There’s an immediate sense of familiarity to Marie’s Room for anyone who is a fan of story narrative “Walking Sims.” It’s a feeling you can’t shake, like you’ve finally made it back home after a long journey. Though the story is new, you can’t help but feel as though you’ve been here before.
As mentioned, Marie’s Room is a narrative driven game that plays out almost like an interactive short story. You play as Kelsey who is as much a story teller as she is main character. The game takes place in basically one setting, Marie’s Room. As the game begins you’re unaware of where you are. You start in the hallway of a house and you quickly learn that even though you’ve never lived there, you’re very familiar with it. After exploring the hall briefly, you make your way into the bedroom in search of Marie’s journal. As you explore the room you can’t help but feel as though you’re exploring Chloe’s room in Life is Strange, or perhaps Edith Finch in exploring one of the rooms in her old house in What Remains of Edith Finch. Your time spent with Kelsey will feel like a bite size portion of those experiences, but that doesn’t mean Marie’s Room doesn’t have its own story to tell.
Differentiating itself from games such as Gone Home, Kelsey is aware of what took place in the past (as opposed to learning about what took place along at the same time as the player). As you examine objects she will open up about all of the events that lead to the final reveal. The room at this point is basically empty except for the journal and some boxes, but as you leaf through that journal Kelsey is transported back to how things were twenty some years ago and sees the room as it once was.
It’s hard to go into great detail about a game like this without spoiling any of the story details, but first and foremost make sure you play the game in one sitting. You can finish it in a relatively short amount of time and developers Kenny Guillaume and Dagmar Blommaert intended for the game to be played in this way.
As far as game-play goes, you explore the bedroom and interact with objects that will cause Kelsey to remember events and explain the significance of each item and event. Certain events will unlock new journal entries so remember to go back to the journal to learn more about the moments Kelsey tells you. The order in which you explore items is entirely up to you. Having said that, it’s entirely possible for you to trigger the event that will lead to the final reveal much earlier than you’d like….this, I learned from experience. If and when this happens you’ll likely be ready and willing to boot the game back up and explore more items the second time around. While you don’t need to have all of the memories reappear in the journal to enjoy the ending, the more you’ve unlocked the deeper that experience will be.
Though shorter than most games in the genre, Marie’s Room feels like a bite size portion of the aforementioned Life is Strange, Gone Home and What Remains of Edith Finch?. This never detracts from the story. The ending is still emotional and you’ll feel an unexpected connection to people you’ve never even met. This is a testament to the writing in the game.
Recommendation: Marie’s Room will set you back exactly $0. That’s right – nada. So if you even remotely enjoy narrative driven games this is a no-brainer. Though it lacks the depth of longer more fleshed out games, the length doesn’t take away from the experience. We still can’t help but wish this was a just a sliver of the game and not the entirety of it. Marie’s Room is available now on the Steam store.
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