When I finished my thesis I really didn’t think I’d be revisiting Some Distant Memory (Galvanic Games 2019) any time in the near future. The story is captivating but it is quite linear. But when I realised how incomplete my notes were from my Masters I was forced to go back to the game before I finalised my paper for ASLE 2021.

The game is a third person, post-apocalyptic adventure game. It leans heavily on environmental/embedded narrative devices. That’s one of the reasons I find it quite compelling, there is a voyeuristic thrill akin to that you might in a detective story in uncovering the lives of these people and how they intertwine with the ecological collapse that results in a mass extinction event.

It’s an effective approach, filtering the culpability of humanity in the destruction of the environment through a single family home. Their illnesses, heart ache, romances and devastating failures still resonate despite this privilege, which gives the game designers/writers more scope to relate the fall of the Anthropocene to their specific experience.

The game has a well developed eco-narrative that goes beyond the obvious eco-anxiety of climate change, implicating corporations in egregious acts of ecological violence. I won’t spoil it any further. The game is beautiful and Ada’s fantastic sculptures a just wonderful. I played the full game for my notes. You can find it below, it’s terrible…