Reminiscence in the Night Review

Game: Reminiscence in the Night
Genre: Adventure, Simulation, Visual Novel
System: Nintendo Switch (also on Steam (Windows, macOS and Linux), PS, Xbox)
Developers | Publishers: Team SolEtude | RatalaikaGames
Age Rating: US E 10+| EU 7+
Price: US $4.99 | UK £4.99 | EU € 4,99
Release Date: October 22nd, 2021

Review code used, with many thanks to RatalaikaGames.

Reminiscence of the Night is a point and click, visual novel. Developed by Team SolEtude and published by Ratalaika Games.

Lost Memory

Set in a two-room apartment, you wake up on the floor and find you have lost your memory. With the help of Sofia, an old friend who has moved a distance away, who you now converse with via voice call. And the help of your Mother, who you talk to on the phone, and the few items scattered in the apartment, it’s up to you to piece together the clues and rediscover your memory.

I must say that it’s an old cliché of a storyline of the main character with amnesia, how many times have we seen that in games before? Reminiscence in the Night is primarily a point and click game. As you point and click your way around the two-room apartment looking for clues. There isn’t a tutorial or any help in the game so you are on your own looking for the clues.

Find Clues

You won’t have too much trouble finding the clues in the game. everything that can be clicked on is highlighted when you move the cursor over the items. In the two rooms, there is a guitar, a teddy bear, a pile of books and some DVD’s that give you clues. Plus you converse with your best pal Sofia via laptop on the desk.

While you interact with different items in the apartment it invokes new scenes and memories in the game. There is also a mirror on the wall in the bedroom. You can take a trip through the mirror in the hopes to regain your memories. When you visit the garden through the mirror the game changes from colour scenes to black and white, obviously to give the impression that this is a long-ago memory and a more traumatic memory for the protagonist.

Extremely Short

We have all noticed that games have gotten shorter in playtime as the years have gone by. I don’t have a problem with short games at all. If the gameplay is fun, enjoyable and the story memorable and over in an hour that’s all good. However, Reminiscence in the Night lasted an extremely short 20 minutes of playtime. I  had no sooner settled into the game when I was watching the credits roll. You can replay the game and pick a few different answers to change the ending of the game. But honestly, I’m not sure you would want to.

You see, the story is rather gloomy and has an unusual subject matter that won’t be a comfortable experience for many players, myself included. The items you interact with within the game and the consequences of choices you make all felt random to me. I had more questions than answers when I had finished the game. You don’t have time to get to know the protagonist at all, which means when the game comes to an end you don’t really care that much about what happened as the characters feel like complete strangers to the player.

The game is controlled with the joy-cons and these work as they should. The music and sound effects do well to give off an atmosphere appropriate to the games settling.

Conclusion

You may have gathered by now if you have made it this far in the review that Reminiscence in the Night isn’t going to get a high score from me. Unfortunately, as I’ve explained, with the game so short I really did not gel with the main character at all. If I had spent £5\$5 for the game in the eShop and it finished so soon I’d be unhappy about that. It’s certainly not value for money at all. This leaves me only one thing to say…

Final Verdict: I Don’t Like It