"It is a story told through emotions": Shelley Chen shares the influences, struggles, and experiences of making A Memoir Blue

A Memoir Blue is a refreshing entry for a year that has already seen several exceptional indie titles come out. The interactive poem is the first venture from Cloisters Interactive, and they have done an exemplary job at rendering a heart-warming story through the colorful medium.

In my playthrough of A Memoir Blue, what spoke to me was the beautiful hand-drawn art style, the music that accompanied it, and the story it told. The developers have perfectly blended the three in their quest to evoke emotions from the player.

I got a chance to engage Shelley Chen, the Creative Director behind the title, in a conversation. We discussed the inspiration behind A Memoir Blue, the thought process while developing, the personal touch of the story, and their experience at finally releasing it.

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Shelley Chen on A Memoir Blue's symbolism, love, emotions, and everything in between

Q: To start, will you please describe A Memoir Blue for our readers?

Shelley: A Memoir Blue is a textless atmospheric journey and interactive story that explores the memories of Miriam, a champion swimmer. In the aftermath of a championship swim meet, she begins to dwell on the childhood memories of her mother and a special trip they took together.

Her journey leads to unraveling hidden truths, including the all-encompassing love between mother and daughter.

This personal story is experienced through a beautiful mixture of 3D and hand-drawn 2D animations. Users will be able to interact and play with dreamlike objects in tactile ways that will surprise and delight them as they dig deeper into what happened that fateful day.

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Q: Miriam’s story feels deeply personal. I found myself relating to the pain and memories of her childhood. I also read that it was loosely adapted from your childhood. What inspired you to tell such a story?

Shelley: It is inspired by two short animation films that inspired me when I studied at the School of Visual Arts. The first is The House of Small Cubes, a Japanese animated short film created by Kunio Kato in 2008, and the second is Father and Daughter, a 2000 Dutch animated short film made by Michael Dudok de Wit.

These two films share the common theme of “familial love,” and both are around 10 minutes long. Despite their brief length, they both evoke powerful emotions in the viewer. I wanted to make a piece of work that conveyed that same feeling I received from both films.

My original aim was to do something expressive. And through experimentation, I came to realize that the most sincere expressions were always ones inspired by personal experience, so I knew I needed to base the story on an intimate, traumatic experience I shared with my mom.

The game’s story is loosely based on a day trip that I took with my mother when I was little.

Initially, I thought that we were just going on a nice day trip, but my mom had taken me and was actually trying to run away from my father. I didn’t realize this until many years later when I discovered some reasons for my parent’s divorce as an adult.

It was shocking to realize the romanticism of youth and how age can change your perception of things. I was inspired by this concept and how it might translate into an interesting game.

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Q: In my opinion, the crowning jewel of A Memoir Blue is its art design and the music that goes along with it. I particularly should mention the 2D and 3D differences that the game utilizes in the story. Do tell us about the thought process behind how each chapter is told and the accompanying visually striking art style.

Shelley: I watched a lot of classic Disney animations when I was little. I watched them so frequently that they became a central pillar of my childhood. As the game is pulled from my childhood memories, I couldn’t help but think of those delightful films, so traditional animation seemed like an obvious representation of the “past.”

Looking back (Image via A Memoir Blue)

One of our animators, Morgan Winchell, has a unique and elegant way of animating 2D characters that immediately sent me back to my memories of classic Disney animated films. I was ecstatic to have her design my memories of childhood.

Each chapter has a theme and mood assigned to it. Before producing a particular scene, we design everything as precisely as possible, and each element we build adheres to the original intent.

For example, Chapter 3 has a mysterious and adventurous theme. We accomplish this with various interactions, such as exploring a 2D map and uncovering hidden animations as you venture into interesting regions.

The music direction was designed to feel breezy and natural by including diegetic sounds you’d hear on a lake cruise to accompany the misty scenery. We do our best to identify unique elements in each scene that help bring the experience to life.

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Q: The gameplay vignettes are enriched with the music that goes with it in A Memoir Blue. Did you initially plan to make music such an integral aspect of the game and its narrative?

Shelley: Sound, musical scores, and songs are important to A Memoir Blue’s atmosphere.

