I'm impressed, but the game annoyed me by letting me get completely stuck after saying how rare this should be in the help text. (Note to authors: Bugs are never as rare as you think they are.) However, I like the game. And it's especially impressive for a first major game.
The memory system works well as it goes, but I'm not entirely sure I like the idea in general. It seems like an excuse for shifting the burden of discovering backstory to the player, instead of letting the player discover this through the game. It's not very interactive.
The same applies to the talk system. There's not enough to talk about. Things that I wanted to talk about didn't seem to be implemented, which discouraged me from asking about others (which, looking at the help text, I should have). The inclusion of a default list of topics seems to discourage the player from exploring outside those boundaries. Otherwise, things seem well implemented.
The writing is excellent and seems well polished. The author has a clear idea of what needs to be achieved. I'm not a big fan of fantasy, but this was tolerable and some scenes were very well executed. The goblin girl is a great example of this, but one of the reasons she stands out is because she didn't talk.
Minor points deducted for the menu system in response to the help command. Menu systems are bad news in terms of accessibility. Minor points returned after seeing the response to "x me".
There appear to be vile zero errors from hell. I ignored them.
To sum up, then, an excellent competition entry and a very solid foundation to build upon for a promising author.
