Instants Review (PC)

It almost pains me to say it, but scrapbooking is a dying art. To say that it’s a dated choice for archiving cherished memories wouldn’t be entirely true, though given the acceleration of modern technology and the convenient storage capabilities which foster most, if not all social applications and warehousing apps, it is a redundant one. And yet, there’s something awfully satisfying about the act of sticking old photos into a binder and adding all of the embellishments to make it look not only aesthetically appealing, but also far more personal and unique. That, really, is pretty much what Instants strives to capture: a visual love letter to traditional curation techniques through a short, sweet, and oh-so personal snapshot of family history.

Instants is all about preserving memories of a former era—arranging bite-sized and sentimental moments in a scrapbook of your own for future reflection. With an entire library of photos and precious milestones at your disposal, it more or less falls to you to figure out which items fit into the timeline, and which items to accessorize with the features in the binder. To that end, Instants isn’t so much a game-game as it is a wholesome snapshot of a golden age. It’s a puzzle game, if anything—a momentary opening to gaze through the looking glass and arrange the pieces of said puzzle in chronological order. If that sounds like something that you’d gladly give your time to, then be sure to stick around for a while as we peel back the pages and delve a little deeper into its past.

Making Memories

If you can recall how Immortality works, and how it tasks its players with locating items and arranging them into a timeline that feels both plausible and structurally correct, then you ought to have a good idea of how Instants builds its four walls. The idea isn’t all that different, in the case that you, as the curator of a jumbled timeline, have the job of flicking through various photos and primal references, and connecting the dots between the past and present. Unlike Immortality, however, Instants doesn’t make a habit out of adding twists, turns, and mixed signals into the mix, nor does it require any sort of formal warehousing technique to grasp the fundamental needs of its blueprint. No, things are much, much simpler here.

Instants casts its web over an ordinary family tree—a brood of people who, like countless others, have one too many memories to stockpile, and a common fear that the loss of one generation will affect the preservation of an entire legacy. The goal here, then, is to work from the beginning of the family tree, and establish a collection of albums to secure the identity and memories of those depicted on the pages. With that in mind, you have the monumental responsibility of analyzing several photos, and combing over subtle details to determine which photo came first, and then using your ever-evolving wealth of family history to construct a portrait. The more albums you complete, the clearer the image becomes, and so on and so forth.

Blast from the Past

To state the obvious, Instants isn’t your typical archiving project; it’s a little more beginner-friendly than the modern timeline that features in a slightly more advanced infrastructure à la Immortality. It’s a bit like Unpacking, in ways: you gradually sift through crucial periods of time, and arrange things in a way that adds plausibility to the story. Simply put, once you successfully manage to arrange one series of photographs, you’re free to add embellishments to the page before moving on to the next album. Herein lies a straightforward, stress-free path for you to explore at your own pace, and one that doesn’t necessarily require a great deal of effort to solve, either. And to give credit where it’s due, with no added baggage to work through or convoluted plot lines to reconstruct, it truly does work wonders on the simple message that it aims to convey.

The art work in Instants is everything I pictured it would be when first starting out: crisp, vibrant, and bursting at the borders with hand-drawn characters with static, albeit noticeable personalities. For a game that relies on dormant imagery, there’s a lot of unique characteristics laced into the tapestry here, with NPCs that provide their own fragmented stories without having to convey much more than a small gesture. That, combined with a wholesome soundtrack and a fitting narrative that feels both relatable and joyous, makes Instants a snapshot worth holding onto. It’s a simple concept, I’ll admit, but for what it’s worth, it delivers a message that I think is worth remembering. Life moves forward, as do the generations of a family. But memories, no matter the situation, are timeless, and worth holding dear.

Verdict

Instants develops a small but effective snapshot of an ordinary family that, through the petite but powerful lens of a standard connect-the-dots theme, feels as close to home as our own in a photogenic world that’s both teeming with grace and character. With thanks to its elegant art style, customizable album elements, and a familiar yet sophisticated narrative structure that comes across as both intuitive and accessible, you could quite easily spend a handful of hours merely flicking through the eras and bathing in adolescent memoirs here.

While the puzzle elements are light and the actual process of threading the tapestry is unapologetically simple, Instants still manages to make up for its lack of complexity with several quality features, including a fully integrated creative suite that allows you to both finesse and evolve your albums, with stickers, fonts, and original backgrounds all available to interact and experiment with over several separate books. Oh, and the addition of a feline friend for a companion adds bonus points here for, you know, obvious reasons.

To help sway your decision on whether or not to pick up a copy of Instants, you ought to consider spooling through the likes of Unpacking, or perhaps even Memoir Blue, beforehand. If you’re a fan of either of these two family-centric love letters to heirlooms and legacies, then chances are you’ll love cultivating the images for this beloved scrapbook for a couple of hours, give or take.