head to head
Neither is meaningfully harder - they pose close to the same test. The widest gap is execution, and it is a single point.

Variance · Light / Casual
A romance visual novel about choosing dialogue paths across memory loss.

Optimization · Light / Casual
A first-person mystery about a fire lookout in a Wyoming forest.
Amnesia: Memories leans Variance (Light / Casual); Firewatch leans Optimization (Light / Casual).
Firewatch leans a little harder on execution, though the gap is small.
Amnesia: Memories
no action input, pure visual novel
Firewatch
Walking and radio dialogue only.
Same score on reads - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
Amnesia: Memories
no opposition, dialogue choices only
Firewatch
No adaptive opposition.
Amnesia: Memories leans a little harder on variance, though the gap is small.
Amnesia: Memories
branching outcomes feel like light randomness
Firewatch
Minor environmental discoveries.
Firewatch leans a little harder on optimization, though the gap is small.
Amnesia: Memories
minimal, mostly narrative branching logic
Firewatch
Few systems to optimize.
A matching score does not mean a matching test. Two games can both sit at 10 on execution and demand completely different things of you - which is why the reasoning above matters more than the number beside it.