A Memoir Blue is an interactive, magical realism ‘poem’ about family

polygon.com:

Shelley Chen isn’t really a swimmer.

Instead, the idea of basing A Memoir Blue, an interactive poem about a swimming champion and her mother, largely underwater came to Chen in the bath. Chen told Polygon she spent a whole day soaking in the bath — despite the pruney fingers and toes — considering the game’s themes.

“It was a big tub, and I was completely inside with the water pressure pressed up against my chest,” Chen said. “I was pretty stressed out about the story back then, and [the water pressure] was like the feeling of crying. When people cry, they feel something on their chest. This is the feeling I want in [A Memoir Blue] and the water will be the way to tell the story.”

Chen leads Cloisters Interactive, a global games team headquartered in Taichung, on A Memoir Blue, the roughly 90-minute game described by Cloisters as an interactive poem. Water is consistent throughout the game, which is centered around the champion swimmer, Miriam, and her relationship to her mother. A Memoir Blue plays with magical realism, quickly turning an ordinary living room into an underwater journey through Miriam’s memories — memories that mimic some of Chen’s own.

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Miriam’s world is flipped underwater after hearing a song from her childhood; the game floats between reality and fantasy, underwater and above it. A Memoir Blue’s imagery flips from 3D Pixar-style animation to 2D classic art from the likes of Disney. The mixed media approach — including an original soundtrack — separates Miriam’s present and past, but the water keeps everything as one.

A Memoir Blue swims through these memories with little friction for the player. It’s a game, but not in the traditional sense. There’s nothing to win, per se; instead, the