Thank you Overlap Games for providing us with a review code!

Be Missed and Remembered: The Letter from Mayoiga primarily takes place in the 1970s at a remote mountain village. The protagonist, Naofuyu, and his much younger sister, Risa, visit their deceased grandparents house which is close to an abandoned shrine. This shrine (referred to as the Mayoiga) is typically submerged for years at a time and only appears in the hottest of summers when the lake recedes.

The Mayoiga has a shrine maiden/master that resides inside. This young girl does not age or need to eat, and cannot get sick or die while serving at this shrine. There are multiple tradeoffs to these benefits. She can only leave the shrine for a few months every few years. There’s a lot of boredom in between! When anyone sees her, she has the appearance of a monster and frightens them. After people leave the presence of the maiden, they will forget about their encounter (good or bad).

Because this game is short, I don’t want to spoil too much of it. Be Missed and Remembered: The Letter from Mayoiga tells the story of a couple of shrine maidens and the people that they meet every few years. These people vow to return, but quickly lose their memories and have trouble honoring their promises. Most of the story telling takes place between the shrine maiden Susu, Naofuyu, and his sister Risa. Both Naofuyu and Risa have an interest in the occult and take a scientific approach to solving the many mysteries of this shrine and its curse.

It took me roughly five and a half hours to complete this kinetic visual novel. There are no choices to make so there’s not much replayability other than to refresh your memory of this touching story. In total, there are thirty chapters which can range for a few to twenty minutes to read through. The game supports saving, but the chapters were usually short so I didn’t need to manually save my progress. I am happy to report that Steam Cloud saves work so I was able to transfer my progress from my desktop to my Steam Deck.

The art in Be Missed and Remembered: The Letter from Mayoiga is really well done. The back drops and character designs are nicely detailed and have a lot of variety.

While Be Missed and Remembered: The Letter from Mayoiga is localized in English, the voice acting is done in Japanese. While I couldn’t understand the audio, I could feel the emotion behind the words. The background music is fitting, but not memorable.

Morally, there are a few things worth noting. There are many references to deities as the Mayoiga shrine houses a water god. Buddha and Jesus get name dropped in the game also. There are multiple instances of the word d*mn being used. Naofuyu and Risa have an awkward conversation about skinny dipping which is weird for siblings, especially with their age gap.

Awkward conversations aside, I enjoyed my time playing Be Missed and Remembered: The Letter from Mayoiga. If you enjoy visual novels, it’s worth looking into. The Steam page says that it’s 7-9 hours, but I must be a fast read to complete it in 5.4 hours. The asking price is fair, but I would recommend waiting for a sale since it’s a bit short.