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Memory Hole's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Visuals | #630 | 3.123 | 4.571 |
| Theme | #798 | 2.733 | 4.000 |
| Innovation | #809 | 2.440 | 3.571 |
| Audio | #837 | 2.342 | 3.429 |
| Overall | #927 | 2.293 | 3.357 |
| Gameplay | #1110 | 1.757 | 2.571 |
| Enjoyment | #1309 | 1.366 | 2.000 |
Ranked from 7 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does the game fit the theme?
Majority of game take place within strange dream realms in a world where reality is shifting.
What code and assets did you not make from scratch during the jam (if any)?
Copyright-free sound effects and old historical footage. CRT shader plugin credited on main game page.
How many people worked on the game?4
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Comments
Memory Hole has a really strong presentation and aesthetic. The 80s Blade Runner style, CRT filtering, and overall tone feel cohesive and intentional. The use of historical footage and the video-style introduction was especially cool and immediately boosted believability.
Where I struggled was onboarding and clarity. The intro lore is ambitious, but it hits the player all at once and I found myself confused about what I was supposed to do and how to use the computer system. It took me a while to even understand the core task, and once I did, I still wasn’t fully sure how I was meant to judge what should be flagged or redacted.
This feels like a game that would benefit a lot from drip-feeding information. For example, having the computer interface guide the player in small chunks, with simple early examples, would help players learn the rules before the story complexity ramps up. With narrative-heavy technical gameplay, the game needs to teach the player the decision logic very clearly.
I also noticed some text readability issues. It looked like some characters might be missing, possibly due to the font or formatting, which made following the story harder.
Overall, the atmosphere and concept are very strong. With clearer tutorials, tighter explanation of the redaction decision process, and improved text readability, this could become a really compelling experience. Especially impressive as a first game.
If you have time during the rating period, feel free to check out our game as well. We’d love to exchange feedback.
this game looks really well done, but The amount of text at the start was just too much to really grasp, and I had no idea what to do. Perhaps adding a tutorial could help at some point?
Otherwise, this game is really cool and had a really good ambience and excellent atmosphere!
Well done with the TV shaders. Unfortunately, there was just too much text for me to actually understand the gameplay. I'm just supposed to redact and use magnifier on the texts? Yet I still didn't know how to get the matching clearance from the code name due to having too much information for me to think about.
This game has immaculate vibes. Similarly, I didn't fully understand how to play. The "requested" clearance level seems to not matter, but it made it more confusing. What information needs to be redacted doesn't make sense to me either. If the colors denote how classified things are, shouldn't people with the topmost security level be able to know anything? I also thought the colors of the keywords were important, but now I'm not sure.
I played through the game a few times to try and understand and I did a lot better when going off what I actually thought should be redacted based on the content of the messages rather than trying to match the colors.
Some still really confuse me though, like how YEOMAN doesn't have clearance to know the subject met a guard. Nothing stands out to me that makes that different from the other things they're allowed to know. Similarly, VENUS seems to be able to know about "the well" but a line related to the well should be redacted.
The idea is really cool and I actually enjoyed the game a lot more when it was just related to the wordings of the questions and trying to see what makes sense to react based on wording (anomalous vs standard, etc.) and the remarks section.
Overall a really neat game with a neat idea. The 1988 footage was a really nice touch!
Thanks for your criticism!
We definitely made things too complex without explaining anything. The clearance level does seem to not matter at times and thats actually where theres an added mechanic technically where the heartbeat-tracker can inform you of something. If the heartbeat spikes, you may find that while they have clearance, they are dealing with trauma and must have that removed. If the heartbeat drops to 0, it's because of a redaction that is needed in their memory.
However, this is basically all but not explained within our tutorial system (which already is quite bad) and totally our fault which then adds further suspicion for you, the player, on whether the confidence level even makes sense. All good things to know and we appreciate you trying it out !
I really love how the game looks and the general idea behind it. Sadly, even after several tries, I had no real clue what to do. I was very confused about it. I know that you wanted to stay in theme with the tutorial text, and it looks great, but it is a lot and I would love to have a better description of how to play the game. Besides that, the visuals are AMAZING. I love the old computer and vhs style so much.
Thank you so much for the kind reply. I appreciate your honest criticism and the attempt. It was our first game and we definitely made some mistakes in that the game is too complex for us to not have made a very in-depth tutorial system
You don't know how much I enjoyed the analogue horror style. You did that very well, especially for your first game. Congrats!