Whenever someone picks up the family photo album that sits in my parents’ living room, I know I’m about to lose an hour or two of my day. Whether it be explaining the apathy in my young eyes when my mother religiously took her first day of school photos, or retelling the absurd events leading up to a vacation photo full of stiff smiles, photo albums, to me, have always been more than a collection of moments passed. They are one of the most effective invitations to telling my family’s story, with each page flip unlocking a memory that appreciates seeing the light of day every so often. Through heart-tugging pictures and light puzzle solving, Instants captures that magic of learning what a family wants to remember. 

In this puzzle game, you play as Princess/Munchkin/Family-Pet-Name as their family members seize on their newfound hobby of making photo albums. You will catch glimpses into camping trips, car resurrections, graduations, and more, learning about how your parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents lived whole lives before you. Chapters are completed by placing photos in chronological order, with arrows offering guidance on whether a picture is out of place.

As more pictures enter the margins, some will come with notes on the back that hint at how that set of pictures should be arranged. Once those memories are in order, which never took long for me, you can spend any amount of time decorating the pages by placing cute stickers and tape, adding texts, and changing the background. This photo ordering and scrapbooking is backdropped by the kind of jazzy music that made me feel like I was trading memories with family across a dinner table: warm and happy with a hint of longing and acceptance. 

Much like real life, the small things make Instants a pleasant experience for me. I like that I can interact with the music player, plate of sweets, and cup of tea hanging out at the edge of the screen. You can even use the music player to switch tracks too, or repeat Summer Sparkles over and over again like I did. I appreciate that the selection of stickers increases at a generous pace. It’s not a lot of options, but what’s there often fits the theme of a chapter, plus the game makes resizing and recoloring its stickers and backgrounds easy. Another incentive to continue is that completing a chapter gives you coins that can be used to unlock new cups of tea, trays of snacks, and mixtape colors.

I love that the family featured in these photos, while doing many of the familiar big life events most folks will relate to, still felt unique. While the game isn’t free of the fatal flaw photo albums can have of failing to capture any spats or disagreements outside a picture’s borders, running the risk of not capturing the full complexities of familial relationships, I was happy to let myself be washed over by the good vibes. It was fun to imagine why these photos were chosen to bear the responsibility of these characters’ memories.

It’s clear early on that the aim is for players to have a good time reflecting on the joys of not just remembering, but creating while doing it. The scrapbook element was the part I spent the most time on, finding ways to imbue my feelings onto each page. Sometimes that meant surrounding an engagement photo with a bunch of hearts, other times it looked like donning a bunch of birds with graduation caps to further commemorate a momentous academic achievement.

The whole process let me engage with this family’s past in a way that doesn’t revise their story or diminish it, but rather record my feelings in an additive way. There’s an element of finality lost by doing this activity digitally, as I began to long for something to hold in my hands with each passing chapter, but I’d argue that speaks more to the game’s ability to inspire some good ol’ fashioned arts and crafts participation.

I think Instants especially resonated with me as someone who compulsively cleans out the photo album on his phone. While digital storage was initially attractive due to the prospect of more space and ease of access, it’s frankly become a bit overwhelming over time. I revisit the pictures on my phone frequently for numerous reasons, but a prominent one is that I save a lot of downright useless shit that needs to be cleared out. I take photos on a whim. I screenshot everything from memes to event info to funny texts to weird social media timeline coincidences. A lot of this is fun in the moment, but coming back to those photos later can leave me unmoved, if not confused, without the full context. These are still photos at the end of the day, so they can’t capture everything by nature. 

It’s not the worst habit in the world, and I don’t do it so often as to call it annoying. Plus, the less interesting pics are broken up by ones I’ll never get tired of looking at. But every now and then, I get hit with this desire to be more intentional about my photography, or at least about what I’m saving. Instants reminded me that the constraints of a photo album, physical or digital, can create the kind of intent I’m looking for. Not every photo will, or even should, stand the test of time. I doubt picking up nostalgic scrapbooking will immediately counter my tendency to snap a flick in an instant, but maybe the practice will ensure that the worthwhile photos go the distance of my life and beyond.