Lucy recommends: Desktop Explorer

Hey folks!

This week, I'm very excited to be highlighting Desktop Explorer: a point and click puzzle mystery set in a 90s era computer OS. I've gone on record before saying how much I love a Fake OS game, and I've been keeping an eye on this one for a while. I first played the original demo back in 2023 and have been dying to get to the bottom of its mystery ever since, so I'm thrilled that it's finally releasing next week (July 17th).

I've got a great interview with Recurring Dream co-founder Carlos Gallegos to come, and the lovely folks at the studio have kindly given me 10 keys for the full game to give away to LFG Supporters. If you'd like to be entered into the giveaway, subscribe below and join the Discord!

It's time to get our sleuth on.

If you'd like to join a community of like-minded game enjoyers, consider becoming a lookingforgame Supporter! Becoming a Supporter will also get you access to our excellent Discord, extra newsletters, discount codes for friends of LFG like Insert Coin Clothing, and entered into giveaways to win game codes!

What is it?

Rifle through your dead uncle's PC (pre-loaded with all the games and programs of the time, of course) to get to the bottom of a missing person's case, but be careful: there's more to this computer than meets the eye.

Why it caught my eye

When I was a kid, going on the family PC was an event.

It was something you had to set aside time to do. You had to go to the designated computer room and sit there patiently as it grumpily whirred and hummed and considered booting up. In my pre-home internet days, I got to know the ins and outs of the Windows operating system out of pure necessity, purely because I didn't have much else to do on my PC, but I didn't want to waste precious computer time. Yes, I had some games to play, but there's only so many times you can boot up Tomb Raider III, fail to get the quad bike key, and spend an hour backflipping around the manor grounds instead.

So, I got creative. I would write stories in Word, make intricate drawings in Paint, and even cartoons using the animations in PowerPoint (with some success, I might add). I would make folders and arrange the desktop and just click around until there was something else to open and root around in.

That's what drew me to Desktop Explorer. Not only does it activate that 90s nostalgia with its facsimile Windows 95/98 aesthetic, but I adore the way it makes you fiddle around within the OS to solve its puzzles. I was opening programs I hadn't thought about in years, hunting for menu options I swore I remembered, and of course, taking a minute to enjoy the classic pipe screensaver.

We've gained a lot with the advancement and mass adoption of computers. We can reach people all over the world in an instant, get the answers to any manner of questions, big or small, and we can watch cat videos whenever we want. But with computers and the internet being so ubiquitous, we've lost that feeling of wonder and awe that we had in the early days. It's so normal to whip out your phone and be online. Desktop Explorer made me remember what it was like to feel excited about the computer again, and so I can't wait to boot up the full game and solve the mystery at its heart, one click at a time.

For fans of

The Roottrees Are Dead, Rusty Lake: Roots, The Operator, reliving the past

Enough from me, try the demo out here!

From the developer

I caught up with Recurring Dream studio co-head and developer Carlos Gallegos to ask about retro nostalgia and how the team is feeling as they approach the launch. Huge thank you to Carlos for taking the time to speak to me!

(This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity)

LFG: Could you give us a little background on the studio's history and how Desktop Explorer came to be?

Carlos: So, we're Recurring Dream, we're working on Desktop Explorer. It is our first commercial title that we have shipped. The background is that me and Rodolfo (Hernández) were the two co-founders of the studio. We used to work in Big Tech for a while. Different companies, but we actually are high school friends from Mexico. Pretty much all the team members are from different parts of Mexico. We have a Mexican origin, and our sense of humor and how we approach writing and certain aspects of design, I feel really comes from a Mexican kind of comic book comedy, which I think is fun.

We started working on the game in 2023. I think it was August. It started as a game jam because, at that point in time and after the pandemic, I think we all had, you know, a lot of time to introspect on what we want to do with our lives. And we were kind of tired of selling our souls to the devil.

So we decided to just start making games. We started making a lot of game jam games, and we started doing small things like projects that lasted like a couple of days to, like, a month.

Rodolfo was the one who had the initial idea of making a desktop game where you could solve puzzles and fiddle with the OS. We built the first prototype, and then we applied to the Seattle Indies Expo, that's where we were living at the time. We saw that people really enjoyed the premise of the game and liked the diegetic aspect of using the computer as a vehicle to tell the story and solve the puzzles.

And I think that was when we started getting the validation of like, oh, you know what? Maybe this is an idea that is worthwhile. And I think that that's where it started.

What was so compelling to you, as designers, about playing in the older computer operating system? Playing the demo really reminded me of the time when going onto the PC was an event, and I think the demo really honed in on that excitement and wonder of the early days of using a computer.

I think the way you phrased it, I think you nailed it. For me, there are two things. There's the first thing where we were just having a conversation like years ago, and we were saying that, nowadays, design is, for the most part, kind of like a solved problem, right?

Like you get an iPhone and you can see a toddler fiddling with the iPhone or iPad and being able to get around. Whereas I remember we grew up with these sorts of OSs and aesthetics and, of course, the aesthetic brings the nostalgia [...] but you have to actually go and understand how things work. And it was just like a different language: how you approach computers and how you interact with them. I think that's something that has been lost with time and something that, of course, we'll miss.

The other part is, I also believe that games can bring a unique palette of emotions that no other medium can do. I always like to bring up the example of a movie: it's really good at making you cry or making you laugh, but a movie cannot make you feel guilt or pride.

Those are more complex emotions that games are really good at making you feel. And so I feel like that's kind of like how we approach the design of the game. We want to make the player feel these sorts of feelings by making you interact directly with a computer. So it's not the game telling you to do something, it's like you're really exploring the computer, [...] talking with the computer in some sense. I think we are unique in that sense of, like, approach to design. 

The game is a week away from launch: how are you and the team feeling?

It's been such a roller coaster of emotions lately, of course. We've been working really hard. I feel like the whole team needs a really good vacation after this, or just maybe a little bit more sleep. I feel, of course, proud of being able to launch this.

I think it's connecting with a lot of people. I also think that any sort of creative endeavor always comes from a place of vulnerability, because there are a lot of feelings and topics that are really close to home for most of us. And so I think, of course, the dream is the game sells well, we're able to make a DLC, keep making more games that we like making. But just having the opportunity, I feel we're really, I guess, blessed in that sense, where we had the opportunity to make the game that we wanted, and the game speaks for itself.

People are going to like it or not. But I think the only thing that I want [people] to take away: if it connects with even one person who really enjoys it and [it] can inspire them to make art or make their own weird stuff, I think that will be the best for me.

Thank you so much for reading this week's issue, and huge thanks again to the team at Recurring Dream for the interview. Don't forget to link your Discord to be entered into the Desktop Explorer giveaway, and I'll see you next week!