Moraff's Monster Memory

Memory game with monstrous faces — that's the whole content. You click on tiles that flip and reveal creatures, and try to match them. If it was named Memory or Concentration, that would be an honest description. Here it's called Moraff's and bears the mark of the DOS independent scene that believed original graphics were enough for everything.

Tiles sit on the board covered. You open one, see a drawn monster with oddly geometric face (just what a graphics artist could manage with limited palette), open another. If they match, they stay open. If not, they flip back. Goal is simple: uncover all the pairs. The game consists of levels where the board gradually grows. Nothing fundamentally wrong, nothing fundamentally new — memory versus time and number of moves.

Mechanics are honest but boring. Memory game offers one choice: either you remember positions or you don't. The game can't surprise you by what it does, only by how well you can concentrate. Hundred monsters with even stranger faces wouldn't help that. Graphics are period — sober, without animation, just pictures that look like they were scanned from paper.

In 1992 such a game was useful as memory training for kids on home machines where complex mechanics didn't slow them. It held its place among DOS shareware titles where plenty of games pretended to be more than they could handle. Moraff's Monster Memory at least knew what it was — a textbook case of 'what you see is what you get.'

Today it's more curiosity. Memory games you have dozens of on mobile, better thought out, with better graphics and snappier pace. But if you're interested in how fun looked on the fringe of the DOS scene, or want to experience a straightforward game without complications, it's here. You can open it in a browser, play a few minutes and know enough. It's not bad, just unnecessary.