Photo albums are a lost art. In a world where photography is at your fingertips, and everything is digital, the temptation is to leaving history floating in the ether. Whether it’s because you’re too busy with work, or because you can flick on a screen to relive any memory at will, it feels far less important to preserve photos in physical form.
In Instants, a newly-released game from Endflame, the strength of the photo album, and its correlation with memory, is very well explored. It also serves as motivation to get your own photo album sorted, to create a memento that lasts.
My family home is littered with photo albums, of all sizes and eras. There’s one that follows me from birth to early childhood, and it’s filled with positive memories that bring back a flood of warmth on revisitation. My mum has her own photo album, and it’s always a delight to see her growing up, to be invited into a world I never experienced for myself.
What’s most precious about these family photo albums is the clear storytelling involved. Scenes play out in a sequence, guiding by careful hands. You can follow the entire journey of a life, and see exactly how people change. How the spark in their eye grows, as well as their maturity. You can see their interests change, usually in the form of a bedroom setting, or a birthday cake.
You can see the world change, too. Buildings go up, then get pulled down. Childhood amusement joints get paved over, and replaced by corporate offices and high-end restaurants. The nature of photography changes too, as quality, colour, and accessibility improves over years.
There is so much beauty in photo albums – and it’s a real shame so many of us have left them behind.
As a visual artefact of a life lived, they are part of our cultural history, as well as precious memories.
Instants understands this well, using the art of creating a photo album as a backdrop for telling the story of a family going through various life events. In your position as player, you are approached by individual family members to create a photo album that represents their past – their trials, tribulations, and triumphs. You’re given a pouch of precious photos, and then must parse the story hiding across these still images, placing them on album pages in the correct order.
What is most novel about Instants is how it encapsulates life moments in these small photos. In one level, you are presented with the story of a Christmas between brothers. You get several images, and a postcard, and you must then piece together how life evolves. Analysing the images closely, you’ll spot a pregnant belly, a baby in a crib, and a bike ride with three siblings. So you’ll naturally make assumptions, figuring out when the baby was born, and how that changed the family’s lifestyle.
Read: Misc. A Tiny Tale launches in July 2025
You’ll also record events like engagements and weddings, with an array of yellowed and colour photos charting a course through the eras.
On each page, Instants gives you the option to decorate as you please, adding in tiny little stickers, tape, and colourful paper to give life and meaning to each moment.
This isn’t necessary to complete each challenge, but it adds a dose of whimsy – and it reminded me so much of creating my own photo albums, as a kid. The careful process of choosing exactly the right bubble sticker, determining whether a new page was worthy of a scratch n’ sniff, or one of those stickers filled with beads. It’s a ruminative process, and Instants replicates it well.
More than anything, I’ve come away from this game with the sense that we should really, really all be making our own photo albums, to preserve our memories for the future. If not only to record what’s most meaningful for us, but also to create a reminder of just how precious and beautiful life can be, in its many and ever-unfolding moments.
It can all change in an instant. We should capture and record our favourite moments while we can.
Instants is now available via Steam.
