Hindsight is a pensive journey as players follow the protagonist walking through the house they grew up in. Memories, a mixture of both reality and imagination, live within these objects, and they come rushing back as the protagonist looks through them.
During my playthrough, it was this mechanic of looking through these objects that fascinated me. Furthermore, the vibrant color palette, accompanied by a beautiful soundtrack, will keep players immersed in the indie title’s world.
I had the good fortune to engage with Joel McDonald, creator of Hindsight, and Emma Kidwell, narrative designer of Hindsight, and pick their brains regarding the development journey, their influences, the ‘aperture’ mechanic, and what the future may hold.
Hindsight developers discuss the indie title’s story, mechanics, and more
Q) To start off, will you please describe Hindsight for our readers?
Joel: Imagine visiting the house you grew up in, picking up old books, dishes, and toys… all these objects that are deeply tied to memories you have of being a child… and suddenly being able to step through these objects into the memories associated with them.
Hindsight explores what this would feel like and how it might change our perspective on things.
Q) The story of Hindsight felt deeply personal, especially when it came to the relationship one shares with their mother and how much of her they really know. What drove you to tell such a story?
Joel: It all started with the simple mechanic of looking through these object-shaped portals. This led us to explore the types of situations where you might be going through a lot of stuff, which naturally led us to want to tell the story of somebody coming home to clean out a parent’s belongings.
Memory isn’t as simple and straightforward as we often think, so we also wanted to explore the subjectivity of memory and how we gain perspective on things that have happened to us over time.
Emma: A big influence on how I wrote Mary’s relationship with her mom came from the preconceived notions I held towards my own mother when I was young and didn’t know her as her own person yet. It was an opportunity for self-reflection and growth that I got to explore in more detail.
Q) What was the inspiration and influence behind making Hindsight, a story-based study on relationships and memories?
Joel: Early on, one of the biggest influences was Terence Malick’s film, Tree of Life, which examined an American family’s relationships circa 1950 while also zooming all the way out to the scope of the universe.
Its explorations of man and nature, God and Grace, were interesting to me, having grown up religious. But it was the film’s tone, more than anything, that really inspired the early direction we set for Hindsight.
An influence that came much later in the development process was Michelle Zauner’s deeply moving memoir, Crying in H Mart, in which she reminisces about her Korean mother, their close but complex relationship, and her mother’s ultimate struggle with cancer.
Our story had already been going in that direction for a while, exploring this mother-daughter relationship saddled between two cultures. But it was definitely useful to be able to “compare notes” and make sure we were being authentic.
Emma: Hindsight’s story changed throughout the production, but something that always seemed to stick was the mother-daughter relationship. When we explored the idea that Mary’s cultural background would mirror my own, I felt this responsibility to make sure everything I wrote was handled with care and nuance.
I’m really fortunate I was given the space to help create this story and influence key parts of it. Halfway through development, my life began to mirror Hindsight’s narrative, and that influenced a lot of how I wrote Mary as she aged. It gave me a perspective I didn’t truly have until I was living it.
Q) What was the developmental journey behind the title like, especially the mechanic of shifting perspectives, juxtapositions, and using various objects as windows to past memories?
Joel: As already mentioned, development really started with the single core mechanic of object-shaped portals, or ‘apertures.’ I had been working on a couple of previous projects that explored jumping across time, but I was looking for a more low-level mechanic that could be a way of segueing between time periods or memories.
I think it finally “clicked” for me as I was coming across a lot of double exposure photography and illustrations–I realized this double image effect could be a form of exploration… a way of transporting you across time.
Q) During my playthrough, I found the soundtrack and art style of the game an integral part of the player experience. Was that something that was intentional and planned from the very beginning?
Joel: I think from the beginning we knew we’d need to rely on visuals and audio to do a lot of the heavy lifting and that they would comprise a majority of the experience for players. So fairly early on, I started talking to Kyle Preston, the composer who also did the Prune soundtrack.
I couldn’t really imagine anybody else doing the music for Hindsight besides him, so I was excited when he signed on again. As for the art style, we wanted to keep it pretty simple and minimal considering the tiny team we had, and we also wanted to emphasize emotions over details.
Focusing on the broad strokes, and how colors and lighting could communicate the mood and feel of the different memories was our main focus.
Q) What has been the response like from players since launch?
Joel: It’s been really positive overall! The folks who have played it seem to appreciate what we were aiming to do with the game. I’ve heard of players doing things like calling their mom after playing, which is great. The best thing that can happen is if the game can have a small impact on players’ lives, maybe changing their perspective a little bit on what’s important in life.
Having said that, it’d still be great to get the game into more people’s hands! I think there’s a large audience of people who don’t traditionally play games but would be into something like this, so we’re still hoping we can reach these people.
Emma: It’s really humbling when someone reaches out to say the game made an impact on them, and I’m hoping we can get it to reach more people as well. Because Hindsight is pretty accessible narratively, I want more people to get their hands on it and try something they otherwise wouldn’t.
Q) Have you started working on any new projects or will you be returning to the world of Hindsight in the future?
Joel: Personally, I’m taking a bit of a break after four years of development. Hoping to focus on family first for the foreseeable future, rather than jumping into any new projects right away.
But having said that, I do think there’s still a lot of untapped potential in the ‘aperture’ mechanic, both as a means of telling stories and also as a puzzle mechanic.
During development, there were a lot of directions we explored that didn’t make it into the final game but were definitely interesting in their own right. It’s too early to say whether I’ll want to explore this further in the future, but I would love to see the mechanic used in new and different ways, either by myself or an entirely different developer.
Emma: If you need a writer Joel, you have my contact info.
Coming soon!