If Found… has you erasing Kasio’s past by wiping images and words from her journal, scrubbing good and bad from memory in order to move forward.
The game is split across two narratives: one where a sci-fi heroine strives to save the world from a black hole, and another where Kasio has returned home to Ireland to come out to her mother. In both stories, the only way to move forward is to literally erase everything in the image and words you see in front of you. This story is presented in a journal-like style, filled with personal doodles and words, and you have to destroy it to keep moving to the narrative’s conclusion.
The feelings are mixed as you erase all of these things. Like the black hole in the story, this personal destruction doesn’t care what it destroys with its work. You just have to get rid of everything. Exploring Kasio’s story in this way gives every moment this feeling of importance – a sense that the memory and moment are slipping away even as you experience them. Maybe this is a good thing for the darker moments, but when Kasio finds a sense of connection with friends, it can cut deep to watch these moments grind away to nothing, giving way to whatever the future holds.
If Found...’s powerful destruction of the self and memory makes its moments resonate with the heart all the stronger through this burial. I know that these things must be purged for Kasio to move forward, but for now, these moments burn in the heart, stinging keenly as she becomes the person she needs to be at the end of it all.
If Found… is available now on Steam.
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