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Some video games wish to check your reflexes. Others wish to check your endurance. MyDear.exe apparently needs to check whether or not your tear ducts nonetheless work.
French indie developer Falling Leaves Studio has launched MyDear.exe, a brief narrative journey that tells the story of a pair’s 57 years collectively by means of the recordsdata, recollections, and minigames of an outdated laptop.
The sport is obtainable now on Steam and the Epic Video games Retailer, providing a nostalgic journey by means of love, humor, and the little moments that make a lifetime collectively.
And if the Home windows XP-inspired interface doesn’t get you feeling nostalgic, the story most likely will.
We’re already suspicious of something that describes itself as heartwarming and recommends having tissues close by.
We all know how this goes.
What Is MyDear.exe?
MyDear.exe is an interactive love letter centered on Ellie and Lucien, an aged couple who’ve shared 57 years collectively.
Gamers tackle the function of Ellie as she explores a recreation created by Lucien to have a good time their life collectively.
Quite than following a conventional adventure-game construction, the expertise unfolds inside a fictional laptop working system impressed by Home windows XP.
Gamers discover folders, uncover pictures and letters, clear up puzzles, and play minigames that reveal completely different items of the couple’s relationship.
It’s a artistic strategy to inform a narrative about reminiscence, utilizing the acquainted expertise of exploring an outdated laptop to uncover moments from somebody’s life.
And actually, digging by means of decades-old recordsdata is already an emotional journey.
Particularly whenever you discover a {photograph} of your self from 2006 and must confront the style selections you made voluntarily.
A Love Story Instructed By way of an Previous Laptop
The sport’s fictional working system isn’t only a visible gimmick.
It’s the inspiration of how gamers uncover Ellie and Lucien’s story.
Recollections are scattered all through the pc within the type of pictures, notes, letters, and different private keepsakes.
By exploring these recordsdata, gamers progressively piece collectively the couple’s relationship and the moments that formed their lives.
The sport additionally options absolutely voiced interactions between Ellie and Lucien, bringing their personalities and shared historical past into the expertise.
As an alternative of relying fully on prolonged dialogue or conventional cutscenes, MyDear.exe makes use of the act of discovery to inform its story.
There’s one thing particularly becoming about that strategy.
In any case, our digital lives have turn into huge collections of recollections, from pictures and messages to recordsdata we forgot we saved.
And typically, opening one outdated folder can take you proper again to a second you thought you’d forgotten.
What Precisely Is a Foldervania?
Falling Leaves Studio describes MyDear.exe as a Foldervania, a playful twist on the Metroidvania style.
As an alternative of exploring an interconnected fantasy world, gamers navigate folders and functions inside the recreation’s fictional desktop.
Development comes by means of exploration, puzzle-solving, and discovering new methods to entry completely different elements of the pc.
The expertise consists of:
Minigames impressed by retro video video games
Puzzles involving passwords and completely different decoding mechanisms
Images, letters, and notes that reveal recollections
A nostalgic Home windows XP-inspired interface
Totally voiced character interactions
Nonlinear exploration
It’s a artistic interpretation of a well-recognized recreation construction, constructed round curiosity moderately than fight.
No big bosses. No elaborate ability timber.
Simply a pc, a lifetime of recollections, and the more and more suspicious feeling that we’re about to cry.
A Quick Sport With a Private Story
In response to the developer, MyDear.exe takes roughly two hours to finish.
That shorter runtime may make it interesting to gamers who take pleasure in narrative video games however don’t essentially have dozens of hours to dedicate to a brand new journey.
The studio can be highlighting the non-public nature of the mission, presenting it as a celebration of putting up with love and shared experiences.
Falling Leaves Studio is predicated in Bordeaux, France, and MyDear.exe is its debut launch.
The mission additionally comes from a developer with earlier expertise as a recreation director and producer on The Rogue Prince of Persia.
It’s an fascinating artistic shift, transferring from action-focused recreation growth towards an intimate story about relationships and reminiscence.
MyDear.exe Value and Platforms
MyDear.exe launched on November 2, 2026, for PC by means of Steam and the Epic Video games Retailer.
The introduced normal worth is $7.75 USD, with regional pricing doubtlessly various.
The writer additionally introduced a 40% launch-week low cost. Verify the storefront for the present worth and availability of that supply.
Discover MyDear.exe on Steam
Gamers on the lookout for a brief, story-driven expertise can discover the sport now.
Typically the Smallest Video games Inform the Greatest Tales
Not each memorable gaming expertise wants an unlimited open world, cinematic fight, or a hundred-hour marketing campaign.
Typically, essentially the most fascinating tales come from smaller concepts.
MyDear.exe takes one thing strange, an outdated laptop full of recordsdata, and turns it right into a strategy to discover the extraordinary quantity of which means folks connect to their recollections.
It’s a premise that would resonate with anybody who has ever stumbled throughout an outdated {photograph}, reread a forgotten message, or wished they may revisit a second from the previous.
Whether or not the total expertise delivers on that emotional promise is one thing we’ll have to find for ourselves.
However as ideas go, this one has our consideration.
And maybe a field of tissues.
Would you play a recreation constructed round somebody’s lifetime of recollections, or do you like your emotional injury delivered by a 100-hour RPG?
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