In Memoriam 2003 detective game

In Memoriam (2003, France)

Original title: Missing Since January

Two journalists, Jack Lorski and Karen Gijman, went missing in Europe while investigating series of bizarre murders. The only clues to their fate lay in the content of a CD Rom that was delivered to you. All you have to do is put in your (real-life) e-mail address and dive into the twisted mind of the serial killer, who clearly kidnapped them.

Why do you have to put your real-life e-mail address? Because In Memoriam is a game of alternate reality (or some people call them meta games), in which you will receive the e-mails while you progress in the case. The first simple puzzles, the video materials, the eerie feeling when a new message hits your inbox, the FMV (full motion video) scenes using actors - all of it is part of the game.

In Memoriam was a very ambitious project, which supposedly costed around 1 million Euro (back in 2003 it was huge budget for such game), but had one flaw - it required player to visit websites outside of the game (again, in real-life Internet, using his own browser), which added another layer to the feeling of being involved in the case. It was no longer something that happens on the screen of your computer, someone was sending you messages to your real-life e-mail account. The flaw was, of course, that all of the domains and websites involved in the process of solving puzzles were had to be kept alive, which was a problem for all of the meta games. But since Ubisoft was a publisher of In Memoriam, it is most likely still possible to play this game even today, 20 years since premiere.

Play In Memoriam

In Memoriam videos