This is going to be another in that popular, long-running series "Just How Bad Is My Memory, Anyway?" It's not like I'm going to run out of material any time soon.
Of course, memory doesn't really exist. It's a construct. Whatever you think you remember, you most likely don't. One of the ironies of memory is that the better you think remember something, the more you go over it and polish it, the worse that memory becomes. The best way to keep a memory pristine is never to remember it at all.
And another irony is that, if you try to remember something for which you have no actual memory, your mind, like a too-helpful AI, will do its best to create one. Then you'll remember that hallucination and believe its real. It's almost as though what Philip K Dick, Timothy Leary and the Beatles tried to tell us back in the sixties, that nothing is real, is all that's really real.
Forget about age-related memory loss, then. I may be getting to the point when my memory might be expected to start to fail but if it was pretty much a failure to begin with, what's to worry? And I never did have a good memory, even when I was in my teens and twenties. I had more trouble than most of my peers learning verse or lines for the school plays and I was much better at A-Level history, where what was required was analytical thought, than I had been at O-Level, when all I had to do was remember dates.
All of this introspecting came about because I looked at my desktop and happened to notice the icon for Amazon's cloud-streaming service Luna. I thought I'd have a look at what was on there, these days. I mean, I used to post summaries of what was new and free on Prime Gaming every month.
When was the last time I did one of those?
Yes, well, obviously I couldn't remember, so I looked it up. That's one advantage of having a blog.
In July, I wrote a long piece about Amazon Luna and how it had taken over as the distribution platform for what used to be free games on Prime Gaming. Reading it back, I found I'd forgotten everything I said in that article except that I could play some games on Luna for free. That I remembered.
The last time I wrote anything specifically about Amazon Prime Gaming, though, was almost a year ago, in December 2025. I seemed to be very confused about what was going on then, complaining that "Amazon Games... still exists independently of Luna, apparently. Or maybe not. I can't tell any more."
I can confirm Amazon Games does indeed still exist at time of writing although, once again, I had to ask an AI to be sure. I didn't start with that, though. I began by opening Luna to see what was inside.
Mostly confusion, as it turned out. The app opens to a carousel of animations for the games they're currently promoting. Below that comes "New Games", "Continue Playing", "Recently Added" and then everything else. I tried clicking on "My Stuff" at the top of the page but apart from the last game I played on Luna, Dispatch, it seemed I didn't have any stuff.
I spent a fair old while, clicking on just about everything, trying to find either the games I used to own or any new ones I might be able to claim until, finally, right at the very bottom, on the fourth page of results, if you scroll down using the Page Down key, which no-one would but I did for science, I came to this:
Literally the very last thing on Luna. Someone very much hopes you'll give up before you get there. But now I'd found them, were there any games worth claiming? I clicked on the banner...
There are eight games to claim for free, three from Epic Games, three from GOG, one from Amazon Games itself and one from Legacy Games, who I could have sworn I'd read were closing down... and yep, they are!
Legacy Games is indeed closing for good in February next year. There's a detailed FAQ explaining exactly what's going to happen to the games you already own, which they said you'd own "forever". Surprisingly, it turns out that you do. You can go on playing as long as you want, provided you've downloaded them and backed them up on your own hardware before the Legacy Games Launcher ceases to operate on February 28.
Most of the the games Legacy offer are Hidden Object titles so I hardly ever claimed any of them. I wouldn't bother to keep the few I did claim and never played but it's nice to know I could if I wanted. Seems like a pretty fair way to end the service although it's slightly odd that Prime is still giving them away.
Of the eight claimable games, none of which I'm going to summarize, so go look them up for yourself if you want to know more, there were only a couple that interested me: Trash Goblin and Caravan SandWitch. Trash Goblin isn't really my sort of thing but I thought Mrs Bhagpuss might find it amusing and since she's starting to express quite an interest in gaming again, it seemed worth grabbing this one, just in case.
My first thought was Luna. I mean, I was on Luna and Amazon own it... but I couldn't see it anywhere so I did what I'm starting to do a lot these days; I asked Gemini.
It's insidious, isn't it? The way these AIs have slyly inserted themselves into our daily routines no matter how hard we try to keep them out. It seems like every day I get a news report about some service or platform adding a toggle to filter out the product of generative AI, the latest being Nexus Mods, whatever that is. Meanwhile, the cybernetic tentacles creep into everything we already use and make themselves indispensable. If this is a bubble it's going to be a hell of a shock when it bursts and not just for the economy.
I didn't keep a record of the conversation because I just typed my query into Google Search and I've long since closed the tab so it's gone. If I'd bothered to log into Gemini, anything we said to each other would have been dutifully recorded. Everything I have ever asked Google's AI is set out in neat tabs, titled by topic, down the left of the screen. It's very handy if a little worrisome. But then, if you saw what I'd been asking, you'd know why I'm not worried. It's all very dull.
My unreliable memory had been telling me with confidence that Amazon Games had been wholly replaced by Luna but it has not. It's still there, just like it always was. I downloaded the Amazon Games app, which must have vanished when I had to replace my C Drive in the summer, and there was Caravan SandWitch, along with all my other games.
I had an hour or so before we were due to take Beryl over to the playing fields, where Mrs Bhagpuss wanted to go so we could feed the crows. You know that thing about how crows can recognize faces? It's absolutely true, especially when the face belongs to someone that's going to feed them.
As we were walking around the cycle track in the drizzle, Mrs. Bhagpuss informed me that not only can crows remember faces, they can pass the information on to their offspring for up to three generations. So crows have better memories than I do and their crow-children will remember me after I'm dead. There's a cheering thought...
I started playing SandWitch and got stuck in the first room, which is never a great start. I had to watch someone else do it on YouTube to find there was an incredibly obvious solution to the "puzzle", which didn't even justify being called a puzzle, and which the game literally explains to you. So that was a good start.
Fortunately, the game looked very attractive and felt good to play so I accepted it was all my fault and carried on. I boarded the space train to the nearby planet, from where the lead character's sister, last seen alive six years ago, had just sent an emergency message. Nothing about any of this felt in any way familiar.
Planetside, I got into the van and weaved my way uncertainly to the nearby town. As soon as I arrived, I started to get the idea I'd been there before. It was almost like deja vu. After a couple of minutes it was more than a feeling. It was a near-certainty. But... memory...
Human memory may be mostly notional and AIs may hallucinate but blogs never lie. Bloggers do but that's different. I tabbed out and did a search on the blog for "Caravan SandWitch" and guess what?
I played the demo in the June Next Fest two years ago. I wrote a full post on it. Apparently I really liked it. Of the demo, my tl:dr was "It's great and I have nothing bad to say about it at all." I also said I'd wishlisted it and was looking forward to playing the full game, when it came out later that year.
As I said, bloggers lie. Not only did I not buy it, it's not even on my wishlist and I don't believe it ever has been. I did clear some deadwood there, earlier this year, but I don't remember culling that one. Although, again, memory...
Oh, memory... this is the downside of keeping a blog. One of the reasons I rarely go back and read my own posts is that they seem to record a different set of experiences altogether from anything I remember. It's a litany of claims I don't recall making and reactions I don't recall having.
As I re-read, of course, those feelings and impressions return. Reading them makes them real. Without the recorded words they have no existence.
Now I have yet another game to play. According to my notes, I ought to enjoy it. I'll post about it when I've played a little more.
If I remember...
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