Read Only Memories

[got_quiet]

Name: Read Only Memories
Status: Complete
Site: https://midboss.itch.io/rom
Pairing: n/a
Description: A polished cyberpunk point and click adventure where you play sidekick to a baby android.

In a cyberpunk future San Francisco, you are a down on their luck journalist who ends up getting recruited by the world's first sentient robot to help find its creator, your friend, after he is abducted. You run back and forth around a variety of locations, doing the bidding of the ROM Turing, and doing favors for other people so that they'll help Turing out.



The game is stylish and polished, with a pixel art style, nice music and effects, and decent writing. The VN elements feel somewhat limited, as the game appears to take more from the point and click adventure genre, where you are interacting with items in the environment to find the right solution to some problems. Those problems are easy and straight forward. The most difficult part of the game was figuring out what drink some characters wanted, and this was mostly because you have to scroll through what feels like 100 drinks to identify the one the NPC wants from the hint they give you. Other than that, almost all of the solutions were obvious, as you there isn't much to interact with besides the solution.
 

It's hard to say if there's much player choice here. What options there are seem to be limited to how nicely you behave towards the various NPCs. For example, you can reassure and show interest in Turing or you can call him annoying and express frustration at how he tends to go on and on in conversation. Nice/neutral/mean options are not particularly exciting. Your conversations with other NPCs go basically the same way. While there are occasionally options that break out of the simplistic mold of nice/not nice, they feel few and far between, and in the final chapter it's relatively clear that the ending is largely just checking to see how nice you were.


 

On top of a minimal dialog choice system that is largely there to feed you the story, and some simple point and click adventure type puzzles, there are a few brief minigames, particularly at the final chapter, as you reach the climax and execute your plan. These are generally simplistic, although the final mini game took me a couple of turns to realize exactly what the game was asking of me.

My biggest gripe with Read Only Memories is that the MC is sort of along for the ride. Aside from being able to make comments about how enthusiastic they are about the role they've been given in the story, they're really just following Turing around, helping him achieve his own goals. If you want a good end it seems like the best thing to do is just let the little robot take the lead. I didn't mind so much because Turing was a cute little character, much in the mold of other naive baby androids who are interfacing with the real world for the first time. The supporting cast are all interesting enough. They feel like archetypes at times, and there are situations where you are given no choice but to play into their demands. The twists and turns of the game, what few there are, are largely predictable because each character is so familiar as an archetype, but even if they are shallow they are not poorly done, and while the story is on rails the ride is a fun one.

I enjoyed my time with this game but feel that it was largely intended to be something where you poke around, interact with the scenery to get a sense of place and worldbuilding, which is solid and feels both clearly cyberpunk with a few fresh takes here and there. The story services this well enough, and with the good art and soundtrack, this is a well made, if not particularly deep, little project. I'd recommend the game without too much hesitation.