Hindsight – BIG

I’ve always had a strained relationship with my father.

Being primarily raised by my single mother, I often resented him for rarely being around, and for fighting with me whenever he was. There are few things a kid needs more than their parents’ love, and I felt like I was lacking half of that. As a result, there’s this perpetual feeling of pent-up emotions — things that I’ve just wanted him to understand — even though he’d never listen, and we’ve since been estranged for years.

As I played through Hindsight, the latest game from boutique indie publisher Annapurna Interactive, I found myself revisiting many of these thoughts. In the point-and-click narrative adventure title, a young chef named Mary returns to pack up her childhood home in the wake of her mother’s death. Naturally, this stirs up many long-forgotten memories from her earlier years, forcing her to process her feelings and come to terms with her grief.

In this way, Mary’s story — rife with conflicted, unresolved feelings towards a parent — hit surprisingly close to home, and it made the already solid Hindsight even more impactful as a result.

A fresh spin on “cinematic”

Before all of that, though, I was quickly taken aback by the presentation in Hindsight. Developer Team Hindsight, led by creator Joel McDonald (Prune), has opted for an understated, painterly aesthetic, which enhances the overall solemn atmosphere. But it’s how you interact with these visuals that Hindsight becomes downright transformative.

While basic pointing and clicking will get you in and around various parts of Mary’s home, Hindsight employs a novel approach to taking you through Mary’s actual memories. Throughout the environment are “apertures,” which are represented by everything from raindrops and flowers to birds and piano keys, and you’ll have to engage with each of them to segue into the next scene. Sometimes, this is done simply by rotating the camera around the object in question until you line up the next memory within, while other instances require simple, short minigames, like arranging dishware on a table or moving books on a shelf.

Hindsight horse aperture

This creates a wonderfully refreshing cinematic look — one uniquely accomplished not with photorealistic graphics, but through stylish transitions that move the camera in a wide array of twists and turns. In one instance, I panned into the family’s moving car before pulling back outside to zoom through a horse that Mary distractingly was imagining, snapping me back to their living room. In another moment, a sequence portraying Mary’s rising culinary career continued playing each time I cut a carrot, akin to how a flipbook tells a little story. Admittedly, it could be a bit frustrating to figure out where the next aperture was, given that they could be small at times, and I did occasionally run into some jarring slowdowns with them. On the whole, though, it’s remarkably inventive, and, more impressively, no two transitions are repeated in the three-hour campaign, keeping the whole experience visually engaging throughout.

A thoughtful and personal reflection on longing

On a deeper, more meaningful level, the aperture mechanic also brilliantly ties into the game’s larger themes about memory and perspective. Quite literally having you look at the world from different viewpoints mirrors what Mary herself is doing with her past. And because her mother is now dead, all of Mary’s thoughts about her are presented through an inner monologue, as read by Reiko Aylesworth (24) in an effectively melancholy performance. As such, Mary is aware that she’s having a one-sided “conversation” with her mother, and, therefore, is forced to try to see things from a different perspective. It’s not enough to just think fondly about her father, the parent she did wholeheartedly cherish.

It’s through this framework that Hindsight truly began to resonate with me. While my father isn’t dead, he is, in a similar fashion, gone from my life, and so I related heavily to Mary’s disappointments regarding pouring her heart out to someone who isn’t there to hear it. Writer Emma Kidwell’s script expertly captures all feelings that accompany this. The bitterness over missing all of the family dinners mixed with the warmth you felt with the other parent who was there for you. The confusion that lies in wondering why they’re not around, and the painful thought that this means they might not care about you. The stubborn rejection you give them when they do finally turn up.

Hindsight Mary alone

Making everything even more personal is the fact that Team Hindsight made the conscious decision to make Mary mixed-race, just like me. There’s a uniquely isolating culture clash that can be felt when you have two completely different backgrounds, which Hindsight explores to great effect. Not unlike how my dad’s side of the family impressed upon me their Indo-Guyanese culture and associated Hindu religion, we see how Mary’s mother repeatedly tried to teach her daughter about her Japanese heritage.

Just like how I viewed this as overbearing and detracting from letting me just be a “regular” child, so too did Mary see her mother’s customs as barriers to everyday activities like playing with other kids. It’s rare to see mixed-race characters portrayed in media in general, and it was especially lovely to see that represented in this game authentically thanks to Kidwell’s own half-Japanese background.

