Time and tide

How Cloisters makes the everyday extraordinary in this tale of inner reflection

Cloisters makes the everyday extraordinary in A Memoir Blue

For some, nostalgia is a sepia-toned thing – others see rosetinted recollections. In A Memoir Blue, however, it’s the cerulean depths of the sea that evoke the past, as champion swimmer Miriam dives into her childhood memory. Its magical realist approach is influenced by Disney animation and the expressive, dreamlike colours of Ridley Scott’s films, project lead and artist Shelley Chen tells us.

Despite its stylised looks, most of A Memoir Blue is concerned with carrying out mundane activities such as buying train tickets, or tuning the radio. “We try to reward players for performing these everyday actions by twisting the reality of the results to surprise them,” Chen says. “Haruki Murakami’s short stories delight in uncovering beauty in unexpected places. He creates unusual situations that lead the reader to ask questions, and the answer is withheld in order to draw out the mystery. I wondered how we could achieve that same result not through words, but through interactions and puzzles.”

Water, meanwhile, was the ideal medium through which to express A Memoir Blue’s central themes. “Water came from the feelings I had when I missed my home, or whenever I was overwhelmed and felt like crying,” Chen says. “I felt an invisible force pressed against my chest, just like the feeling of being underwater. Water is formless, but it has a weight that can constrict you, so I felt that it was the perfect element to describe emotions. As Miriam submerges herself into the water, she is also submerging herself in her memories to uncover the truth of her childhood.” But you’ll have to hold your breath a little longer: A Memoir Blue isn’t due on PC and mobile until summer 2020.

The character of Miriam is successful, Chen says, but “feels that there is something inside of her that is unresolved. Beyond just the visual contrast, yellow was also chosen as a symbolic colour that represents the character’s determination in a world surrounded by murky uncertainty”