A Memoir Blue (Xbox Series X)
Victory is not necessarily the same thing as success. A victory simply means that you placed first in some sort of competition or received an award or reward for your performance, but success can sometimes include goals beyond just earning a win. This can perhaps manifest best when victory perhaps comes too easily to a person, their definition of a successful performance going beyond merely meeting the criteria to win a contest.
When A Memoir Blue begins, we witness what seems like it should be the greatest victory in a championship swimmer’s career, an Olympic medal earned and reporters eager to hear what she has to say afterwards. It is clear her mind and heart are elsewhere, and when we start to see more of her life and her apartment, it becomes a bit clear that victory has come to her often and perhaps too easily throughout her life. Swimming may be her talent, but her heart yearns for something more out the activity, something she once received long ago but learned to resent after it went away. This is what A Memoir Blue aims to explore in this self-described interactive poem, the actual activities you’ll be participating in rather light but the focus lies on a wordless narrative meant to explore the emotions of its lead as more of her history is shared in an interesting mix of imagery and two different art styles.
While the game forgoes words for telling its story, outside materials mark the female lead as Miriam and the other character of consequence in the tale it tells is her mother. After witnessing that early scene of what should be Miriam’s greatest triumph, we begin a fantastical dive into her past in an almost literal fashion, her history intertwined with an aquatic presentation that makes for more fascinating visuals and scenes that help put you in the mindset of interpreting things a little less literally. The core of the story being told is the relationship between Miriam and her mother but it’s a tale told remarkably quickly, the game not even likely to hit two hours since there are few true gameplay barriers and the story-telling itself is brisk and makes a few large leaps in time.
Delving into the past does begin to display a somewhat sad story of a single mother trying to raise her daughter, and while the plot progresses at a rather quick speed, it also doesn’t exactly rush to wrap up either. This does make for some unusual emphasis on certain moments though, the game allowing some of the early moments of the hardships the two experience breathe while Miriam’s swimming career makes some large jumps. Acknowledging that what you see might not be the full truth behind a situation feels key to getting the most of the narrative as singular events can often seem a bit overblown or dramatic without the kind of context that actual dialogue could have added or more scenes that slowly built up to them. For example, while Miriam is happy to have her mother show up for her early swimming competitions, her mother can’t make later ones, leading to a budding resentment that would seem a bit entitled if viewed under a literal examination that she’s angry at her overworked mother for prioritizing supporting the two through work rather than showing up to another medal ceremony. As a broader metaphor though, it does embody the growing gap between the two and their strained emotional connection, and in some ways the limited window we have into the past also primes the player better for interpreting the scene rather than accepting it merely as presented.
One reason the story sets you up well for looking deeper than the surface level is its heavily aquatic presentation. That medal ceremony the mother misses isn’t presented as a fully recreated memory, instead it is just a few key pieces of that moment arranged in the underwater world Miriam is now exploring. The ocean holds a great deal of Miriam’s past for her to explore and she’ll find both aquatic life and contextualized pieces of her urban existence. A train runs underwater, there being no issue with breathing as you open its doors and watchh schools of fish swim by. Buildings that once housed businesses and homes are covered in barnacles and other marks of age that would imply they’ve been submerged for a long time, but that is merely a representation of how they’ve become a part of Miriam’s past. There are still some clear details you can pick up even with this style of presentation, mostly through the actual actions of the two echoes Miriam is chasing. Miriam herself and the underwater world are portrayed in a 3D visual style while her younger self and her mother are exclusively depicted in a 2D cartoon style. The rounded, simplified forms of the two illustrated characters make it easy to find some of their sweeter interactions adorable or heartwarming, and their expressions are easier to read and thus able to draw out emotions better thanks to some fluid animation. The disconnect in the art styles is more about the intangibility of the past and the game does a pretty good job mixing them together in scenes that remain entirely 3D, the player often having a hand in arranging things so the cartoon representations of the pair can continue their tale.
