Retrospect: An Interactive Story Experience

This was a project in which I and and four others were tasked with creating a non-linear, interactive story in just five weeks. After much deliberation, my team decided on my idea, which we ended up calling Retrospect. My idea was to create an exploration of what remains between two people after they have been apart for an extended period of time. Specifically, I wanted to create an experience that mirrored and examined the effects of selective memory and confirmation bias on our perception of people.

The final version is available to play below (it had some lag issues last time I tried it, so you might have to be a bit patient. I'll try to get it hosted elsewhere as soon as I can.):

RETROSPECT 

-- Spoilers beyond this point --

The experience centers around a young man. It begins with the man walking down a hallway alone. He looks up and sees a girl. Time slows down, and he is transported to a white room filled with floating photographs, each representing a memory of his past relationship with this girl. The first memory shows the breakup of the couple, indicated that they were once and are no longer together. After that, a new selection of memories is shown (randomly selected). These memories each have three versions: one where the man remembers the positive side, one the negative, and one the distant/apathetic. There is no way for the player to tell which is which aside from very minor hints from the photograph that represents the scene. Each version of the scene does not change the actual events, just how they are remembered. Once one version of a memory is viewed, the other versions black out and are no longer selectable. The player is not aware that each memory has three versions.

After the player views several of these memories, they are moved to a second screen of the remaining memories (the ones that weren't randomly selected for the first batch). The difference is that now, the version of memories that they viewed the least of on the first screen (positive, negative, or apathetic) is removed, narrowing down their choices to the two that they picked the most of before. Again, the player is not aware of this. After viewing several more, they are moved to the final screen, containing one of three memories based on the previous memories that they viewed. These three are separate and only have one version, each representing one of the three perspectives very clearly. After that, the player is brought back to the man in the hallway, who reacts in one of three ways to the girl corresponding to the final memory.

The game was intended for multiple playthroughs, with subsequent playthroughs after the first making the player gradually aware of what was going on in the experience. I wanted people to come out of the first play feeling a certain way about the relationship between the two people, only to be shocked by the different versions of memories they had seen a certain way before shining a different light. I wasn't trying to make any kind of clear statement with the experience. I just wanted people to think about what goes into the way that we remember things and how easy it is to skew our own perception of people and events.

For this project, I served as the project manager, concept designer, script writer, film and audio director/editor, music composer/producer, and game/interaction designer. I learned a lot of valuable lessons about time and resource management. We had to cut out or simplify a lot of our ideas in order to make the project feasible. Being forced to make the best product possible with extreme limitations is a frustrating, incredible experience. As much as I contributed creatively and artistically to the final product, that was the most valuable thing I took out of the project.



I, of course, extend my eternal gratitude to the other members of the team. It would have never been possible without them, and even if it were, it wouldn't have been half as good.