New narrative exploration game Hindsight is a unique title about grief, nature, and memory. Hindsight comes from developer Joel McDonald, and was published by Annapurna Interactive, who have previously published beloved titles like Stray, Twelve Minutes, and Journey. The game uses the mechanic of apertures to explore the memories of protagonist Mary as she cleans out the home of her recently deceased mother.

In Hindsight, players will encounter apertures in the form of things like flowers, raindrops, and wind chimes that transport Mary mentally to moments in her past. Within those memories players can find even more apertures, delving deeper and deeper into Mary's mind until she is eventually pulled back to the present. Mary narrates these memories, having a one-sided conversation with her mother about the nature of their relationship and reflecting upon key moments in her life.

Related: Every Reveal In The Annapurna Interactive Showcase

Developer Joel McDonald sat down with Screen Rant to discuss the inspirations behind the game, the narrative process, and the key things about Hindsight that he wants players to know.

Delving into your history with game development, this is really different from games that you've worked on in the past. I know that you started off at Raven Software, working on Call of Duty games. And then you shifted over to Prune, which was a meditative puzzle game and already a huge change. What was the transition like when shifting again from Prune to this more story-based, complex puzzle game of Hindsight?

Joel McDonald: Even earlier before Raven Software, I kind of got my start in the mod community for the Quake games, which were more first-person shooters. Growing up in the 90s, I was big into shooters and got my start creating levels for them.

It was super constructive to be hired at Raven Software. I felt like that was kind of my college education, if you will, as far as the game industry. I learned the ropes of how to develop and release games, which is a lot different than just working on your own stuff; it's learning how to work with a team. I started at Raven back in 2006, and then around 2008 to 2010 was this golden age of indie games. Games like World of Goo and Braid started coming out, and that's when I first saw that video games could be more than just these bombastic shooters. I didn't realize that they could be ways to express yourself, and that they could be these artful things.

I kind of started devising my plans once I saw those types of games and started to think about what I would want to develop. Way back in the Fall of 2013, I quit my job at Raven and didn't even necessarily have Prune lined up. I didn't know what I was gonna make, but I just took a chance and started prototyping and kind of stumbled into Prune. I knew I wanted to go in a different direction than the shooters, even though I enjoyed them. I was getting tired of having worked on them for the last 10 years.

I think it was also important to me to reach some gamers that are, I guess, non-traditional gamers. It just felt that there were plenty of games made for the traditional gamer; there was no shortage of those. So, I was happy to kind of stumble into Prune, and then from there into this game. I guess there's an aspect of my personality where I'm always wanting these novel experiences. I don't necessarily want to work on the same stuff all my life, so I'm always exploring different ideas.

I guess this game, Hindsight, started with this apertures mechanic where you enter these object-shaped portals. And very early on, there was this decision point of, "I can take this in an abstract direction, more along the lines of Prune, or I can try to add story to it and see how that goes." And I kind of decided that I hadn't done a serious dive in story, so let's give it a go—not realizing that it's very hard to craft a story. But luckily, I had Emma Kidwell and brought her onboard very early on to help me with that.

You touched a little bit in the preview presentation on how the story process was a little bit inspired by real-life events mixed with fiction. Can you elaborate on what that story crafting process was like with Emma?

Joel McDonald: Yeah, 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.

Were there any inspirations, in terms of other games or pieces of media like movies or TV shows?

Joel McDonald: There were a lot of inspirations that evolved throughout the development. Early on, Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life was a big inspiration for me. I loved how expansive that was, going from—almost infamously—the dinosaurs and the Big Bang all the way up to the present day, giving this grand context to the family's everyday goings-on.

On the theme of exploring time, which was important to me, there is this graphic novel by Richard McGuire called Here. It's a super interesting concept that just looks at this corner of a room, and then as you turn the page, it's the same corner of the room, but it's jumped 50 years into the future or 1000 years into the past. You might see Native Americans hunting in the woods where this house is now built. The idea of jumping around in time; Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five talks about getting unstuck from time. It's just such an interesting concept that I was trying to explore.

There are so many inspirations; I could keep going on forever.

The art style is also really unique in the game. It's a little extra colorful and semi-realistic, while still maintaining that fantasy element to go with how the apertures work. Did you always have that visual style in mind, or did that come later?

Joel McDonald: Yeah, I think it was from the beginning. I started working on the game solo, then eventually brought on a handful of artists to help flesh it out. But from the beginning, I knew that I wanted to play to my constraints of not having a huge team to make this high-fidelity, realistic art style. I wanted to do something pretty simple.

One of the main art goals was to focus on the broad strokes, and really focus on this almost impressionistic style, where emotions matter more than detail. That was the goal from early on, and I think it just took some time and took bringing on these additional artists to help flesh that out more. Colors are so important in this game, and I had help from Lexie Mason-Davis, who was an artist I brought on a couple of years ago that really helped flesh that out. And then Tim Doolen was another artist that helped bring us to the finish line; couldn't have done it without them.

