Hindsight

Hindsight offers an experience lasting only a few hours, but with a strong emotional value. Despite an essential gameplay to say the least, Joel McDonald's creation flows smoothly and without uncertainty, without generating boredom or giving in to monotony. Only at the center of the scene, the fluctuating relationship between Mary and her mother turns into the stage chosen by the team to tell the importance of empathy and the continuous search for mutual understanding. An inner journey that lives on the border between the USA and Japan, Hindsight looks to an audience of curious gamers, willing to sacrifice articulated interactivity for a few hours in favor of a markedly intimate story.

Hindsight struggles to find a place within traditional expectations of a video game, but aside from some finicky controls, it achieves what it sets out to do. It’s up to you to decide if that journey sounds like a worthwhile endeavor.

In order to make a game with this subject matter really stand out, you have to put a new spin on it like we’ve never seen before. Unfortunately, Hindsight didn’t really manage to do that, either in its gameplay or its story. At the end of the day, story is what’s supposed to matter the most here, and if the writing were stronger, I’d be able to forgive Hindsight many more of its transgressions.