‘Hindsight’ Uses Objects to Peer Into Our Past
Hindsight uses the items from childhood and its surroundings to look into memories, following that connection to explore a woman’s entire life.
You’re packing up after a loved one is gone. It’s the sort of activity many of us dread having to do, because the things we own, and the places we inhabit, carry memories within them. It’s a kind of surreal recall that happens when in those old places, as if the walls and things are infused with what happened around them. In this title, you’ll be seeing a lot of those memories as you try to pack the place up, with the past continually breaking its way into the present.
As you clean up and pick up objects, if you look at them from the right angle, you’ll see the world through the window of a memory. The objects in the house all contain their own little moments, and if you take the time to touch and handle them, you’ll live through moments in the character’s life at different points. Through delving into these memories, you’ll see the flow of the character’s life with their loved ones, piecing together who they are and how they became the type of person they are.
Hindsight is a look at how the most innocuous of things can hold important memories within it. It’s not just photographs that can hold the past, especially at emotional times like the main character is going through right now. There’s something about recent loss that seems to blur past and present – when we only have memories of someone we loved, memories seem to pour out of everything around us. Perhaps it’s a need to live in that past at the moment – to go back to when that person was alive – that makes this happen. This game lets us experience that feeling for a little while, and perhaps reflect on someone we care about who may not be gone just yet. And that maybe we should reconnect before all we have left is memories and things.
Hindsight is available now on the Nintendo eShop, App Store, and Steam.
