Review: Vivid Memories

What would it be like to peer into your childhood memories? What if you could rewire your brain making new connections and scoring points while doing it? Well Matthew Dunstan, Brett J. Gilbert set out to answer that question in Vivid Memories . Vivid Memories takes 2-4 players on a 30-45 minute trip through their childhood memories.

As you recover fragments of your childhood memories you place them on your player mat (which very much resembles a brain). The object of placing these fragments on your mat is to make connections between like color spots along the edge. The longer the connection and the more points it connects the higher value you will score from the memory fragments. There are also the tiles under the fragments and if you draw the last fragment from a tile you get to take the tile and add it to your player mat at the end of the round. These tiles can unlock some ways to rearrange the memory fragments on your player mat and score bonus points by having certain patterns setup on the player mat.

This game has a lot of puzzle aspects to it that I enjoy very much.

The way this game is designed is in a fashion that lets you have control over your own puzzle. This game has a lot of puzzle aspects to it that I enjoy very much. I personally love to optimize a system, If you have played games with me you know I love Ticket to Ride and know that I love optimizing connections like this. I could see how this game becomes more of a multiplayer single player game. Meaning that even though we are all playing the same game we are interacting minimally. Even with the potential of it going this way the puzzle feeling of the game outweighs any downsides. The mechanisms that are designed into the game to manipulate and rewire the connections in the player's "brain" are very interesting and can lead to some big scoring moments that have the whole table excited.

Andrew Bosley's art really highlights the game and brings you back to those actual childhood memories.

This is definitely worth checking out on May 4th 2021 when the Vivid Memories Kickstarter launches. The Deluxe Edition will have some nice component upgrades available. Also dont forget to checkout all the other games Floodgate Games has to offer.

Designer Matthew Dunstan, Brett J. Gilbert

Artist Andrew Bosley

Publisher Floodgate Games