the fact is that no matter how inventive or involving this game is, it's simply too short and at times too easy.
this game had great potential. for the first hour of play, i was engrossed and could not be bothered to do anything else. the protagonist, a 14 year old girl, goes to a deserted island and explores a foreboding mansion in order to find her father. as if that weren't creepy enough, she befriends a ghost who explores the place along with her. the controls are fairly simple, the art and design are on point, and the puzzles are varied both in presentation and manner of solution. for a relatively early nintendo ds game release, this game is beyond its time. the amount of detail and effort put into even the smallest of things make it seem as though this game were a labor of love for its creator/s.
it's difficult to criticize this game because there are so many things that i love about it (see above). but to be perfectly honest, trace memory simply isn't worth the time and effort -- especially for more-than-just-casual gamers. the fact is that no matter how inventive or involving this game is, it's simply too short and at times too easy. the whole game can be finished in one sitting! and sometimes the "clues" are so in-your-face that there might as well be a walkthrough within the control menu. it feels like a watered down version of the real thing, except that it IS the real thing. there are flash games that i can play for longer hours than trace memory; it's that short.
i'm going to give it a 6.5/10. sadly, style can't be traded for substance here.
(originally posted on my blog: http://miaowow.blogspot.com/2009/10/trace-memory-ds.html)