“Marie’s Room” by like Charlie (Dagmar Blommaert & Kenny Guillaume), Lauren Hendler, Dries Vienne, Simon Alexander, Ward Snauwaert & Lauren Ann Higgins.
“[A] short story exploration game about an unconventional friendship between two classmates. You play as Kelsey, remembering Marie’s room as it was twenty years ago. But [something is] off. What happened to Marie?”
In a sense, “Marie’s Room” is a mashup of a coming-of-age and a crime-solving game. After two decades, you in your role as Kelsey are finding yourself back in the house of your old school friend Marie. There you find her old journal, which starts with a letter addressed to you. It is obvious that the letter was written many years ago, but the content makes you curious. Marie wrote that she thought of you as a friend, that she did what she did because of you and that she cannot be near you right now.
This dubious note lays out the basic scenario of “Marie’s Room”, because you have to delve into their shared past to understand what really happened to them. In her mind, Kelsey travels back in time and finds herself in the exact same room, but twenty years ago. By interacting with the objects and environment itself, step by step the memories come back, which also fills up Marie’s journal with more pages. What was going on back then? Did Kelsey’s ex-boyfriend Trevor something that changed their bond? What is the deal with the locked case?
Thanks to the fantastic voice-over work, “Marie’s Room” brings the eponymous space right to life. Everything just happens in one single room, but it shows that it does not need more than that to build up a fascinating world and the portrayed relationships. [PLAY]
