Photographs (video game)

Photographs is a puzzle game by British developer Luca Redwood under EightyEightGames, released for iOS and Microsoft Windows devices in April 2019.

Gameplay

Photographs is composed of five narrative-driven stories that each involve a decision that the story's lead character comes to regret. Each story iterates between two phases: first, focusing a virtual camera viewfinder on the object in the given scene that matches a text description, and then once located, performing a mini-game with rules that are unique to each story. After completing the mini-game, additional story elements are given via way of photographs and changing scene elements before the player seeks out the next photo to locate. Once they reach the end of the story, they may then start on another character's story; the first time through the game, the player must complete the characters in a specific order, but afterwards can revisit any character's story. Each story's puzzle elements do change along with the story, reflecting the difficulty of the lead character of the story; for example in the Alchemist, the player has to figure out how to simultaneously move figures representing the grandfather and his granddaughter around the board, but as she becomes ill within the narrative, her movement becomes much more limited in the puzzle.

Once the player has completed all five stories, the five characters that made hard decisions pleads to a mirror, which shows the player via the device's camera or webcam, each begging to be allowed to go back in time to change their decision. The player is given two of the characters and must decide which one they feel deserves a second chance. After several of these questions, one character will have been chosen by the player the most frequently, and the game's credits are shown alongside the narrative of the character if they had made a different decision.

The Alchemist involves an elderly potion maker living with his granddaughter.