Distant Memories

What Distant Memories is

Distant Memories is a collection of memory games under one roof. It opens on a screen of tiles, one for each game, and the first one to open its doors is the oldest memory game of all: a table of face-down cards where every card has a twin.

The cards are the heart of it. There are seventy hand-drawn pictures in seven decks: animals, sea life, bugs, famous landmarks, music notes, fruit and outer space. Every picture is a soft, glossy cartoon, from a lion with a scalloped mane to a sleepy crescent moon, and each card has its name printed under the picture so younger players can learn the words as they play.

Pick a deck, or a mix of all seven, and a size from twelve cards up to sixty. Turn over two cards at a time. A pair stays face up with a gold glow; anything else turns back over after a moment. Clear the board in as few moves as you can. The game keeps your fewest moves and fastest time for each size, and gives up to three stars for a sharp memory.

Up to four people can play on one screen. Give each player a name if you like, then take turns: find a pair and you go again, miss and the turn passes on. Each player's pairs glow in their own color, and whoever finds the most pairs wins.

The second game on the shelf is Echo, a memory game for the ears as well as the eyes. A row of smiling music notes sings a tune, lighting up one at a time, and you play it back in the same order. Every note has its own sound from a pleasant pentatonic scale, so the tunes always sound like music. Get it right and the tune grows by one note and speeds up a little. Choose four, six or eight notes, and whether one wrong note ends the game or you get three tries.

The third game is What's missing?, the old party game played with a tray of objects. A row of cards is laid out for you to study while a timer bar runs down. Then the cards turn over, one of them quietly slips away, and you pick the missing card from a few choices at the bottom of the screen. Every right answer adds a card to the next round, and once the table is full the time to study gets shorter. On Easy the missing card leaves a gap, on Medium the others shuffle around too, and on Hard two cards vanish at once. You have three tries.

The fourth game is Postcards. A painted postcard arrives from a made-up town like Pebble Bay or Frostvale, with a few of the card characters in the picture, a sky at morning, sunset or night, and a stamp showing a famous landmark. You get a few seconds to look, then the postcard turns over and the questions are written on the back: where was it from, what color was the stamp, what was in the sky, who was furthest to the left. Five postcards make a trip, and the game gives up to three stars.

Screenshots

How to play

1. Choose Classic memory from the shelf of games.
2. Pick a deck of cards and a size. Easy is twelve cards; the three biggest sizes, 36, 48 and 60 cards, use the mixed deck.
3. Choose how many players, from one to four, and type their names if you want them shown.
4. Turn over any card, then a second one.
5. If the two pictures match they stay face up. If not, take a good look before they turn back over.
6. Keep going until every pair is found. A perfect game takes one move per pair. With more than one player, a match earns another go and a miss passes the turn.
7. In Echo, watch and listen as the notes sing a tune, then tap the notes in the same order. Each round adds one note.
8. In What's missing?, study the cards, press I'm ready, then pick the card that disappeared from the row at the bottom.
9. In Postcards, look at the postcard until it turns over, then answer the questions written on the back.

Controls

On a phone or tablet: Tap a card to turn it over, tap a note pad in Echo, or tap your answer in What's missing? and Postcards. The cards and pads resize to fill the screen, on a phone or a big monitor.

Tips

• Turn over cards you have not seen yet before guessing. A new card tells you something; a wild guess at an old one rarely does.
• Work in a pattern, row by row, so the board is easier to picture.
• Say the names out loud. "Owl, top left" is easier to remember than a picture alone.
• When the first card of a move is one you have seen the twin of, go straight for the twin.
• In Echo, hum along. Remembering the tune by ear is easier than remembering a list of pictures.
• In Echo, break a long tune into chunks of three or four notes, the way you remember a phone number.
• In What's missing?, make up a little story that links the cards: the fox ate the apple on the moon. A story is easier to replay than a list.
• In Postcards, sweep the card the same way every time: town name, stamp, sky, then the characters from left to right. The questions come from all of them.

Questions

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