Remember Me! 

Together with my teammates Carita Muhli and Dewi Becu, we created "Remember Me!" for our Science to Experience project, an interactive game that explores how false memories shape our identity. The project challenges a basic assumption we all have: that our memories are accurate records of our past. But research shows our memories can be easily manipulated, especially by photographs, and this directly affects who we think we are.

We built our installation around old TV screens and cassette tape buttons to create a nostalgic feeling that connects to themes of memory and recording. The game setup uses one large screen showing a main memory, four smaller old TVs displaying memory options, and physical buttons that look like VHS and cassette tapes. Players have to distinguish between true and false memories by looking at distorted images and choosing which version is correct from multiple similar options.

The experience starts simple, you're told your memories will be tested to determine your identity. Then the main gameplay begins where you see a hazy, unclear image on the big screen with moving "eyes" that let you peek at the true memory. As time passes, the eyes move faster, making it harder to see clearly. Meanwhile, the four smaller TVs show similar images, but only one matches the true memory. You press the cassette tape buttons to make your choice, and this happens several rounds.

The ending of the gameplay gives the player a powerful statement. Based on how many false memories you choose, your character on screen becomes more or less "glitched." If you picked mostly false memories, your identity appears distorted and fragmented. The game then forces you to accept this new identity, all four options appear as ''yes'' and lead to the same outcome of acknowledging that you have false memories. The final message reinforces that we're all made up of our memories, whether they're true or false, and that's neither good nor bad, it just is.

We also squeezed a little easter egg in there. When you have to accept your new identity after making a few mistakes during the gameplay, it says ''after all, it's still you''. This is a reference to Toby Fox's game called Undertale, in which at some point the player sees the quote ''Despite everything, it's still you.'' Insinuating, even after you remember all the memories right or wrong, you're still you.

The project taught me how fragile our sense of self really is. By making people physically interact with memory selection through the physical cassette buttons and moving around the TV screens, we created an experience that feels personal and unsettling. Players leave questioning not just the game's memories, but their own, which was exactly our goal in exploring how false memories influence who we think we are.