Nothing beats the nostalgia of childhood memories, when imagination ran wild and your potential was boundless. Floodgate Games' Vivid Memories aims to rekindle those precious moments in this tile placement game designed by Matthew Dunstan and Brett J Gilbert.
The game is set up with each player taking a memory board and a mat, with a number of memory cards depending on the number of players set up in the middle. Coloured synapse tokens are then randomly pulled from a bag and layed out on these cards ready for play. In a format similar to games such as Chakra (Blam!), the 2-4 players take turns to draft synapse pieces from the centre mat to place on their player board. Players can either take three different colours, two of the same colour or a single piece, and if they take the last piece on a memory card they also pick up the card. These become the engine for the second phase of the game, where players use actions at the top of their player board to manipulate their synaptic pathways to hopefully score more points at the end of the round. Memory cards are placed at the top of the board, covering an action slot with a unique action, depending on the card and the opportunity to score additional points. Once pieces have been swapped, jumped to adjoining spaces or traded in for different colours, the players score for that round, considering not only their memory card goal but also the number of consecutive pathways linking core memories around the board and the number of core memories fulfilled.
The game continues over three rounds and, at the end, players tally up their running score and then reveal their lifetime goal to score extra points for every memory with the same colour as this card.
Andrew Bosley's artwork for Vivid Memories is charming and evocative of childhood whimsy, and the boards, bag and game mat are substantial and well produced. The inlay on the board ensure that pieces stay where you put them. However, the player board can feel crowded and busy. Similarly, some of the memory cards could have benefited from clearer background on the action sides, as the background colours merged with the symbols that depict the game mechanic. Some players may struggle with the printed colours on the cards, which are not as vibrant as their plastic counterparts, and symbols on the printed cards can also be difficult to discern, with similar shapes like the heart and shield indistinguishable at the smaller scale, adding to confusion in gameplay for those with sight impairment or in poor lighting.
Gameplay is busy, with lots of parts to consider, and tho' it's a family game some players could get lost in the complexity. The element of random draw means strategic planning is challenging and sometimes leaves the hidden objective cards or moment tiles defunct. The game feels like it has the potential for players to build a point-scoring engine but it doesn’t deliver on this because it's played over just three rounds and you only have the ability to only do each action once. Moment cards often are more of a hindrance than a help, cluttering the players memory bank with the potential to not be able to play or score. So Vivid Memories can be frustrating. But perhaps that's in keeping with the theme: our most vivid memories aren't always happy ones.
(Review by Claire Woodward)