In terms of the main themes of this game, one of the really interesting ones is Mary spending a lot of time in nature as a child. It contrasts the beauty of nature, but also the harsh realities of nature as well. Death is inevitable and that sort of thing. On your Twitter, I saw you had harvested a bunch of berries from outside, and it made me think that maybe you spend a lot of time in nature as well. Do you have a personal connection with nature that you brought into the game?

Joel McDonald: Yeah, I think I do. And I didn't always have that connection to nature. I think as a kid, I was into video games and dabbling in making levels in the mod community. I just wanted to be on my computer all day and hated it when my parents forced me to go outside for an hour or whatever. But as I grew up, I think I started to develop this appreciation for nature. Emma is kind of the same way, and as she's gotten older, she's found this respect for nature.

Even now, I'm conflicted about it, because my job is to be at the computer all day, but I want to go out. One of the reasons I moved to Portland is that there's so much great nature around. There's the coast, there's the mountains, and these great hikes in the gorge. And I want to be doing that all the time. Anytime I can get out, I think that it's very regenerative, I guess you could say. I'm still trying to find that balance between getting out in nature—with the berries, it's great that we have a yard that we're growing. Lots of veggies and fruits, and it's great to be able to go out in that and escape for a little bit.

I'm incredibly jealous. The closest I've ever had are some basil plants on my fire escape.

Joel McDonald: Yeah, it's gotta be a little bit harder in New York. I guess you get out to the parks.

Related: Lost Wild Looks Like The Jurassic Park Horror Game We've Been Waiting For

Your closeness with nature really does shine through in this game. I know there are scenes in the preview of them hiking and playing in the rain. Going back to the apertures, you said that's where you started. Was there any impetus for that? Did it just come to you in the middle of the night?

Joel McDonald: I know I was into double exposure photography and illustrations. I was looking at a lot of that online, and I just love the juxtaposition of a woman's head with mountains in the background. It's visually very interesting. And I think I saw one of those that was animated, or just slowly drifting left and right so that you could see inside. And I think that was definitely the idea of, "There's something in these. What if you could enter this almost miniature world? What would you find?" And it felt very exploratory.

I had worked on another game prototype for a long time before this that was exploring similar themes with jumping around time, but it was missing the mechanic to connect these different points in time. I wanted a way to naturally segue between the time when you made this vase in pottery class and the time 10 years later when it breaks on the floor, and I found that the object itself transporting you was a very natural way to connect the dots.

A water aperture in Hindsight.

I couldn't get enough of the concept once I saw the preview. I've never seen a mechanic like this in a game. And I know that in each chapter, players don't necessarily have to find every aperture to move on to the next chapter, but that it's a game that really does reward exploration for the people who do. Do you think there's a lot of stuff in the game that most people might not find if they're not looking closely?

Joel McDonald: Yeah. During development, that was definitely a bit of a juggling act to find that right balance. We eventually landed on wanting it to feel like this kind of messy stream of consciousness, where you're kind of stumbling into things. Not necessarily like, "I'm clarity in the level. I'm at 100%," or whatever. We just tried to strike that balance so that everything feels pretty organic and flows pretty well. If you go back and replay a chapter, we're hoping that you find something new that maybe you didn't catch the last time.

In an interview about Prune, you mentioned that it was really important to respect the players' intelligence, in terms of learning and understanding the game and its mechanics. And it seems like that's really true for Hindsight, as well. You're not trying to make these apertures glaringly obvious, but you're also not trying to make them incredibly difficult to find. Is that accurate?

Joel McDonald: Yeah. We try to, mostly wordlessly, lead you through it and establish this simple visual language to let you figure things out for the most part. But, at the same time, we're not wanting to get you stuck and have you run into a brick wall.

What was it like trying to make some of the apertures more interactive? I know that a lot are simply looking at something from a different perspective, but there are others that are a little bit more interactive, like moving raindrops together or moving clouds out of the way.

Joel McDonald: Yeah, I think some of that was born out of trying to get into Mary's shoes and feel what she's feeling. She's a kid, and there's this playfulness, and we want you to use the interaction to feel the same way. Or, elsewhere in the game, there's this sense of control where you have to do things the right way. Interactions are great for letting you feel those things as the player, but we didn't want to just add in interaction for interaction's sake. We always try to have it be meaningful in the moment.

Another inspiration that's coming to me in that regard is the Annapurna game Florence. That was great, with all the little mini-interactions and how they let you feel what it was like to be there while going through different stages of this relationship and life.

Is there anything else you want players to know about Hindsight?

Joel McDonald: It's the type of game where you get out of it what you put into it, if that makes sense. I'm hoping the players can really have a chance to slow down and linger in these moments. It's kind of reflective of where we find ourselves in modern life, because it's easy to just jump from thing to thing and constantly divert our attention. But I'm hoping that it will help remind players to just slow down and maybe reflect on the things that matter in their lives.

Next: Thirsty Suitors Preview: Surreal Relationship Repair, Kickflips, & Cooking

Hindsight is available for PC and Mac via Steam and Nintendo Switch.