Best Month Ever is fast approaching — the adventure game charts the last month in the life of Louise, who takes her son Mitch on a road trip after finding out she has a terminal illness. It’s a challenging premise, and will no doubt take us to some emotional places when it launches in May, so we chatted with Klabater CMO and Best Month Ever producer Michał Gembicki to find out more.What is Best Month Ever?Best Month Ever is a point-and-click narrative-driven adventure game, developed by Warsaw Film School and published by Klabater. When does Best Month Ever launch?Best Month Ever isn’t too far away now, and launches on May 5th.What’s it about?Best Month Ever revolves around the relationship between Louise and her son Mitch. Louise finds out she has a terminal illness that leaves her with only one month left to live. She decides to take Mitch on a road trip to try and make up for as much time that will be lost as possible. It’s a more mature, sombre story, and Gembicki says it is “first and foremost an emotional journey into motherhood, parental sacrifices, and what profound impact our relationships and early childhood events may have on the rest of our lives. The 60s are a cultural phenomena both in the US and Europe, and being able to showcase the personal vs. political was a chance we simply could not let pass by. Narrative stories have been our forte for a long time now,” Gembicki continues, “given our previous released titles such as We. The Revolution, Help Will Come, or Apocalipsis, and mature themes have become synonymous with our key publishing choices. We’re good at promoting a different perspective and offering our audiences a ‘what if?’ scenario to act out in different historical and inspired by real-life surroundings. It was a natural choice to present another glimpse into the XX-th century, with a more nuanced, private story of a mother and her parenthood journey throughout the country.”Translating such tough topics into a gameplay experience sounded like a challenging job. “Parenthood may be one of life’s toughest tests and showcasing how much effort it requires, with no obvious link between one singular event and the long-term, proved to be an exciting challenge for us — especially considering the process of shaping a person’s personality,” Gembicki says. “In terms of cultural depictions, it’s definitely a stepping stone for us to properly depict key phenomena of the 60s in the USA, given our European perspective and how much pop culture influences the key stereotypes people may have of the era in question — how much of an impact on the average’s John did the civil rights movement truly have, what perspective could the elders have on choices we see as perfectly acceptable now in 2020s but could raise an eyebrow back in the day, what did counterculture offer in some places and what was met with backlash in others?”The Native American diaspora, the political turmoil of the era, single motherhood and making do with tough choices — all while playing as a strong, capable woman that Louise definitely represents — these are some of the topics we look forward to see represented more widely in the gaming media, and responses our audience will undoubtedly share with us after the premiere,” Gembicki concludes.Best Month Ever is very clear that you only have those four weeks to cement the crucial relationship between mother and son. “A month left to live is a pretty established literary and film trope — it’s a span of time that enables you to build lasting memories and at the same time, short enough that you do feel the time ticking out,” Gembicki explains. “Louise is diagnosed with a terminal illness, one which is left to the interpretation of the players — but which is accelerating at a rate that makes securing Mitch’s future of paramount importance. We’d like our players to keep in the back of their minds, how impactful their decisions truly are, and yet, how fragile life can be when faced with an unchangeable outcome — living life to the fullest, you may regret some of the choices you make but ultimately, the story builds you up, and the narrative of your life runs free,” Gembicki continues. The game is built around 12 chapters and is “divided into them because of the most impactful moments during the mother and son trip — and a longer timeframe may have thrown the storytelling and its rhythm to the side; it’s been important to make players feel for the characters and sympathize via their choices with the routes they’d like Mitch’s life to take on.”How does Best Month Ever play?Best Month Ever switches between flashbacks and memories, between past and present. We’ll be making Louise’s choices in the past and seeing how they shape her relationship with Mitch, and how they influence the kind of person she was and the kind of person Mitch will be. Each choice will have a positive or negative effect on three stats: Righteousness, Confidence, and Relations. “Righteousness and Confidence give us a wide spectrum of possible endings and also provide some uncertainty for the player,” Gembicki explains. “We didn’t want players to be able to ‘guess’ the best answers and the best mix of the statistics right away. Relations on the other hand, add yet another layer to the possible image of our adult Mitch. Just to be clear, we didn’t base the statistics on any psychological studies; we decided to use our poetic licence to full extent here.”Decision-making is key in Best Month Ever. “Our game is first and foremost about the influence and weight of choices — some of them small and miniscule, some of them of paramount importance in creating Mitch’s way for himself in the future.” Gembicki adds that there are a few mini-games in the game to “spice up the gameplay experience, and we count on players wanting to test their skills — if they aren’t your forte, you can also skip them and just enjoy the narrative-focused part of the game.”So, the ending to Best Month Ever will change depending on the choices we make. “There are a number of endings that are directly influenced by your decisions taken for Mitch’s future — there are several of them, depending on the parameters mentioned before. You can influence Mitch’s outlook on life and therefore his life choices — it’s no easy feat to fully predict where your own judgment may take him and therefore our players will feel more than inclined to give the game a few tries, in order to witness the change in sentiment and the start Mitch has into his adulthood,” explains Best Month Ever line manager and Klabater marketing manager Joanna Keler. “No ending is inherently bad or best in our view — each of them showcases different facets of Mitch’s experience and what influence Louise’s figure had on him growing up. Therefore we highly encourage all players to live through this one particular month a few times at the very least, not just once.”Decisions are “of paramount importance,” Gembicki concludes, “and players can get satisfaction from the changing circumstances of Mitch once they achieve the endings — so another thing for ours that is highly anticipated by the team, is this particular feedback; are the players happy with their choices?”What’s the world like?Best Month Ever switches between the past, set in the 60s, and the present, set in the 70s. “The 60s were truly THE turbulent era worldwide, but especially in the USA — with anti-war protests, political turmoil, the civil rights movement, women’s emancipation, changing attitudes, and anger of the young towards the choices of the elderly,” explains Gembicki. “Setting the storyline is that era, one of growing up, making amends with one’s past and yet living life to the fullest, built on our own rules — it makes perfect sense to offer the storyline centred around these topics during the time that reflects them on a bigger, extensive scale. “The 70s are another era offering a very different outlook than today’s times, and following Mitch over the period of ten years offers a glimpse into what our perception changes given the journey from childhood into early adulthood — perspective changes depending on our overall life experiences,” Gembicki continues. “We think such a time window offers an opportunity to further sympathise with Mitch and his retrospective view on what Louise is like and what informs her actions throughout the story. In a rare opportunity that video games enable us in terms of storytelling, like films and books, we can witness the past accompanied by narration from the future, already richer in context and the aftermath our decisions being taken in real-time have had down the line for Mitch.”Any news on the Best Month Ever achievements?We don’t yet have the Best Month Ever achievements, but Gembicki did give us an idea of how the team goes about designing them. “The design process for these involved finding the best translation of the alignment systems into what provides the players with most satisfaction for trying out different routes, and finding a way to give nods towards pop culture — we hope to have people recognize some of the iconic names for what they are!” Since Best Month Ever has different endings, we wondered whether there might be any achievements tied to uncovering them all. “Not to spoil the fun of finding the achievements, we have ones dedicated to the progression throughout the game and the different fates Mitch can be led towards based on the players’ decisions,” Gembicki says. “We also have a few dedicated to ‘secret’ encounters or stackable decisions which can be received only by following a decision road — one step at a time.”So, what do you think? If you’re interested in finding out more, be sure to check out the Best Month Ever Steam page, the game’s Twitter account, and another game trailer! Will you be playing Best Month Ever on day one? Let us know in the comments!
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