Remembering Emily Review

Remembering Emily - Mystery visual novel is a visual novel from the Spanish developers, Tortita Studios. As someone who admittedly does enjoy a good visual novel every now and then, I thought, “Oh, hey, why not give this a go?” After all, it was described as a mystery: who was Emily? What happened to her? With the mention that the story touches upon themes related to violence, drugs, and death, I was, of course, curious. Something must have happened to Emily, and our protagonist, Thomas, must have the answers.

Now, to just do a quick preface: this review will contain spoilers. I’ll try to keep spoilers to a minimum here, but as it’s a visual novel, I do have to go into a little bit of depth about some things. But, nonetheless, let’s dive in!

The air of the mystery has already vanished a little bit, as even in the promotional art of Remembering Emily, it’s shown that she’s been hit by a car. Our protagonist, Thomas, is there to discuss the months he’d spent with the titular Emily, and begins with something of a meet-cute storyline in a coffee shop, which is also a chain of cafés that is just… called Coffee Shop. I would have been happy with a Coffeebucks, but it looks like the owners of that chain chose the simple, on-the-nose approach.

Here, Thomas orders his regular drink: the Americano with Coconut Milk. In other words, he has a white Americano with a dairy alternative. Thomas, and to some extent, Emily, are intrigued by this combination. I’m not sure why, as milk with coffee is fairly normal. I have milk with Americanos all the time. Is that not the default when one has instant? These were the questions that plagued me, dear reader.

At this point, it’s shown that Emily and Thomas have a lot in common. They both like games, and they both believe that their choice of coffee is revolutionary (no, I won’t let the coffee go). Somehow, Emily saw Thomas’s recommendation on Roddit — one of many on-the-nose references used throughout the visual novel — and so they happened to find themself in the same place. It’s a simple trope, one based on mistaken identity that I admit I’ve seen a number of times in romance. It gives the vibes of the kind of interest they have with each other, which is one of the key elements of this plot.

By the end of their first meeting, Emily had already left a huge impression on Thomas. So much of an impression, that our first key decision of the game is to decide whether you tell the office you’re sick, or if Emily answers the phone for you. However, it’s also around this point that you can see that there’s something suspicious about Emily. Upon hearing the sound of police sirens, she flees the Coffee Shop, where Thomas spots a gun in her bag. Despite being deterred by how she has a gun in a country where it’s supposedly difficult to get one, he chooses to work from home, specifically from Coffee Shop, to hopefully meet her again.

Except, he doesn’t. Instead, you’ll find that he won’t meet her again until they both happen to meet at the same book shop. Here, they’re looking for the new Brad Sanders book. Fellow bookworms, I’m sure you’ll have noticed that name sounds familiar. In fact, this is another on-the-nose reference that Tortita has supplied. Brad Sanders is a ridiculously fast-writer whose short stories are akin to the size of Lord of the Rings. That’s right, we have a fictional Brandy Sandy here. Interestingly, I’m not sure why they felt the need to use a fake name for an author instead of coming up with an entirely new persona. But alas, that’s just a small pet peeve of mine.

References are a relatively big thing in this game, in case you haven’t noticed. One of the ways that we see references isn’t just through discussions about Coffee Talk with Emily, but even the discussion of the popularity of Simulator games. For example, Thomas’s close friend, William, had developed a game called Electrician Simulator, which was streamed everywhere for a week, and he’s since been working on a new game. However, despite being close friends with William, the two of them never interact one-on-one. They always need to have their third friend, Kate, who is also interested in Thomas.

I admit, it’s around this point when Kate and William are introduced that things get a bit… weird. Emily and Kate dislike one another, and a love triangle is set up. William, who is also Kate’s brother, doesn’t have any personal conversations with any of them. In fact, I did question William’s role as another character here. He doesn’t offer an outside perspective; he’s just there, looming in the background. However, Kate is there and will always offer an opinion, even when she does hate Emily’s guts. It’s just that we never see life outside of Emily. She’s always there, lingering, and even a scene where the three friends could bond, has Emily thrown in with the fact that she happens to live above Thomas’s new place.

Before I forget, I’d like to say that due to circumstances around Emily and Thomas’s second meeting, he chose to flee the city that he lived in. Within a few months, he’s moved, and Emily has somehow moved before he did. There’s supposedly a catalyst where she’s trying to flee her ex-boyfriend, Seth, who may be looking for her. However, it felt… odd. While this is explained in one of the endings, it’s not done in a way that makes a natural sort of sense.

This is where the content warnings may come into play here. I mentioned that there’s a degree of violence, drugs, and death. However, there’s one content warning that is notably not mentioned. While it’s not explicit, it’s one that I couldn’t look past, as it could significantly trigger some players. In a key moment of the game, Emily will put Thomas to bed, and they’ll sleep together. There will be a choice where Thomas can grab a drink for them, or Emily can bring one from her place. Either way, it’s heavily implied that Emily has drugged Thomas, or taken advantage of him. In both scenarios, it’s later stated by Thomas that he repeatedly said no to her. However, this is then never really treated as anything other than “Thomas needs to be there for Emily.” Without going into too much depth, it just… feels like consent was brushed under the rug for the plot.

Throughout the story, we’re forced into an uncomfortable relationship with Emily that never feels good. Around this point, I wondered where the mystery was? While this is all taking place with Thomas in therapy, he talks about Emily in an obsessive manner. In fact, the two appeared to be equally obsessed with one another, and I never thought much about what happened as the writing made everything feel on-the-nose.

It only gets worse when you get to the ending. Depending on the choices you get, you’ll either reveal the truth of everything, or you’ll get something of a… bittersweet(?) ending. However, before playing both endings, I was confused. In my first playthrough, I got the truth of everything, and while it should have been satisfying, I was left frustrated. After all, the ending consists of a trope I hate with a burning passion of a thousand suns. It’s a trope that I was warned away from in all creative writing lectures, and so it’s stayed with me for all these years. The ending robbed me of any agency I had as a reader. And with that, I was disappointed.

This visual novel promised a mystery, but the mystery was solely a couple of cliffhangers at the end of each chapter, where Noah, our therapist, would ask what happened next. There were no emotional stakes. Thomas and Emily’s relationship was uncomfortable in all areas, and frankly, I thought that Kate and William could have been fleshed out much more.

I wish I could say that it was saved by dialogue, or even saved by the art. However, I didn’t think that the art stood out. Emotional scenes filled with rage didn’t evoke that, as everyone mostly looked mildly perturbed rather than actually full of rage. The character dialogue didn’t show each separate character, and I wish that the dialogue box would have at least had a separate colour for each name. After all, Thomas would speak, but Emily’s face would be on the screen, and it was particularly confusing when they were discussing the coffee, specifically.

Overall, I personally didn’t enjoy Remembering Emily from a writing standpoint. While I understand that it was Tortita Studios’ first game, I think that it could have been fleshed out more. From my understanding, Remembering Emily was made over several months. I think that more time could have been spent on fixing grammatical and translation issues. Heck, they could have even got some sensitivity readers involved to try it out before release to get feedback. At this point, I’m not sure if a demo was ever released, considering it only consisted of about three hours, and I just think that more time could have been spent on fleshing out the plot and letting all the characters shine.

This was an ambitious project for a first-time game tackling serious themes, but I don’t think they understood that the mysterious effect was long-gone. Remembering Emily is more of a thriller with dark romance elements than a mystery, and if they had leaned more into that, I think I would have probably enjoyed it more.