Hellooo!
What is Forced Recall? Forced Recall is a game made with RPGMaker VX Ace in two weeks by JIHAUS for the rpgmakerweb.com's Mysterious August contest (whose goal was to create a mystery game with at least 20 minutes of gameplay), and even won it earning the first place. JIHAUS is also the author of some cool games such as Ruin Frontier 0 (that I reviewed three years ago, check it HERE if you are curious, it was a cool game!), anyway this game is very different, and probably also different to many other games you may have played before.

Forced Recall (like Total Recall!) is set in a futuristic/cyberpunk setting: a corporation has lost an important shipment after a heist, and the only person that can give some informations about the theft, John, is comatose, so they hire two skilled guys, Cleffy and Rene. The two have to enter John's mind and investigate, looking for the answers that their employers are looking for. Easy? Heh, not at all, of course!


That's correct! Sliding areas and directional teleports: getting these memories won't be easy!

After a short introduction and a little prologue part that acts as a sort of tutorial to learn the basics of the game (how to move, interact, run and jump, nothing new if you played other rpgmaker games!) Rene, that entered John's mind, finds the rapresentation of the ma inside an area in a zone with four portals that lead to different areas... where the memories, rapresented by crystals, are hidden! Rene will have to explore these places, face John's rapresentations of Rage, Pain, Despair with only 20 minutes to find an answer!

Forced Recall can be considered an action/puzzle game: there is no combat, enemies have to be avoided since being hit means losing precious time (the severity of this depends on the difficulty selected at the beginning, and it's pretty cool), luckily you can find also some orbs that lets you recover more time. There is no equipment (and no menu or stats), the chests in this game have the role of save points, and luckily there is no shortage of them. The only thing you will have to worry about is time, since it's the equivalent of the health bar in this adventure (and it's funny how when I retrieved the second memory I actually had more time than after I retrieved the first! So, never give up!).


As we get more memories, we uncover nes details of the story...

Now, I still haven't mentioned the gameplay, well the game is a series of tasks that goes from mazes with tark rooms to avoiding traps, solving puzzles with directional teleports and sliding areas and sections where you are a giant that has to destroy all the buildings. Hostiles and dangerous inanimate things like iron spikes won't be the only problem, because there will be also some less harmful problems like trapdoors and dead ends, that while won't damage our hero, they will still provide a waste of time!
As we progress and deliver the memories to Jones, we get more informations about the heist, and new details that will make the story progress, but this also means unlocking new and more difficult levels in every zone! This for the Story Mode, but if you want the game also includes an Arcade Mode that removes the cutscenes and the hard Challenge Mode, that instead removes the save points (but as mentioned before you can also choose a different difficulty setting)!

Visually the game uses RTPs to rapresent John's mind, while everything else that's instead set inside the real world (from the appearance of the protagonists to the flashbacks of the heist) is instead illustrated by some black and white hand drawn pictures (that looks stylized, rough but realistic n style and were custom made by JIHAUS) that really contrast with the super/deformed and colorful world created by John's mind. Cool. While sounds are usual Rtps, music is instead made by Jesus "Cleffy" Avila and Michael Somnes, and well that's good and appropriate to the game.


As we progress things will become more and more difficult for us!

Final Verdict
Well, I didn't expect a game that mixed The Matrix with Inception, but this is exactly how the plot of the game can be described. Despite the use of classic RTP graphics (don't let them judge the game before playing it!) this is a pretty original and enjoyable frenetic adventure (that luckily does NOT includes battles in the traditional sense). Ok, it's true that know every single part is original (I mean teleport and sliding puzzles aren't exactly something new), unlike others that are more innovative (like the "Godzilla" minigame that seems an "rpgmaker version" of the popular arcade Rampage) but the final result is a coherent set of differen tasks and puzzles compacted in an intriguing adventure. The difficulty is well balanced (well, you have various options to tailor it) and despite the inadequacy of RPGMaker VX Ace for making frenetic action games, the final result is really good, especially if we remember that it was made for a contest in a really short time (also winning it!).

Ok, now the clock it ticking... start running!