MidBoss built 2064: Read Only Memories around a machine that learns to feel while its maker is missing. Turing is Hayden Webber’s creation, described as the world’s first sapient machine, a self-modifying robot that can learn and grow emotionally. The game puts that robot beside a journalist hunting a kidnapped friend across Neo-San Francisco, a city it frames as low life and high tech.
Trailer, via MidBoss.
Turing Breaks In on December 21
The setup is a kidnapping. Hayden, a Parallax engineer, disappears. Turing breaks into the journalist’s apartment in the early morning of December 21 and delivers the news. The player is that journalist, searching a city run on Parallax’s ROMs, personal assistant robots that have overtaken smartphones and computers.
TOMCAT Finds the Footage
The supporting cast does real work: TOMCAT the hacker, Detective Lexi Rivers, attorney Jess Meas. When a lead to the activist group The Human Revolution goes nowhere, TOMCAT searches Parallax’s network and uncovers encrypted security footage showing Hayden’s murder. Turing is shaken, then resolves to dispense justice. The story then splits by lead — the Media arc follows tampered news articles and a string of murders in journalism, while the Flower arc brings Parallax engineer Vincent Mensah, fleeing the country, with more on Hayden. The news tampering, the source establishes, was done by the rogue Baby Blue program, an AI created by Parallax.
What the Split Ending Costs
Splitting the back half means one playthrough skips half the investigation. In this paper’s view, that is a real cost. The source does not describe any momentum loss, so treat that as opinion, not mechanism.
A Snatcher Lineage, Updated
MidBoss wears its sources plainly — Snatcher, Rise of the Dragon, Gabriel Knight, the 1980s and 1990s adventure canon. Director John “JJSignal” James, writers Valerie Amelia Thompson and Philip Jones, and composer 2 Mello turn that inheritance into something with its own pulse. Melissa Hutchison’s Turing carries the emotional weight. Adam Harrington’s Doctor Yannick Fairlight, the disgruntled former Parallax CEO, gives the conspiracy a face. Xavier Woods plays Mensah.
The Order Worth Playing It In
- Media arc — the news-tampering thread leads into Baby Blue.
- Flower arc — Mensah’s escape fills in Hayden’s history.
- Replay the other branch.
The Numbers Behind the Release
- Original release: October 2015 on computer platforms, as Read Only Memories
- Updated title: January 2017, alongside the PlayStation 4 release
- Platforms: PlayStation 4, Ouya, Linux, PC, iOS, Mac, PlayStation Vita, Xbox One
- Developer and publisher: MidBoss
- Sequel: Read Only Memories: Neurodiver, 2024
- Score: 8.3/10 (IGDB critic aggregate, 7 outlets)
The Verdict on Neo-San Francisco
The point-and-click frame is old, and 2064: Read Only Memories does not reinvent it. What it does is put a machine still learning to feel at the center of a kidnapping case and let that tension do the work. Turing’s growth is the game’s real subject; the conspiracy is the delivery system. The split narrative costs it momentum, in this paper’s reading, but the writing and Hutchison’s performance keep the thing grounded.
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