Before I Forget review: compassionate game about living with dementia

(3-Fold Games, Humble Games)
Mystery and melancholy combine in this affecting exploration game in which you navigate through a life unravelling

You wake up in a handsome apartment, sparsely furnished, the walls and tables covered in Post-it notes. Each one is a scribbled reminder (the date) or a stern warning (leave the hob alone). The mementoes on your shelves, the pictures on the wall, the photos in the frames remain blank until you interact with them; then the detail emerges like a photograph developing, to reveal a snippet of reminiscence. The harsh ring of a telephone interrupts your rummaging. A care worker leaves a message. Combine the clues and Before I Forget's first mystery is solved: you have advancing dementia, that slow-burn neurological fire that consumes certainties and leaves only questions, in both the small things (Where do I keep the phone? Where is the bathroom?) and the large: who am I? Who cares about me?

So it is that player and protagonist share a quest. Together you must piece together her life's memories, and from scant household clues rethread the narrative string that ties them into her life story. This is video game design on a domestic scale: your character is housebound, therefore you too are unable to leave the flat. Only the windows offer a view of the outside world, with its letterboxes and birdbaths, its chimneys and children. Otherwise, the exploration all happens in the mind as your character scrabbles to dredge artefacts from her past.