Dear me, I was...

Dear Me, I Was tells a moving story that's grounded in ways rarely seen in video games. Paired with the gorgeous audio and visual style, it's well worth experiencing.

A visually stunning and emotionally charged short experience that blends rotoscoped watercolor art with a touching life story, but whose scarce and inconsequential interactive elements feel shoehorned in, leaving the work closer to an art piece than a fully engaging video game.

Dear me, I was… is a very short narrative experience, affordably priced, where player interaction is stripped down to the bare minimum, just light touches that move the story forward. And yet, the storytelling is outstanding, despite not using a single word. It’s the images that speak instead, the extraordinary art of Taisuke Kanasaki, returning to illustrate a video game after a long time. His mastery of the rotoscope technique reaches new heights here, gifting the characters with moments of exceptional visual intensity. It’s certainly not a game for everyone, and not the kind of comeback fans of Another Code or Hotel Dusk might have expected. But it is a bittersweet portrait, capable of stirring emotion with great subtlety. It’s worth the price of admission for the hour of beauty it offers alone.

Dear Me, I Was is a short, intimate, and visually captivating experience that reaffirms how video games can move players without relying on action. Arc System Works and Taisuke Kanasaki invite players on an introspective journey where storytelling, music, and art intertwine to remind us that the ordinary can also be profoundly human.

Dear me, I was... is a visual novel that minimizes interactivity and pushes the medium of video games to its most extreme limits, telling a story of ordinary life in a delicate and evocative style, but one that requires a certain mood and sensitivity to be truly appreciated.