“When someone you love becomes a memory, a memory becomes a treasure.” I don’t know who first said those words, but they have given me great comfort over the years. I truly believe that memories can be a treasure and often the most valuable there is.
But what if we took those memories and channeled them into creating something special and new that would then help others going through something similar? That’s what Hyper Luminal Games did with Pine Hearts, its healthy take on the Metroidvania genre and similar to what fellow Metroidvania Tales of Kenzera: Zau did when it launched in April.
Pine Hearts welcomes players in the hiking boots of Tyke, an adorable little guy who returns to the Pine Hearts camp he used to visit as a child. As Tyke makes his way around the grounds, he can help other campers with tasks like gathering firewood and scaring away crows. So far indie. But you’ll soon realize there’s more to the game beneath its bright, understated exterior—a deeper story of love and loss that serves as a heartfelt ode to creative director Rob Madden’s father.
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Madden’s father, Roy, died in 2019, shortly after suddenly being diagnosed with cancer. “The diagnosis when he got it was that it was dysfunctional,” Madden explains via video call as he shares his story with me. “There was nothing that could be done. It was well past the stage of any recovery.”
It was understandably a huge shock to Madden and his family. “He’s always been such a healthy guy, and in a lot of ways, you always look up to your dad as this kind of almost immortal being, even when you’re 30,” Madden continues, recalling how quickly his father was moved. to palliative care. Six weeks later, Roy died.
After his father’s death, Madden became consumed with grief, so he turned to something he had always had a passion for as a source of solace: gaming. “I’ve always loved it. I’ve always been artistic and creative in that way, so it became a natural thing to want to build something that feels cozy and is a welcoming place,” he says. “I made myself somewhere warm.”
Madden soon realized that there was an opportunity to tell a story through this game that was “much more directly involved [his] experiences’ and the idea began to grow from a self-soothing project into something more.'[Hyper Luminal Games] he’s built games before that had an element of story, but we’ve never really used them as a vehicle to tell something about a very specific human experience,” Madden says of the studio he co-founded alongside Stuart Martin.
The team soon got to work, and the end result was Pine Hearts, a game about childhood innocence, camp fun, and memories of loved ones, loosely based on where the Madden family would go on vacation. At the start of the game, Tyke arrives at the titular camp with the hopes of climbing the mountain that towers above him. However, it does not have all the necessary equipment. So, to prepare for the climb, he goes through the camp, helping others and gaining new abilities.
“The main premise of the game, in terms of what you do and how the structure is laid out, was very much inspired by something my mom said to me when she was reminiscing about my dad,” Madden says. “She said, ‘Well, of course, your dad lives through you.’
“I thought that could be the theme and tagline that the game is built around – how the people we love, whether it’s relatives, friends or whoever, how they live their souls and their values through the things we can do, or the way we behave or interact with the world, there was something really profound about it.”
Ultimately, Madden wanted the game to have a sense of hope, and this idea of hope and expectation became the core of Pine Hearts. “I knew that if we were going to make a game about this subject, which is inherently sad and—you know, it sucks—I didn’t want to make a game where people would play it and feel worse,” he says.
“I felt it was important to build something that, wherever possible, you can walk away from feeling like you’ve taken a step forward…and if we can be a source of comfort to even one person, that’s wonderful. I certainly hope that anyone who has experienced something like this can take away a positive.”
I ask Madden about his mother and how she feels about seeing a game inspired by her husband’s memories. Madden says with a smile that she is his “biggest fan” and both of his parents have always been his biggest supporters. They have been together for over 40 years, he tells me, meeting when his mother was just 17. “And they got married when she was 18, so they spent most of their lives together,” he says. “So to see something come into being that was inspired by that life experience is valuable and she appreciates that.”
While Madden’s story was a key element in the creation of Pine Hearts, he is full of praise for the rest of the Hyper Luminal team, who all played an integral role in bringing the game to life. Yes, Madden’s personal experiences were the catalyst, but love and loss are a universal part of life. This is why the father and son in Pine Hearts are meant to be slightly ambiguous in their design, serving as an embodiment of these special people in our lives, rather than specifically Madden’s father.
Madden describes the father of the game as “someone you look up to, who has been a formative figure in your life, who you have a lot of happy memories with and want to carry on the way you are.” It could just as well have been a friend, sibling or mother. It’s about the connection and the emotions behind that relationship.
Madden now hopes Pine Hearts will start conversations and in turn help others going through similar experiences. He admits that talking about his father is still often difficult, and during the marketing of Pine Hearts he sometimes worried that he had “bitten off more than [he] But even though it was difficult, he is grateful that it gave him the opportunity to be more open about his feelings.
“I definitely would never have been so open about something so personal if it wasn’t for the game,” he says. “I’m quite a private person, I’m quite quiet… but being able to talk about something like this, I think it really helped me. It gave me a good perspective that everyone has been through similar things. It’s important to talk about it, you can feel better, even though you may feel better at the time.
“It also made me appreciate the time you spend with people,” he concludes with a smile. “You have to make the most of it.