Our sound designer, Ray Gould, is a veteran SFX designer who has worked on numerous television and game projects. He tends to design complex sound arrangements for specific instances, which creates unique, immersive feedback as players explore the game.

He has a well-trained intuition for how sound impacts players and expertly mixes the soundscape to engage without overwhelming.

Our music is scored by Joel Corelitz, who has a talent for producing incredibly dreamlike and otherworldly scores. Listening to his work takes your mind to another place. I come from a classical music background myself, and this commonality allows us to combine ideas into a one-of-a-kind experience that fits perfectly into the world of A Memoir Blue.

All these sound elements work together to support the narration, smooth transitions, and give meaning to the interactions. The goal is to blend them seamlessly so that a user’s experience feels natural, like a dream.

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Q: I remember seeing Annapurna Interactive mentioning A Memoir Blue as an interactive poem in its reveal trailer last year. And in my dive into the world of Miriam, I found the phrase to be quite apt in describing the title. Can you shed some light on choosing to call the game such? What was your experience with, in a sense, gamifying a poem?

Shelley: Part of it was inspired by one of my mom’s favorite songs: 水色のブルース. It was a happy coincidence. 水色 means water’s color, automatically making you think about the color “Blue,” which stands for two meanings that would be the perfect word to be in part of the title to echo the story.

In A Memoir Blue, players dive in with Miriam and recall her memory. I brainstormed with our tech artist (also co-art direction) Tim Doolen and found “Memoir,” a romantic French word for memory. That’s how the name A Memoir Blue came out.

Down the memory lane (Image via A Memoir Blue)

I always try to think of unique ways that stories can be told. I knew I wanted to create a game based on a feeling, which was not bound by structure, but rather a type of dream-like, ethereal expression. It is a story told through emotions.

Since every critical element in the game has a meaning to it, it carries more information than just an interaction itself. That’s why people called it an interactive poem.

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Q: A Memoir Blue is Cloisters Interactive’s debut game. What was the experience of developing the first title? Did the partnership with Annapurna have any effect on the development?

Shelley: The most challenging part was recruiting the right people to be part of the project. I had an apparent direction on even the finest details in A Memoir Blue.

Figuring out how to implement certain elements or communicate what I intended to my team was challenging. I quickly learned that communicating takes a lot of effort, and most team members have a particular style that I needed to adapt to.

Having Annapurna Interactive as our publisher is fantastic, but the honor of working with them also comes with a great deal of pressure. With all the well-known titles they have released, A Memoir Blue needed to be at an incredibly high level of polish.

In search (Image via A Memoir Blue)

AI arranged a workshop, and we expanded the game to a grander scale since we had their support. A Memoir Blue could no longer be the super short experience we had originally planned. AI provided a different view of the narration and gave constructive feedback on the initial gameplay, which helped focus our development.

However, their feedback was not overbearing, and they also supported us when we had specific reasons to keep certain design decisions. Following a good back-and-forth discussion, we arrived at a nice balance with both the narration and design.

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Q: Since launch, how has the response been to the title?

Shelley: The team is pleased with the launch. I’m grateful that everybody is excited for the game to come out. This team is a talented and fabulous group of people that deserves all the applause! After working on something for so long, there is a real sense of relief to finally release it into the wild.

One thing I enjoyed the most was watching people stream A Memoir Blue on YouTube or Twitch. When they speak out loud to their audience, it’s gratifying to hear them understand what you intended them to experience. It’s incredibly rewarding to watch them notice the tiny details we were unsure they would see.

Reconciliation (Image via A Memoir Blue)

Everybody’s understanding is also unique. Some people resonate with Miriam and focus on her loneliness or trying to be a good daughter. Some relate to the mom’s perspective because she is a single mother raising a child.

If you can relate to the characters, I think you can experience the story much more intimately.

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Q: Have you started working on the next project already, or will we get another chapter of Miriam’s story?

Shelley: I did have a recurring idea that I recorded in my notebook some time ago. A Memoir Blue is a good student project that reflects our favorite influences as game designers and artists.

And I personally enjoy fantasy worlds and fairy tales quite a bit. The next game idea would be driven by this alluring mysticism and an equally heartfelt story.