PAX West 2024 Conversation with: Carlos Gallegos, developer and co-founder of Recurring Dream – Desktop Explorer
We’re here at PAX Rising showcasing our game, Desktop Explorer. It’s a puzzle narrative game that has some psychological-horror elements to it. Basically, the way you traverse through the puzzles is by using OS functionality so you can think about, you know, our version of like internet explorer, paint, we have puzzles that use minesweeper, screensavers, you know, everything is based on a Windows 95/Windows 98 aesthetic, so for those people who grew up with those kind of OS, I think that’s something that they’re going to find really exciting and we have a bunch of Easter eggs and cool stuff to show.
It is really faithful to that Windows 95/98 aesthetic. Are you anticipating a difference in how somebody’s going to approach it based on how old they are or what generation they’re in?
Yeah, it’s funny because I think that back in the day there was a more abstract and unstructured language between humans and computers at that time. I feel like nowadays you can put a kid with an iPad and then, you know, they will manage through it, but I feel like the team, and myself included, we’re from a time where we had to develop that language ourselves.
And so, the game does teach you how to traverse through it, and there’s a language even in the game, as you start. It’s really atmospheric so it benefits from taking your time, exploring all the files, getting all the secrets, there will be journal entries, and yeah, by the time we’re building this experience where you get all the clues, you find out what happened to all the users of the computer.
Atmospheric really is the right word for it. I was getting so immersed in it, I’m like in my old family home basement again, like fifth grade on the computer logging onto Neopets. What was the inspiration, why this format, to tell this story?
We really believe that there’s something that is so naturally creepy and unsettling about messing with other peoples’ desktops. The basic premise of the game is that your uncle started suffering from dementia and losing his memories, and he reaches out to you to help him find a missing girl, believing that the answer is within his old computer, but he cannot remember why. It’s funny because you’re getting into the profile of somebody really close to you, and somebody that you hold dearly to you, and just start messing with old cache websites, old journal entries, figuring out like “oh maybe I didn’t know this person as I thought I had.”
There are three users in the full game and each one of these users is a different person. Just picking one, the first user is your uncle – an old man – so everything is more, you know, he has a way of describing himself and describing his thoughts through the journal system.
The second user, she’s a teenager, so even the music changes a little bit based on your user. She’s an artist, so you know, her desktop is more messy.
So, it is a lot about, you know, we have mechanisms for storytelling, like a journal system where you can get all the pieces of the story, but there’s this other side where it’s more immersive storytelling where you’re actually getting to know somebody just by looking at their desktop.
I found myself, you know, while I was trying to solve the puzzle, I was tempted, and able, to try every possible idea that popped into my head. Just from the brief look, it seems to go very deep.
How long has it been in development?
We’ve been working on it for a little more than a year now and we’re expected to release it, the date that we’re telling ourselves is Q1 of 2026, but we’re still in discussion with publishers and kind of settling that situation, so we don’t have a concrete date, but aiming to release around that time.
In the process of developing this, because this is such a faithful recreation just from my own personal experience, did you have to do any specific research or was it pulled totally from your memories of old Windows OS? Were you like looking at old screenshots, going on the wayback machine?
We had to do a bunch of research. Like, one of our friends still has like an old computer with Windows 98, that helped a lot, especially to get the specific game feel, you have the whole nostalgia trip there and I think one of the biggest challenges is the game design, because we want it to feel like a simulation, like you’re actually in the OS, but then it would go through the simulation route. Like, maybe a user wants to delete all the files, which is something that is possible, so we have to build the safeguards for us so it’s still a possible game moment. You know, enable enough freedom for people to explore at their leisure, but at the same time it is a game so there are some safeguards to avoid locking yourself out.
I imagine that there are some significant contingencies in there if you really want to mess it up.
We manage everything as if it were a permission system, so when you start you don’t have permission to do anything at all, once you keep going and unlocking other users you get more admin permissions, so to speak, and you’re able to do whatever you want with the files. We have a system called the daemon system, it’s hard to showcase in the demo, I know you saw a little bit of it, but basically we’re tracking like hundreds of metrics about what you’re doing. So how many tabs you have open, do you take notes within the notes, do you stop the music to solve the puzzles – we get all the data and we’re trying to create a psychological profile about you and tailor the experience based on that.
With that, I think we get a lot of info and really good data just through playtesting, even here at PAX. There are some puzzles that we’re showing to the public for the first time, and so just seeing how people solve these puzzles in many different ways, it’s like “oh I didn’t even know as the developer that you could do that.” That’s fascinating to me, and just gives us more ideas on how to react, or track people’s behavior, their interactions with the game.
And what are you most proud of?
Definitely the game feel of it. We’re really proud, as you can see we brought our own CRT and there’s an OS version of the game that doesn’t have any of the puzzles. Like people have been coming to our booth, drawing and sketching for the whole four days and we have like hundreds of drawings now and it’s amazing, some people are really creative. I think the thing I feel the most proud of is making something that people are engaging with and that’s resonating with people. It hits you with a unique sense of nostalgia, just with how much it really does look and feel, and even sound like an old system.
When you are trying to lock in and get a lot of work done, is there any specific music that you like to play or any specific playlists that you turn on to really focus in?
Yeah, I feel like probably the playlist I hear the most while working is hip hop, MF DOOM, something that is not as lyrical like something that’s background noise, upbeat enough that it keeps me going, I feel like that is really good for me.
Do you have any final thoughts, anything you want everyone to know that I haven’t touched on?
We have this demo that we built for PAX, but we have another demo that’s on Steam, it’s a longer version. We wanted to be mindful of everybody’s time, so this demo lasts like 20 minutes or so, the one that’s on Steam is like 40 minutes to 1 hour depending on how good you are at solving the puzzles. So yeah, if people want to check that out, it’s amazing.
And how has the experience at PAX been? Like the community reception, what’s some valuable feedback that you’ve gotten, or anything like that?
People are great. This is the first time that the team has come here as exhibitors, we usually come to PAX as attendees, and we know that it’s packed, there’s a lot of people, but I feel like we’ve had a lot of attention, people have come and given us encouraging words, and that’s always exciting. We actually have an ARG that’s going on. Our designer made that specifically really hard. We came to PAX with the idea that nobody was going to be able to solve it.
Has anybody?
Eight people have solved it already. On the first day there were people who were solving it, so we were stoked. So, we really feel like this is our community.
You can also find Recurring Dream and Desktop Explorer on X, Bluesky, and Instagram, check them out on itch.io and their website, and join their Discord!