What I found genuinely moving, though, is that Hindsight offers a commendably nuanced take on this dynamic. I won’t spoil what sorts of conclusions adult Mary eventually comes to, but suffice it to say that the narrative has a lot of empathy for both daughter and mother in ways I didn’t know I needed. While I don’t think I’ll be able to find quite the same resolutions with my own family issues, Mary’s ability to more maturely process her feelings as an adult — particularly by learning to take the good with the bad — nonetheless proved touching, cathartic and even inspirational.

An unforgettable trip down memory lane

Hindsight Mary in field

Hindsight was a game that kept surprising me. The aperture mechanic was a smart means to keep the gameplay simple and approachable yet distinctive and compelling. But moreover, the story about the pain one feels toward an absent parent is layered, heartfelt and eminently relatable. Hindsight can be a sad and difficult journey at times, but it’s ultimately a beautiful and profound one that’s well worth playing.

Hindsight will release on Nintendo Switch (reviewed), iOS and Steam on August 4th.

Image credit: Annapurna Interactive

It’s not necessarily uncommon for adventure games to follow characters as they reflect on their lives, but Annapurna Interactive’s Hindsight seems to be approaching the concept in some clever and effective ways.

Primarily developed by creator Joel McDonald (Prune) and narrative designer and writer Emma Kidwell (Half), Hindsight tells follows a woman named Mary as she’s clearing out her childhood home. Along the way, she drudges up memories of her mother, who has since passed away.

“How do we make the most of the time we have on Earth?” says McDonald of the game’s premise during a hands-off media preview. By going through her old home, Mary will have to come to terms with her complicated feelings about her past. “How did I lose touch with what was important?” Mary asks herself during the demo. Over the course of Hindsight‘s three-to-four-hour story, you’ll figure out just that.

Right away, it’s easy to see how Hindsight could compare to emotional narrative-driven adventure games like Gone Home and What Remains of Edith Finch. But the storytelling techniques that McDonald and Kidwell use appear unique and well-executed. During each of the game’s chapters, you’ll see snippets of Mary’s life play out, and in order to progress, you’ll need to find “apertures.” These objects, which can be part of the characters or environment, will directly lead into the next scene through stylish, cinematic transitions.

According to McDonald, this idea came from taking the concept of mementos, which transport us back in time, and making that literal. As an example, one scene shows a child Mary excitedly asking her mother to spray her with a hose on a warm and sunny day. After her mother enthusiastically obliges, you, the player, must pan the camera around until you can line up another image of Mary through the ensuing water droplets. This segues into a dark and moody scene in which Mary is splashing in a puddle alone in the rain. In another instance, you have to re-arrange broken pieces of a mirror so you can zoom through it into the next segment.

It’s a smart way of creating light “puzzle” mechanics of sorts to engage the player while allowing for smooth jumps between often visually or tonally juxtaposed scenes. McDonald says the goal behind bouncing between these different periods of Mary’s life was to create “that feeling of being in a particular place in time.”

“And just sitting with it,” adds Kidwell, noting that players can their time to just absorb individual moments before moving on. “Because there are going to be a lot of heavy themes that we deal with.” Indeed, without any sort of combat or enemy threat, you’re free to just soak everything in, and it looks to create an appropriately wistful vibe when coupled with the game’s minimalist, painterly aesthetic. Adding to that is the fact that McDonald and Kidwell say Hindsight‘s story draws a lot from their own lives, which should add some authenticity to the subject matter.

On top of Mary dealing with her grief, there’s a larger external narrative at play regarding her job as an accomplished chef. At the start of Hindsight, she’s about to open her own restaurant, so returning home is a way to close one chapter as she’s about to open another. We see this play out during the demo when a phone call in the present day snaps her back to reality as she’s reminiscing. It’s currently unclear how much of a role this side of the story will play, but Kidwell says it serves as “an external force to push the player and remind them why they’re there,” and from that perspective, it seems to be working well.

At the end of each chapter, you’ll also get the chance to keep one object in Mary’s suitcase in what Kidwell says was inspired by an Itch.io game called Packing Up the Rest of Your Stuff on the Last Day at Your Old Apartment. While Hindsight‘s narrative beats won’t change depending on what you pick, McDonald and Kidwell say it’s a chance for the player to reflect on the journey as they go along.

“You as the player choose what you want to value — what matters in your own life or what would matter to Mary,” says McDonald. “Player expression was really important to us,” adds Kidwell. “It acknowledges the player’s journey that they’re having with us.”

In the end, I’ve come away quite intrigued by Hindsight. It’s looking to be a tightly crafted and emotional story told through an engaging presentation style. I’m eager to play it for myself when the game releases sometime later this year on Nintendo Switch, PC and iOS.

Image credit: Joel McDonald/Annapurna Interactive