Wearing its cyberpunk, retro point-and-click adventure game influence on its neon-stained sleeve, Read Only Memories [official site] wants to send you into the future to become a struggling freelance journalist. Living as one in the present, I can assure you it’s not the most glamorous of lifestyles, but if you wish to time travel to Neo-San Franciso 2046AD to find this out for yourself you can – Read Only Memories is out now.

Okay, so it’s not just about drinking coffee by the gallon and turning up to work in your underwear, Read Only Memories explores an Orwellian, Big Brother-inspired tale of conspiracy and unscrupulous authority after the world’s first sapient machine, a ROM – Relationship and Organizational Manager – named Turing inadvertently enters your life. Check out the game’s customarily 80s-styled launch trailer here:



To experience this #content, you will need to enable targeting cookies. Yes, we know. Sorry.

Manage cookie settings



When Graham got to grips with Read Only Memories’ demo this time last year, he enjoyed its multitude of genre-typical conversation trees and environmental descriptions and whilst he pointed to the game’s art style as resonant of something you’d see on the TurboGrafX, it also very much reminds me of the Atari II’s iteration of Tass Times in Tonetown.

Read Only Memories from developer MidBoss – the organisers of GaymerX – is available now from Steam, GOG and Humble, among others.