In the Prologue of ‘Dark Memories’ you get into a snowstorm while you travel towards a holiday location called ‘Brenton Lake’ and have to now search for shelter.
The driving experience is a large part of the Prologue and it is admittedly done quite well. The snowfall is very heavy, the visibility low and there aren’t too many distractions. It is quite a realistic depiction of the scenario and therefore quite immersive. You really want to find that shelter to get out of the snow chaos and survive the night. I also like how you slow done significantly when driving upwards and have to actively break when going downwards, which you don’t see in every game with driving sections.
But let’s talk about the big problem of this Prologue. It is a Horror Game that so far lacks nearly all Horror elements. I don’t mind a game, that takes its time and slowly raises the tension, but in Dark Memories you wait for this increase till the Prologue abruptly ends. I acknowledge that the pure expectation, that something scary is going to happen soon, is a part of the Horror experience, but the Prologue needed to show us more.
Interactions here are decent, but very brief. There is just not enough going on so far or rather there isn’t enough to do as a player. I understand that the Prologue isn’t supposed to be too long or spoiler too much, but it should feel like something that could stand on it’s own. Even a little scare or a meaningful ending would have gone a long way. So far it feels like you just started playing the game and after 10 minutes somebody randomly pulled the plug, regardless of where you were. It is undeniably more work to create a short Prologue, which is completely independent of the full game experience, but it might have helped to actually showcase the game experience better.
What I can however praise are the visuals of the game. For an Indie Horror Game, Dark Memories actually looks quite well. A lot of other small Horror Games go for a Pixel or PSX inspired visual style, but the visuals do fit well here.
I also saw some users complaining about the performance, but I can’t really confirm that experience. The settings offer a good amount of customizability and the performance for me was rather smooth. The game received a couple of updates in regard to performance improvements, so maybe those did the trick.
Result:
Evaluating the Prologue of Dark Memories is pretty difficult. I like the immersive start of the game, where you drive through a snowstorm in the middle of the night, while trying to stay on the road a little while longer, till you can find some shelter. But there simply isn’t enough going on to properly judge the game potential so far. The Prologue unfortunately doesn’t feel like a complete experience. Just when you expect something to happen, it ends out of nowhere. I can’t deny that I am a little intrigued, but there are too many unnecessary questions still open and make the Prologue feel like a bit of a wasted opportunity.
5/10
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