A Memoir Blue dives into a poetic soul – Review

gamepur.com:

I have a confession to make, I haven’t tried my hand at poetry in well over a decade. In high school, I had a pair of pieces published in our annual literary magazine, but I never quite understood why they were accepted. Something about seeking that answer out broke my relationship with poetry for a long time.

Still, I love hearing someone talk about their favorite poem. My partner has this beautiful copy of The Gorgeous Nothings: Emily Dickinson’s Envelope Poems on our coffee table. It’s been taunting me since the day it arrived. Usually, I only interact with it by putting the controller down for the night right next to it. However, this game has been pushing me to pick it up. A Memoir Blue markets itself as “ an interactive poem about a superstar athlete and the all-encompassing love between mother and daughter,” so picking this up was an intimidating, but well-spent exercise in reconnecting with a buried fondness of poetry. 

As a game, A Memoir Blue is a seemingly bare experience. You’re taking on an abstract role with an incredibly limited set of interactions. Primarily, you’re exploring the memories of a young prolific swimmer named Miriam as she dozes off after dodging a phone call. Moving from scene to scene, you’re tasked with poking at things like the contents of her bag or the cubes in a glass of water on the table in hopes of triggering some sort of shift in the vignette presented to you. For example, the title screen gracefully teaches you the gist of the entire game by having you drag a tape deck under the water. You’re descending from that scene as you uncover Miriam’s memories submerged under a decade of clutter.

A Memoir Blue pulls you into this meditative experience by excising all distraction. You dive