My Dream is a Lost Memory is beautiful. Visually, its simple two-tone, sepia-drenched, hand-drawn art style penned by developer LeJunes is gorgeous. Thematically, she’s relatable, weaving a short, interactive, semi-autobiographical narrative about an overworked urban woman struggling to juggle the myriad responsibilities attached to adulthood. Its soundtrack is a perfect arrangement of ambient strings and lazy orchestral melodies that would fit perfectly into an ASMR video or Ministry of Sound chillout compilation. And, metaphorically, it taps into our innate desire to belong, connect with people, and relive cherished and long-forgotten memories in the present.

My dream is a lost memory made me think of my grandmother who passed away 25 years ago. And she made me think of Farmfoods, a British chain of supermarkets and frozen foods.

Return to the future

Before the brain hemorrhage that first hospitalized her in 1991 (when I was five years old), my grandmother, Mary Brown, often took care of me when my parents were at work. She lived in an area of ​​Glasgow called Pollok, which is now home to Silverburn, a 1.5-million-square-foot shopping mall that houses a Cineworld movie theater, dozens of restaurants and more than 100 high street shops. Before Silverburn, however, there was the Pollok Centre, built in 1961 and whose main attractions included a greengrocer, post office and Farmfoods. Even in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the Pollok Center seemed to have passed its sell-by date, but the fact that I was able to go with my grandmother means it will always have a special place in my heart.

Last weekend, I walked into Farmfoods for the first time in what must be over 30 years to buy some chips for my kids. In an instant, I was transported back to Pollok, back to the uniform aisles of commercial chest freezers, beige tile floors, and holding my grandmother’s hand, even though she was barely five feet tall. While playing My Dream is a Lost Memory, I was reminded of this entire event, childhood memories with a loved one before illness took him away from us. While lamenting her everyday life in the present, the anxious protagonist of My Dream is a Lost Memory falls asleep while she waits for the bus on her way to work. She dreams of her carefree youth. She hooks up with a stranger, before calling her mother and reminiscing about times gone by. She recognizes that she is working too hard and makes plans to break out of the rut she finds herself in.

To be clear: My Dream is a Lost Memory is not a bleak experience, far from it, it’s charming, but its power to take me somewhere else, to go somewhere so introspective, speaks volumes about its delivery. It’s a simple game, one that takes less than 10 minutes to complete, a fact reflected in its price, but it’s one that I think is well worth the money. I may be reading too much into your metaphors and symbolism around deja vu and reconnection. I doubt very much that the creator (who I think is Portuguese) has ever heard of Farmfoods or Pollok, for example, but he deals with themes that are, in essence, universal; those that can, and will be, interpreted differently by those who receive them.