Turning relationship memories into mysterious puzzles with Mind Diver

gamedeveloper.com:

This interview is part of our Road to the IGF series. The IGF (Independent Games Festival) aims to encourage innovation in game development and to recognize independent game developers advancing the medium. Every year, Game Developer sits down with the finalists for the IGF ahead of GDC to explore the themes, design decisions, and tools behind each entry.

Mind Diverburies a mystery in someone's memories, tasking you with diving into someone's past experiences to get a lead on a missing person.

Game Developer caught up with the director of the Best Student Game nominee, Victor Selnæs Breum, to talk about how thinking on past relationships would lead to the game's puzzles, what thoughts went into using the fluid nature of memories to create compelling mysteries, and how the visual style was born out of carved hunks of meat.

Who are you, and what was your role in developing Mind Diver ?

Hi there! I'm Victor Selnæs Breum, and I am the game director of Mind Diver. The team has changed tremendously during production so my role has changed with it. I've done a bit of everything; especially game design, writing, voice direction, programming, and general cheering-on-talented-people-doing-cool-stuff-on-computers.

Together with our producer I also pitch and fundraise, so if you have funds and are interested in a first-person detective game with a striking, unique style that is IGF nominated for its demo, well… I should say you can get in touch!

What's your background in making games?

I've made a ton of smaller games and tried to do a mix of stuff to learn from many different sources. I've made Escape Room-like treasure hunts for adults at grand old castles, and I've studied at a Film School with grand old