Dear Me, I Was… Review

Dear Me, I Was… is the latest title by Arc Systems Works, and more specifically art director Taisuke Kanasaki, most well-known for his work on Nintendo’s Another Code and Hotel Dusk series of adventure games, the former of which received a Nintendo Switch remake in 2024. A Switch 2 exclusive, Dear Me, I Was… describes itself as an ‘interactive story’ rather than a video game, and that is a very accurate summary.

The gameplay of Dear Me, I Was… amounts to the very occasional movement of the Joy-Con 2 mouse or control stick to have brief moments of interactivity – often in the form of eating breakfast or revealing a sketch. The vast majority of this game’s runtime, which comes to slightly under an hour, is spent watching and listening to a rather emotional story unfold.

The plot follows the life of an unnamed Japanese woman from childhood to elderhood as she experiences moments of joy, sadness, confusion, depression, love and everything in-between. It is a story filled with emotion and one brilliantly told through the visual and audio design.

Through a mixture of rotoscoping and the beautiful watercolour artwork of Taisuke Kanasaki, this short animated film is brought to life and conveyed without any dialogue. The game relies on its piano score, expressive artwork and incredibly smart use of colour to relay its tale in the hopes of touching players emotionally. It is the visual and audio presentation that sells the experience.

Of course, how much enjoyment players get from this experience is going to entirely come down to expectations. Anyone going into this expecting something similar to previous games from this team may end up disappointed at the inconsequential gameplay. After all, this is not a video game. It is a (barely) interactive short story, a film that is effective at telling an emotional and relatable tale about life, and if players are expecting any more than that then Dear Me, I Was… is not for them.