Miniatures and the Wonders of Memory

We need more games with hand-drawn animation. While this is only my opinion and hand-drawn animation requires more effort, I think the emotional impact always lands more strongly. Two-dimensional animation has depths and nuance when conveying abstract concepts; three-dimensional animation, in contrast, can hurt the eyes and cause many lags. Not to mention the rigging means that there is less flexibility.

Enter Miniatures, a pleasant surprise of the hand-drawn animation variety that came this year, especially welcome during a rather bleak winter. A straightforward point-and-click game, you open a keepsake box with five different items. Each one tells a story, some that go as far as the moon running to distant mountains on islands and others that keep us in the comfort of a domestic space. Yet each vignette remains contained, with unique soundtracks and an overarching blanket of nostalgia belonging to someone else. Melancholy also hangs over the vignettes, and I had to think about it to figure out why.

The magical realism of each chapter reminds us of how fragile memory can be. I've argued with family members about things they've said or events that have happened, and we can only verify things that my dad videotaped with his ever-present camcorder. Yet sometimes, we are left with memories; anything we've kept since childhood can hold significance. Then sometimes we forget, because our brain decides that information is no longer necessary.

I once collected a bevy of beautiful stones from digging, but one day they vanished. So did the projects I made the year my dad died, including different slimes and attempts to sew without available fabric. Those keepsakes no longer exist. The encyclopedia I received as a fourth-grade birthday present has been gifted to my younger brother and lost its golden shimmer. So playing this game made me feel wistful about what wasn't kept.

How do they connect?

My main initial confusion was that the stories vary in genre more than in character or animation. A story about a girl named Alma trying to find her mother and the moon feels like a fairy tale, while a first-person yarn about trying to assemble furniture together and having to lock away something dark and mysterious borders on the edge of cosmic horror. What was the connection?

Then it hit me while tackling this review: loss. Each story is about loss and what we do to remedy it. Sometimes we can recover the things that we miss. Other times, we register a great absence.

Okay, but what about the seashell vignette, an experienced player may ask; you help them recover their tiny instruments. Or the furniture assembly? You don't lose anything there.

It is true that we help the little creatures on the seaside and manage to make a cabinet come to life with screws and gravity. But the loss hangs over each vignette; just as the band gets into their groove, the tide comes in and washes them away. Meanwhile, a boy missing his parents sees his apartment turned into a jungle, and he moves to sleep with the creatures amid tall plants.

I think the main connection is that the characters in each story are searching for something missing. With the creatures on the beach, they need their musical instruments. Alma is seeking her mother and finding answers about why a parent abandoned her, while a nameless boy explores an empty apartment and a family questions why this piece of furniture will simply not assemble and become useful.

Childhood ends when we realize we've lost something we cannot recover. Whether it is as small as a sentimental trinket or as large as a family member, we can feel the absence strongly. That is not to say that my childhood ended when the ceramic piggy bank that I played very carefully with got shattered when a sibling knocked it over, but it feels like the world irrevocably changed when my dad died.

There is a dividing line where I feel we all became more bitter and resentful of the way things are. Miniatures as a game pays homage to the time before all that and reminds us of when life seemed simpler, and magic could happen just five feet away at home.