Interactivity isn’t A Memoir Blue’s strong suit. While it can create gorgeous moments from its mix of real environments and the incursion of water and aquatic life, it does feel like more a story you’re witnessing than one whose hand you guide in any sort of way. Few true puzzles exist along the way, the moments where things do stop and give you control often more about messing with the few objects you can interact with to get them in place for the next scene. There is a variety in these simple interactions at least, the player sometimes needing to arrange objects to properly set the stage for a flashback while others can have you experiencing something the pair went through like getting your ticket punched before getting on the train. You’re not often asked to figure out much, the game even letting you press a button to highlight different interaction points so it’s not even a matter of finding the things you’ll be futzing with, but there is at least some visual novelty in the way such actions unfold. Needing to clear up an image by dragging a paint roller across a blurred image or figuring out the order of operations to utilize a boat’s steering wheel are at least different types of play, but these do feel fairly insubstantial and often without much purpose. Here and there it can be said it gets you in the mind frame of a character, but too often it’s just a brief task to make the next scene unfold, the interactivity perhaps better off when it just lets you tap a jellyfish to see it light up since at least there’s no illusion it’s there for anything beyond light amusement.
It’s easy enough to put aside the weak activities because they’re so brief and barely ask for much in the way of mental engagement, the player instead able to drink in the visual storytelling as well as a lovely soundtrack that fits its emotional nature and the sereneness one expects from a story so focused on quiet moments in an oceanic setting. Funnily enough, despite committing to having no words to tell the narrative, there are songs with English lyrics, the tracks doing a fine job of priming you for more emotional moments and adding that extra weight to them with their rare appearance. Emotion is basically where the game is trying to make its strongest appeal, hoping you’ll get invested in this quick tale and certainly achieving some successes thanks to the artistry on show, but director Shelley Chen’s efforts to broaden this story away from its initial conceptualization as a more personal tale do perhaps make it rely more on broad strokes rather than an intimate understanding of the familial relationship it’s depicting. That is where the poem comparison probably comes in, specificity not always the purpose of such an art form, but more time exploring the emotions could have deepened the impact of scenes that try to pay off the sometimes predictable narrative.
THE VERDICT: A Memoir Blue uses lovely aquatic backgrounds to tell a sweet story, the tale short and perhaps not as deep as it could have been for it but still able to elicit some emotions from the player through how it utilizes its limited time. Small scenes seem to serve as broader metaphors for where the mother and daughter are at emotionally at certain points in their life, the visual metaphors never oblique but perhaps a bit limited in how much they can say in this tale without dialogue. The interactive moments are unfortunately very weak, often just fiddling with whatever is on screen so the next scene can activate, but they can also let you touch some of the beautiful sights you encounter so you aren’t just sitting back watching a movie unfold.
And so, I give A Memoir Blue for Xbox Series X…
An OKAY rating. I must admit I wavered a bit on whether A Memoir Blue is Okay or Good, and it actually has very little to do with the weak implementation of any form of gameplay. In some ways this is similar to a narrative exploration game but rather than learning by exploring a space you’re just touching objects in a scene or arranging them so a moment can unfold, but it’s clear the focus is meant to be on the visual storytelling and it can be quite effective at times. There are many individual moments that look wonderful, the underwater setting easily able to conjure up gorgeous flora and fauna and the way they mix in an ethereal way with urban environments making for an art direction you’re eager to see more of. Reading about game director Shelley Chen’s approach to the game though, it’s often little surprise to learn which moments had some root in her real experiences as they felt a bit more personal, the kind of moments where emotion is given room to breathe and develop so that narrative beats can have something to draw from as they arise. This is perhaps where A Memoir Blue could have improved itself more, because while Shelley is no championship swimmer, reading outside interviews about the game makes me more interested in her personal tale and emotional struggle than Miriam. There could be some fictional disconnect still to explore the premise of the balance of personal and financial support a loved one struggles to provide, but A Memoir Blue’s poetic approach can make it feel like it moves too quickly when ruminating more deeply on its messages and characters could help to make it more effective.
If A Memoir Blue sounds nice to you, you will probably get what you hope out of it, and beyond its interactive elements being rather limited additions to the experience, it is executed rather cleanly and can still get its emotions across despite the potential for it being a more meaningful story had it been willing to be more personal. It is artistically wonderful at many times thanks to its vision for its visuals, but a more specific narrative could have still been broadly relatable and even the good use of visual metaphors it engages with could be strengthened if there were more connections to be made across the history of the main character. Perhaps it’s a bit much to ask Shelley Chen to bear more of her soul to us, but it is because of the parts that work that I feel it could have benefited from her not shying away as much from the real life inspirations that shaped this tale. A Memoir Blue does work well enough as an emotional art game, but it might have been a greater success if more of it came directly from the heart.