The game's structure is highly multilinear (see Interactive Narrative), with a variety of endings and a labyrinthine web of behaviours which allow for many complex interactions in time. While the town of Lebensbaum (in which the game is set in all its various eras) is not especially interactive, being almost completely deserted, considerable effort has been devoted to giving the player as many options as possible within the limitations imposed by the design. This conceit, which corresponds to assuming that Kusch can only travel specific distances in time, adds a real sense of tension to the gameplay, since the player is always racing an unforgiving clock. Time passes continuously and simultaneously in all periods during play, meaning that if the player travels into the past an hour before they are due to die in the present, they have only sixty minutes to save themselves in the past before their fate is sealed. The game's rationale depends on Science and Sorcery (the individual who rescues Kusch is an alchemically created homunculus who uses a technological Time Machine), but its conception of Time Travel is entirely science-fictional. Eventually it becomes clear that the only hope of survival lies in travelling to a variety of time periods, including the Middle Ages, the beginning of the twentieth century and the 1980s, and attempting to uncover the secrets of Kusch's forgotten past. The game then proceeds through a sequence of fatalities the player can repeatedly succeed in preventing their character's death, only to discover that they will then be killed in a different way, and resurrected yet again. This entity tells Kusch that if he wishes to survive he must change the sequence of events that led to his death, gives him an erratically functioning Time Travel device, and dispatches him into the recent past.
The game begins with the murder of Eike Kusch, the player character, in a modern town in Germany, followed by his resurrection by a mysterious figure. The display is fully three-dimensional, and the gameplay revolves around puzzle solution and conversation with computer controlled characters, in the manner of Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle ( 1993) or The Longest Journey ( 1999). Shadow of Memories is a highly atmospheric graphical Adventure with an unusual plot the player must solve the mystery of their own murder.
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