“Remember…” (or Know by heart) is a new game by the Russian studio Friv2Online, which you probably know from the cult “Mor (Utopia)”, “Turgor”, “Knock-knock-knock” and Pathologic 2. The novelty was developed by a small team inside the studio, but the relative compactness does not prevent the friv game from being poignant and deep. What calls to "remember" Know by heart - we tell in the review.
The action of "Remember..." takes place in a provincial Russian closed town near Kazan. So provincial that you can cross it in just a few minutes, and the residents trust each other to such an extent that even the apartments are not locked.
Our main character Misha lives here. Of the five school friends, he is the only one who has not changed much: he lives alone, goes to routine work and does not find the strength to reshape his fate. The rest - who left, like school love (which Misha never confessed) Asya and the brothers Tema and Almaz, who stayed, but underwent a serious transformation, like a Mongol, "retrained" from a hooligan into a policeman.
One day the whole company gathers in the city: Asya came for work, Theme and Almaz - for a family celebration. School friends remember the past, walk through the places of former glory, even manage to play a little, stealing a car from a local uncle. And Misha finally gets a chance to confess to Asya, feelings for which flared up with their former strength. Yes, but the happiness will not last long: very soon a cruel reality breaks into the idyll - an outbreak of either a virus or some other misfortune irreversibly changes people, and the heroes are desperately trying to prevent the epidemic from swallowing them too.
“Remember…” is very atmospheric. And the atmosphere here is changing with every gaming day. At first, it is a pleasant nostalgia for the times when everyone was very young, sculpted a snowman, sat all day on a huge oak tree in the park, walked until the morning. The characters vividly share their memories, and their stories are catchy - as if the player becomes not just a witness, but also a participant in the events of the past. The town itself is subtly familiar, and the autumn yellow tones evoke a sense of melancholy.
Further, when a catastrophe occurs, the military fills the city, and the first panic notes can be traced in the dialogues, the mood is replaced by a coldly disturbing one. Misha, Asya and their friends are painfully trying to figure out what is happening, and the feeling of the inevitable apocalypse is getting stronger. At night, you have to hide from patrols, in the morning the streets are covered with an almost mystical fog. I wanted to quit the game so as not to know what will happen next - the atmosphere in this episode is so pressing.
Finally, after waiting for the catharsis, the player feels devastated. The ending is predictable, even though you don’t believe in it until the very end. Golden autumn gives way to a sterile indifferent winter, which makes it easier to accept what happened. The final chord sounds in the credits - the song of Ekaterina Yashnikova "We would return...", which will surely hurt you to the very heart.
Emotionally, “Remember…” is a very powerful game. Moreover, it can hit the player in different ways. For example, the literal idea of such an apocalypse sunk into my soul - ordinary and inevitable, and therefore, perhaps, even more terrible than the alien invasion or the invasion of zombies.
But the metaphorical meaning embedded in the project did not hook me so much - I'm not very nostalgic for my childhood and friends with whom I parted ways, so the key morality was tangential. Although I understand what the writers had in mind, and why for many players "Remember..." can be a vivid, heartbreaking experience. The ending of the story, despite its gloomy tone, can be taken on the positive side, as something leading up to a new beginning. At least I would like to think so.
What about the gameplay in Know by heart? Nothing special: a small open world that we explore in search of memories, a skimpy dialogue system, and mini-games - among the latter there are funny ones, like QTE when using a typewriter (if you play on a PC, you can enter words directly from the keyboard ), but there are boring and repetitive ones - the friv game is simply riddled with puzzles of the same type.
Even worse is the control and behavior of the camera. The latter is static here, and when changing the angle, the hero starts to go in the wrong direction with the gamepad stick. You have to release the stick and press again. On every screen. Which are replaced literally every few seconds. This is damn inconvenient - the benefit of the game is played in 4-5 hours, and the management does not have time to piss off.
Nevertheless, these "Remember..." problems are to be forgiven. As well as a very simple, slightly sloppy picture, and bugs that are found here and there - and judging by the reviews, they can also spoil the passage; Fortunately, this didn't happen to me. Forgive - because "Remember..." is very sincere, atmospheric and kindly sad.