Dear me, I was… (2025)

An atypical release for fighting game developer Arc System Works, this short narrative game simply looks back on key memories in its protagonist’s life through a series of brief little lightly-interactive vignettes. From her childhood through old age, it mostly focuses on a mixture of slice-of-life moments—often seen through characters’ own art, which lets parts somewhat interestingly say a bit about both the moment and the person who captured it—as well as first meetings, unexpected reunions, and deaths that most made a mark on her life. Along the way, the player is just occasionally asked to nudge the scene along by selecting, moving, or uncovering some clearly-indicated part of it.

It’s a nice enough game concept that is approachable for any player and has a good alignment between its story, presentation, and interactivity. I think it just fails generally to leave much of an impression or make much emotional impact due to how little time it has to let the story breathe and connect properly. Individual moments have a somewhat relaxed pace, but overall it is zipping through this whole lifetime in a very short amount of time. The closest things the game has to surprises landed very oddly, like I just didn’t really care and didn’t feel like the moments were earned, and most of the rest is also like that. The art is pleasant and fitting but occasionally awkward-looking in a way that broke my immersion. Parts where the gameplay does something actually interesting are present but also few and relatively far between.

So while this is not necessarily something to actively stay away from if you’re interested, it’s hard to actively recommend and feels like something I will unfortunately forget very quickly.