All Our Asias

The Good
First of all the simple stuff. I played the Steam version of the game which is free, always a plus point for someone as fiscally cautious as I am. It loaded, played, and uninstalled without a hitch.

There is no spoken dialogue but the translated text was almost perfect. The music was very relaxing and I kept it playing for the full three hours it took to complete the game. The game's style is very minimalist, very blocky, but in a dreamlike world such as this it works, in fact it works very well because the focus is on the story and not on the eye-candy.

There's quite a bit of traveling from one location to another but it never felt as though the designers had overdone it. There's got to be a significant element of traveling, after all you are searching for memories with no idea where they are or what they will look like and on the whole the balance of this aspect of the game vs the rest is pretty good. The dialogue is all text based and the player has to press 'C' to get the next phrase/sentence but that's not a problem and there is quite a bit of dialogue to read through.

The controls are pretty basic too, arrow keys to move, 'C' to interact, 'X' to jump and RETURN to bring up the configuration menu and that's more or less it. There's no fighting, there's only one object that has to be carried and that's used within the same location. There are puzzles but they are related to the plot of the game so well they don't feel like puzzles rather than, say, an artificial sliding block puzzle inserted to present a challenge.

Finally, three hours of solid gameplay - well, let's say two and a good bit extra to allow for cups of tea and comfort breaks - is pretty good for a free game. Thank you Sean Han Tani.

The Bad
There's nothing in the game that I didn't like yet I felt it was missing something. It's hard to put my finger on and the closest I can get to it is this:
At the start of the game a character called The Storyteller appears and talks about how big Asia is, 4.4 billion people, many different cultures with interlinked histories, customs and traditions yet all different - so big that to refer to something/one as 'Asian' is practically meaningless. [That's a thought that had never occurred to me before and is something I'll take away from playing this game]. The narrative ends saying that this story was developed to help the author understand what it means to think of oneself as 'Asian', which is probably why the main character is Yuito, a second/third generation American hedge fund manager who thinks of himself as Asian - a theme explored in the game.
Now I am NOT Asian and I think this is why I didn't connect with the story, for me this was 'just a game' and not 'an experience'.

The Bottom Line
This is a difficult game to recommend. It is pleasant, different, quirky and yet not remarkable enough for me to get up on a soap box and sing its praises. I enjoyed playing it, I was surprised by just how big a game it was, and I'm pleased I stuck it through to the end. However I didn't learn anything and it didn't excite me; it's not the kind of game that's full of WOW! moments - I honestly can't think of one. It's not a bad game, it just didn't speak to me.