We are good at pretending we have forgotten. We wear a banal smile as if it were a mask we can even get used to, and then hide the dust under the carpet believing it’s right. Any action we take, however, carries with it those memories that continue to tear us apart. We can be good actors during the day, but we can’t fool our minds; any thought that we try to chase away will arise in a dream.
Memories, fears, visceral sensations emerge overwhelmingly in nightmares, those who have no mercy on us and throw in our face what really is in our soul. Other dreams are almost revealing, real journeys that try to get us to an awareness.
A Memoir Blue, the latest creation of Annapurna Interactive, is one of those short experiences that can make us reflect with an extraordinary delicacy. Maybe too much. The life of Miriam, the protagonist, is a tangle of suffering masked by a timid writing, as if it were a feeble flame. Her story is told as a mother would do it: with profound sincerity, albeit carefully measured in order not to hurt unnecessarily. It is an intuitive adventure that allows us to capture certain events, without ever actually having a well-defined confirmation.
A vicious circle of thoughts then takes over, mixed with often personal identifications. The numerous medals obtained by the protagonist correspond to the false goals we have obtained to be accepted. The traumas of a life are immediately linked to the psychological violence of a father. Well, the desire to write a real in-depth study on this game is really great, but at that point we would risk revealing all the important background.
The precise reason we must avoid is very simple: A Memoir Blue only lasts an hour. Such a short amount of time is crucial to trigger the ‘wow’ factor and fully empathize with this young woman’s story. As you may have guessed, Miriam is an athlete who has allowed her greatest passion to become as heavy as a boulder. Her true motivations, as well as her deepest memories, lie where her heart has decided to stay: underwater. And it is there, through an extraordinarily vivid dream, that her mind decides to take it without allowing any objections.
He does it with deception, in his sleep, because he has to show her how much harm he is doing in vain. She thus travels through the first moments of her childhood, strictly in an aquatic setting, walking on a backdrop as heavy as her heart. She doesn’t swim, she doesn’t want to, she can’t. She prefers to continue walking slowly, chasing a little five-year-old Miriam as if she were a spectator. And it is here that she relives the memories of her linked to her mother, the only woman to have really accompanied and supported her in the complex and delicate years of her childhood. She was a person who was present in defeats and victories, despite everything.
However, something unknown, complex and deeply difficult shakes the athlete’s life. Something he can’t live for anymore. It is a sweet and bitter story, one that makes you think and leave you in silence for several minutes. Despite this, he does it with such delicacy that he does not leave his mark in an incisive way. He takes you, cradles you, takes you with him into his world and then brings you back down as if you were wearing protection. Paradoxically, however, in this case we would have preferred a descent as steep as it is painful. It hit the right spots, but in a single hour it could have involved many more, if only the writing had been braver.
This doesn’t mean that we didn’t like this game, on the contrary, we loved it to the point of wanting an even more intense emotional component. The gameplay, in fact, is a real occasional accompaniment, an interactive input to proceed with the story of the protagonist. Small puzzles of extreme ease have surrounded the various underwater settings. While the latter may be a disadvantage, it actually makes sense dynamically. Telling such an exciting story, and then allowing the player to potentially find himself in trouble with the various puzzles, would have been absolutely deleterious.
The problem is that, precisely for this reason, the developers should have concentrated their forces more on the narrative sector, in order to be able to fully enjoy it. Fortunately, however, this dream world managed to surprise us with well-made landscapes. The settings and characters have an imprint that is pleasantly reminiscent of an animated film, and that’s probably what gave this title even more magic. The same goes for the soundtrack, with a melancholy guitar and a voice able to hit the heart without too much difficulty. This last element is probably one of the greatest strengths of the game, given that it has been able to give life to a story without real words.
If only the developers had dared slightly more, A Memoir Blue could have inexorably left its mark. However, it is an extraordinarily relaxing and reflective experience, with a technical sector that gives it the right fluidity. However, anyone who needs to experience an adventure that is too dramatic, or with more dynamic gameplay, should think before putting their hand in their wallet.
Overall, this latest effort from Annapurna Interactive is a sweet tribute to a mother’s unbreakable love. That mother to whom we are attached in a visceral way, although sometimes we do not realize it. And if we can do that, then we need to take the opportunity to hold her in a warm hug and thank her for still being in our life.
7/10
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