What Isn't Saved (will be lost)

Disclaimer: I'm friends with everyone credited on this game, and married to the sound designer, so I'm as far from unbiased as one can be. But this is common among intfic circles, so.

In What Isn't Saved, Zoe, a neuroscientist, tries to salvage the memories of her recently deceased partner, but there's only so many that can be saved.

It's a gut-wrenching task—memories explode into other memories, a book you can only quickly skim. It reminds me of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, when Joel dashes through his disappearing memories. Structurally, it also reminds me of Sam Barlow's Aisle in that, instead of lightly exploring the story's boundaries, each choice cuts the narrative space with garden shears.

There's a sinister, desperate note to every choice in What Isn't Saved that mirrors the anxiety we often feel in romantic relationships, about the effect we have on those we're closest to. Of course, I wanted to rebuild Sara's memory of her and Zoe's first kiss. But what about her memories of Zoe's flaws?

Being in Zoe's shoes, I felt uneasy and invasive, and questioned my own motives when I made decisions about why certain memories were important or not. The story handles these choices with the weight they deserve—there's no hope in this task, just compounding doubt and worries.

There are many aesthetically beautiful games made with Twine, and What Isn't Saved is among them. The confusing way pronouns flicker inside the memories made me kick the dirt and cuss, because I wish I'd done similar for the shared consciousness scenes in Mama Possum.

This game is a short Twine game with glitch-like animations and moody background music. It is designed to be replayed.

In it, you play as a computer program whose job is to interface with damaged humans and sort through their memories, deciding what should be saved. As the title says, Whatever isn't saved will be lost.

So the game is reaching for a poignant picture of humanity, and in a way it can be a projection for you, the reader. If you could only keep a few memories, would you pick the most painful ones, to learn from? The best ones, to treasure? How would you decide?

The words in the text (mostly the pronouns) glitch and shuffle themselves as you try to understand what's going on.

In one playthrough, there were only five or so memories to work through the whole time. In other playthroughs, I unlocked more somehow. Maybe I also did the first time and just didn't notice?

Overall, this is strongly written. The size of it felt a little weird, almost that it would make more sense to be slighter or more substantial but that it was caught in an awkward spot between the two. But the feelings of melancholy and nostalgia are powerful.