The ‘casual’ is advancing, and while genres are bumping uglies with the likes of tower defence vs rhythm games, and rogue-like with sandwich-making, Momento, from Fat Alien Cat and Nomo Studio, is part hidden object, part organising, in the mould of games such as A Little to the Left or Unpacking.
There are several commands that can be performed with the mouse in this demo, ranging from simple interactions to dragging and dropping, and reverse engineering an objective. The experience begins with a mildly disorganised room. You’ll open a trinket box and then select a plushie that will, in turn, transform the story of your character.
But that’s not it. You will be picking up and fiddling about with all manner of objects – perhaps because of the self-diagnosed OCD you have and wanting everything to have its correct place, or maybe because you’re a busybody. Then again, Momento isn’t a screensaver – you need to get stuck in.
So, like Unpacking, you move items around the room, put them into locations that feel right, and then an achievement pops up. That’s the hidden object, or hidden objective, where you look at keywords and manipulate the environment to reach that goal. For example, picking up a Rubik’s Cube and rotating it will award the Child Genius achievement. Ooops – spoiler!
Besides picking up an item, you can change its state in Momento by repeatedly pressing the right mouse button. This might mean solving a puzzle as above, straightening a picture, or putting an item upright so it can be stored away properly. Whatever ‘properly’ may be.
Another aspect of Momento is the narrative paths. Like Unpacking, there’s a story being told, a nuanced one at that, but it’s a little more in-depth than the latter and more like Projected Dreams – if you’ve played it. Understanding what the objectives can be is a little tricky at times. When I played it on the Steam Deck, it seemed like some items appeared that didn’t appear when on the PC. As a result, I couldn’t 100% the objectives the first time, but could still progress to the next level.
Being able to pan and zoom in on stages is also a nice addition to Momento, but perhaps the most unique one – in the demo, too – is the Creative Mode. Here you can revisit one of the rooms and start decorating from a good selection of furnishings that aren’t so limited. Pick from beds, desks, and numerous objects, change the wallpaper, the time of day, and take a piccy to show off to your mates. Just from this feature alone, the demo is quite the standout, so push whatever you’ve got on at the moment to one side, and take a momento to try the demo.
