If Found… moves forward by erasing diary entries, literally eradicating the past. Through this, it shows the beauty and healing that can come from destroying what you used to be.
Erasing the past doesn’t seem like it’s a healthy part of moving forward – at least, that’s what I used to think. How can you get rid of a whole part of your life? It’s a piece of who you are, even if you’re lugging it around like a weight chained to your back. Even if it makes you miserable, you can’t simply be rid of it. Also, what might tumble out of your life if you cut that piece off? What else is connected to it that you can’t bear to lose? These thoughts have kept me trapped with some people and mindsets for some time, losing years of my life out of fear of what will happen if I start gouging things out of my existence.
Destroying who you used to be – purging the past – is not as destructive as it sounds, though. Like marble shaped by an artist, it is a shedding of what you are not – losing what has been weighing down the beautiful, wonderful person you really are. It’s a destruction of the things that kept you from being yourself, or the things that were keeping you from being happy. As we watch Kasio erasing their journal throughout If Found…, we see them moving forward to become who they want to be. The steps are painful and difficult, bringing much confusion and suffering, but they are vital in finally reaching that place of, if not happiness, a sense of being who they truly are.
I’ve been so afraid to take these steps in my life many, many times. It’s difficult to walk away from years of pain because you’ve spent years working on it. You need to be willing to shed it all, sometimes. To risk what you’re afraid of losing, if you’ll lose yourself if you don’t. The things that matter in your life are often sturdier than you give them credit for, and if they aren’t, then there will be others more deserving of the love you have for them. You deserve happiness and comfort in your existence, and if that requires the destruction of what once was, then I want you to know that there can be a better place beyond it. At least, there was for me.
If Found… helped me realize some things about eradicating the past that I wish I’d understood years ago (but I also realize that failing to understand them is what brought me to my current happiness, so I can’t really complain). It does many, many other wonderful things I don’t feel equipped to speak about, but in its demonstration of how erasing the past can free you from its shackles, I feel it carries a message many of us need to hear, and is the most important title I experienced in 2020.
If Found… is available now on the App Store, itch.io, and Steam.
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