Gaming’s new coming-of-age genre embraces millennial cringe

A micro‑trend has emerged in games: millennial nostalgia that goes beyond Y2K aesthetics to become semi‑autobiographical work about growing up in the early 2000s. Recent examples include Despelote, set in 2002 Ecuador and seen through the eyes of a football‑obsessed eight‑year‑old; the award‑winning Consume Me, about a teen girl battling disordered eating in the 00s; and Perfect Tides: Station to Station, a point‑and‑click set in New York in 2003 starring Mara, a student and young writer who works in her college library.

It was an era before Facebook and smartphones, shaped instead by late‑night forum browsing and instant‑messenger conversations. Perfect Tides treats the college experience with an earnestness that now reads as cringe: it quotes whole paragraphs from pretentious texts, stages awkward interactions with classmates and features stilted phone calls with a boyfriend back home.

Ecuador, New York

coming-of-age, millennial nostalgia, video games, despelote, consume me, perfect tides, early 2000s, instant messenger, point-and-click, college experience