourites. There are more than a thousand though, which is a strong indicator of the spirit of the global indie community but a terrible thing for me because I can’t possibly play them all or I’ll wear my fingers down to nubs of bone. The theme was ‘Tiny World’, rich for invention, and I have to declare my love for one entry immediately. Memento, by Sébastien ‘deepnight’ Bénard is a beautiful miniature point and click adventure about memory. Visually, it’s like peering into the rooms of a lovingly crafted dollhouse. If you’ve seen any spectacular entries let me know in case I miss it and I’ll take a look.

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34 Comments »

  1. 24/04/2012 at 18:39 Hoaxfish says:

    Played through this, and only cheated once. That’s pretty good for an adventure game.

  2. 24/04/2012 at 18:43 wccrawford says:

    Some day, I will make a game at least half as awesome as this, and I will be so proud of myself.

    Thanks for the head’s up!

  3. 24/04/2012 at 18:46 the.celt says:

    Don’t they have a place where you can download all the entries in one pack? I thought I had done this on previous events…

  4. 24/04/2012 at 19:04 Squire says:

    Niiiice little game. I don’t understand your article title though, Adam. Could you enlighten me?

  5. 24/04/2012 at 19:40 monomer says:

    The visual style in Memento is amazing. That dev also made one of my favorite games from the last ludum dare challenge, “Last Breath” (http://deepnight.net/games/ld22-lastbreath/)

    As for other good gems, I particularly liked “Planet 161″ (http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=7981) for its art style and solid mechanics. Audio wasn’t too shabby either.

  6. 24/04/2012 at 20:13 CaLe says:

    Thanks for reminding me how much I hate adventure games. They are the most frustrating things in the world. I dunno why I backed the Double Fine adventure.

    • 25/04/2012 at 04:03 bill says:

      Heh. Me too.
      It’s a really nicely made little game, but it suffers from all the standard flaws of adventure games. I know what i want to do, but what combination of clicks does the designer want me to use to do it? Should I use the cupboard or open it. Why is there a Close verb?

  8. 24/04/2012 at 20:27 Dyst says:

    I played this earlier. It was quite lovely.

    Probably not an appropriate place to link to mine and a friends entry to LD, but regardless, here is a link to mine and a friends entry into LD: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=5397

  9. 24/04/2012 at 20:52 Createx says:

    Deepnight might think about bugfixing Die2Nite a bit before he writes more cutesy little games :)

    • 24/04/2012 at 23:59 Robert says:

      You are right.

      That reminds me: I should not be reading this website, i could be working. As I should be, every waking moment. How dare I do something else.

      • 25/04/2012 at 09:12 adonf says:

        @Robert: I read that as a private joke. For someone to know that deepnight works on Die2Nite they surely have to be a friend or a coworker of his. Am I right?

      • 25/04/2012 at 16:27 Createx says:

        I’m not, but a quite active player of D2N. It was kind of a joke, though with a core of truth, since D2N has become almost unberably buggy. I know that it’s not deepnights fault and that he can’t be coding all the time.
        Anyway, why do professional developers code in their freetimes? Don’t they want a bit respite from work?

        • 05/05/2012 at 01:13 deepnight says:

          Right now, I’m not working anymore on D2N : I left this project to 2 other devs. And as far as I’m concerned, they do a pretty good job at managing this game :)

          So I will take that a joke.

  10. 24/04/2012 at 21:13 Keith Nemitz says:

    Reminds me of Rückblende, by Nils Deneken.

    “A man is confronted with his childhood memories while walking around a familiar summerhouse. The more he dwells in his memories, the more secrets he unravels.”

    It was an IndieCade Finalist in 2008. Great game!

  11. 24/04/2012 at 22:55 matthias_zarzecki says:

    “Oh boy Oh boy” Had me fascinated for some time. It’s spore-ish in nature, having you rotate a planet towards sun, rain and asteroids to cultivate flora and fauna.
    http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=rate&uid=13144

    Then there’s My Little Planetoid (disclaimer: It’s mine. I’m plugging it), which has you build a little civilization on a small planet, creating houses, factories, and later launching satellites and rockets into space. It’s quite popular so far :)
    http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=3880

    -Matthew

  12. 24/04/2012 at 23:38 Solbard says:

    Quite liked This Precious Land myself:
    http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=8804

    A sandbox world building game/puzzle with no real goal I guess, but I enjoyed tinkering with it much longer than I anticipated upon first opening it.

  13. 25/04/2012 at 03:38 johnki says:

    I really liked Save the Tiny World!: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=10692

    I also thought Capsule had a neat idea, if a bit small in scope: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=2063

    Then I thought the art was great in Eye Quest, along with having some interesting puzzles: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=1695

    EDIT: There Is a Picture was also fantastic, I thought: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=12109

    And then since others are doing it, I’ll plug my game, even though it’s a bit confusing (fortunately it comes with a howto guide). :P
    http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=8693

  14. 25/04/2012 at 08:39 matthias_zarzecki says:

    I just found “The Tiny World Of Fiorella” which is awesome. It’s not even awesome, it’s Zelda-tastic! (or was that “isaac-ular?”)
    http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=5269

    -Matthew

  15. 25/04/2012 at 09:35 Jigxor says:

    This was one of my favourite games: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=8353 it’s a great little top down shoot ‘em up with a good difficulty curve. Kept me playing for a long time.

    I also really enjoyed this platform game http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=7674 with Alice in wonderland styled visuals.

    And you can check out my entry here as well, it’s a platform shooter: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=rate&uid=3289

  16. 25/04/2012 at 12:18 Rob The Swan says:

    Some cool games in there. I shall rate them all. I offer my own to the mix – a 3d voxel game with item progression and puzzles a bit like Zelda too:

    http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=1845

    Rob

  18. 26/04/2012 at 01:01 johnki says:

    Re-posting this after it got stuck in moderation for 2 days…

    I really liked Save the Tiny World!: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=10692

    I also thought Capsule had a neat idea, if a bit small in scope: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=2063

    Then I thought the art was great in Eye Quest, along with having some interesting puzzles: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=1695

    There Is a Picture was also fantastic, I thought: http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=12109

    And then since others are doing it, I’ll plug my game, even though it’s a bit confusing (fortunately it comes with a howto guide). :P
    http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=8693

  19. 26/04/2012 at 20:45 Hmm-Hmm. says:

    Wonderful little game. Thanks for giving it the limelight it surely deserved.

  20. 07/05/2012 at 04:05 KinoftheFlames says:

    Pretty cool point and click. I did a video on it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaQGbs9mk2Y

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