Hindsight dev explains how the game pulls from their real-life experiences
A bit of reflection
Hindsight is a deeply personal experience that takes you through the life of a woman who has lived a life of pain, sadness, and disconnection. It’s an extremely moving experience that is sure to resonate with players in a number of ways, and it turns out some of the experience was built off the lives of the dev team.
In an interview with Screen Rant, developer Joel McDonald spoke about Hindsight’s connection to his own life, as well as others on the team.
…I think the story was probably primarily driven by the constraints that we had with the mechanic. Starting with the aperture mechanic and knowing that we want to explore memories naturally led us to setting it in this house. And why would you be in the house? Maybe you’re cleaning up the house, which actually leads to a loved one that passed away. All that evolved from one starting point.
But once we had that as our bare-bones structure, we were finding that we were pulling from our own lives to fill in the details. Especially with Emma being Japanese American, and Mary our protagonist also being Japanese American, there’s a lot that we tried to pull from Emma’s experience. And then just different vignettes; different, specific memories—an example is that my dad, when I was growing up, built this backyard playset that had two levels. I would just climb up there at night and sit and look at the stars, and I added that type of thing into the game. It’s not how you would typically experience a playset, but I think those specific little details and vignettes help give the game a little bit more life.
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