A Memoir Blue is fast approaching — describing itself as an interactive poem, A Memoir Blue seems to have kept details close to its chest. Combine this with the fact that it launches day one into Xbox Game Pass, and A Memoir Blue looks to be one intriguing adventure. We reached out to Cloisters Interactive, with creative director Shelley Chen having been kind enough to answer all our questions about A Memoir Blue.What is A Memoir Blue?A Memoir Blue is both an atmospheric adventure and an interactive poem, in development from Cloisters Interactive and published by Annapurna Interactive.When does A Memoir Blue launch?A Memoir Blue launches next month on March 24th. Will A Memoir Blue be on Xbox Game Pass?Yep! A Memoir Blue will launch day one into Xbox Game Pass.What’s it about?A Memoir Blue revolves around the relationship between Miriam and her mother. Chen expands on this, explaining, “A Memoir Blue is a textless atmospheric journey and interactive story that explores the memories of Miriam, a champion swimmer. In the aftermath of a championship swim meet, she begins to dwell on the childhood memories of her mother and a special trip they took together. Her journey leads to an unravelling of hidden truths, including the all-encompassing love between mother and daughter.” Chen adds that A Memoir Blue is inspired by two short animation films she discovered when studying at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. “The first is The House of Small Cubes (つみきのいえ), a Japanese animated short film created by Kunio Katō in 2008, and the second is Father and Daughter, a 2000 Dutch animated short film made by Michaël Dudok de Wit. Those two films share the common theme of ‘familial love’, and both are around ten minutes long. Despite their brief length, they both evoke incredibly strong emotions in the viewer. I wanted to make a piece of work that conveyed that same feeling I received from both films.”Chen discusses how accessibility was also important to the team behind A Memoir Blue. “We have strived to create an experience which is accessible to everyone, so we also hope the experience is able to operate within the impactful realm of colour and sound. We want to present a story that anyone can empathize with no matter their culture or background; we want to capture a commonality inherent in being human and experiencing the pain and joy of that humanity. That theme also carries into our gameplay. Our easy to execute ‘toy-like’ interactions feel almost as effortless as flipping through the pages of a book. A Memoir Blue aims to deliver a simple yet deeply meaningful universal message to each of our players’ hearts.”And as for what Chen’s most excited for players to experience? “I hope that players finish the game with a refreshed feeling, as though they have worked their way through a conflict and had the weight lifted from their shoulders,” Chen says. “The experience should be closer to finishing a rewarding short story, or watching an inspiring short film. A Memoir Blue brings an unique experience to players, as each chapter of the game explores different methods of storytelling.”Nor can the game be explained as simply a “retreading of the past. Miriam experiences her subconscious as both her childhood self and her mature self, meaning that she can now reexamine a memory she had previously interpreted from a fresh perspective. The game is about recontextualizing something that was once accepted as truth.”How does A Memoir Blue play?A Memoir Blue has Miriam submerging herself in her memories through a series of gameplay vignettes. “This personal story is experienced through a beautiful mixture of 3D and hand-drawn 2D animations. Players will be able to interact and play with dreamlike objects in tactile ways that will surprise and delight them as they dig deeper into what happened that fateful day.” Chen expands on this, adding, “There are immersive toy-like interactions to move the narrative along as the player makes their way through the story. As such, they are designed to be engaging, but more importantly, to also have metaphorical meaning behind the interactions. The narrative is unearthed as players explore our environments; each interaction gives another stanza of the poem and together you are left with a beautiful sequence of events that you must interpret in your own personal way. What separates us from other narrative interactive experiences is that we expect our audience to derive meaning through engagement.”A Memoir Blue avoids using speech or text as, Chen explains, “sometimes an indirect form of expression can capture an idea more accurately than through direct explanation. Additionally, because the story is interpreted, you can derive meaning from it no matter what language you speak or what culture you’re from. We think this is a very fundamental and accessible way of experiencing narrative.”A Memoir Blue has kept gameplay details close to its chest, and so we were curious about how these gameplay vignettes would function. “Our gameplay is based on how things behave in everyday life. We like designing around ideas of mundane tasks, such as buying train tickets, or turning the knobs of a radio. These actions are so common that they can be operated almost instinctively, so if we start with the expected, it becomes easy to manipulate the performance of these everyday actions and surprise players with magical, unexpected results. The game is a lot like a toybox in that you can play with many things you see in a scene, and almost all interactions will be exciting or charming to the player in some way.”What’s the world like?A Memoir Blue combines hand-drawn and 3D art for a “magical-realist” journey. “I watched a lot of classic Disney animations when I was little,” Chen explains. “I watched them so frequently that it became a central pillar of my childhood. As the game is pulled from my own personal childhood memories, I couldn’t help but think of those delightful films, so traditional animation seemed like an obvious representation of the ‘past’. One of our animators, Morgan Winchell, has a really unique and elegant way of animating 2D characters that immediately sent me back to the memories I had with classic Disney animation films. I was overjoyed to have her design my memories of childhood.”The mixed media concept is something that was also influenced by my undergraduate studies. A required course was ‘The History of Computer Animation and the Foundations of VFX’, in which we learned about early experimentations that were first explored when animation was first being developed. Of particular interest to me were the animated scenes in Mary Poppins where 2D characters from a fantasy realm could magically interact with the real life performers. That notion of two different worlds coming together created a sense of wonder — as though anything was possible. Those scenes served as a development guidepost, as it was really important to us that we captured that same feeling in A Memoir Blue.”It’s not just the art style that helps A Memoir Blue appear so heavily atmospheric. “Sound, musical scores, and songs are important to A Memoir Blue’s atmosphere. Our sound designer, Ray Gould, is a veteran SFX designer who has worked on numerous television and game projects. He tends to design complex sound arrangements for specific instances, which creates unique, immersive feedback as players explore the game. He has a well-trained intuition for how sound impacts players, and expertly mixes the soundscape to engage without overwhelming. Our music is scored by Joel Corelitz,” Chen continues, “who has a talent for producing incredibly dreamlike and otherworldly scores. Listening to his work really takes your mind to another place. I come from a classical music background myself, and this commonality allows us to combine ideas into a one-of-a-kind experience that fits perfectly into the world of A Memoir Blue. The songs are written by Eric Hillman and Imogen Williams, the latter of whom also provided the vocals. The goal for the songs is that of a messenger for our audience. The songs are the only use of language to convey the emotions of our characters, so it was incredibly important that the lyrics communicate the complex and intimate feelings the characters often conceal or are too timid to express. Ultimately, the songs are incredibly sincere and heartfelt expressions that are also quite catchy. It’s very hard not to feel moved by them, even after hearing them so many times during development.”Any news on A Memoir Blue achievements?We don’t yet have A Memoir Blue’s achievement list, but Chen’s given us an idea of what to expect, and it sounds like not rushing the game is the key: “We really wanted to avoid players doing anything akin to speed runs for a slow-paced game like A Memoir Blue. Our achievements are designed to encourage players to poke around in our environments and explore. Our gameplay engineer Zhaopeng ‘Kevin’ Zeng was inspired by pop-up illustration books, as well as games that encourage similar charming exploration rewards such as Vectorpark Windosill. I illustrated the achievement icons myself,” continues Chen, “which were meant to echo the pop-up illustration books that inspired them. We hope players find the achievement’s experience amusing and fun!”What do you think? Will you be diving into Miriam’s memories when A Memoir Blue launches in March? Let us know in the comments!
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