Hindsight

Hindsight (2022) is a narrative point-and-click game where you revisit the past by finding objects that trigger memories. Play involves exploring each scene, locating objects and listening to the story as you move the camera to look within what you've found and be drawn into the memory it represents. It is a straightforward game that innovates with its onion-layered approach to memory, but really stands out for the calm, moving interactions and the chance to eavesdrop on the complexity of a woman wrestling with her mother and their shared Japanese heritage.

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Play involves moving around a world from one still-frame snapshot to the next. As you tap or click on characters to make these connections, you are told a story about a daughter and a mother. In each scene are objects from their memories and as you shift your viewpoint you can find just the right perspective to see another scene within them that pulls you in to revisit the past. Revisit her childhood home, sort through personal belongings, and step through windows to memories frozen in time.

As you move around each memory, you journey through the daughter's life, from birth to childhood, adolescence up to the present day, as she tries to make sense of things after the death of her mother. Finding more objects with sentimental memories attached enables you to go deeper into the past. And then, at the end of each chapter, you are asked to keep just one of the objects you find with you.

The result is a game some may find too simple or slow. But the temptation to dismiss this too easily belies its deft ability to get to the heart of family relationships with long-forgotten memories and dreams that cascade into one another.

Linger as long as you wish, but sooner or later you must come back to the present. What will you take with you? And what will you leave behind?"

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Our examiner, Andy Robertson, first checked Hindsight 3 years ago. It was re-examined by Thom Robertson and updated 2 weeks ago.