The Moon Wed Saturn by Pseudavid
This game is a really nice example of non-chronological storytelling. It follows a romance between two women, but you jump between three days: Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. It’s a quiet, introspective piece, pretty much entirely driven by the two characters and how they interact with each other.
The time jumps don’t feel gimmicky - a jump forward lets you see how a dialogue choice you just made impacts the future, and a jump back lets you see what led to the present moment. It makes it feel like you’re the protagonist looking back on the memories and trying to make sense of how things played out, and I really liked that. The writing style was lovely too.
The story is told from the perspective of Veronica, who works as a night warden at a half-built estate where there isn’t really anything worth watching over. She forms a connection with another woman, Araceli, who she catches trespassing on the estate one night, and they keep meeting during Veronica’s night shifts. The empty estate is presented as unsettling, but also as a quiet and peaceful escape from other people.
The relationship portrayed is realistic and flawed. We are shown the contrast between the two characters - Veronica, who is just grateful she has a stable job even if it’s not the best, and Araceli, who is bolder and more ambitious. We see lots of Veronica’s internal thoughts and insecurities, and the choice of saying the truth or saying what she thinks Araceli wants to hear comes up a few times. Some of the text is in blue and a different font, which I took as being the (often regretful) thoughts of “present day” Veronica as she looks back at these memories, and they sometimes explain why her attention has just jumped back/forward in time. The blue text also means we get a sense early on in the game that the relationship has since ended, so we feel like we’re looking for clues for how and where things went wrong. (If Veronica had said something different here, would things be different now?)
It takes a little while to fully understand what’s going on, so although I started off a little confused, things made a lot more sense by the end. And to be honest I kind of liked how this mirrors what the game is doing - you read something, and you then you think back to a sentence you read a few minutes ago which now makes sense.
Overall, this game was a great demonstration of how to make the player feel like they’re processing memories rather than actively making choices in the present, and I very much enjoyed the story it told as well.