If Found
iOS, PC
Loss is a complex thing. Anyone who’s experienced it will know the sharp stab of it – of something, or someone, suddenly not being where it once was, where they ought to be. And yet, it can also be a relief. When the noise threatens to overwhelm, the instant silencing of it can be a balm, albeit one that often comes with a side-order of guilt. It’s a hell of a thing on which to base a videogame, in other words. But If Found portrays this most universal of subjects with an almost unparalleled grace, wit, fire and even humour.
Restraint, too. Your means of interacting with this playable graphic novel is almost entirely limited to destroying it. An erase tool invites you to rub out the pages of Kasio’s – your – diary, sentence by sentence, sketch by sketch. It’s a winsome chronicle of the 23-year-old’s life following her return home from university to the Irish isle of Achill, and her mounting struggles with her own sense of identity. The diary is filled with slice-of-life tableaux, scribbled observations (the particular way a friend makes a cup of tea, for instance) and affectionate portraits that, although simple, flicker with life. The density of the thing becomes even more apparent once you start to reveal the layers at work in this very personal palimpsest.
Kasio has revisited this diary before – quite recently, it seems. Anguished scribbles blot out certain words and faces. It’s disturbing to see the quiet, dependable Colum reduced to a black shape; likewise, to read ‘HE LEFT’ carved over a description of soft-hearted Shans. There’s a pang of relief as you wipe sadness away, getting a glimpse of what’s beneath, before deleting that too, consigning everything – joy, fear, rage, sadness, friends, family, beaches, houses, your very self – to the same dispassionate white void. These are things Kasio once wanted to immortalise: “I remember” is a common refrain throughout descriptions of tense dinner-table confrontations with her mother and brother, a morning spent making breakfast with the gaggle of mates she moves in with afterwards, the midnight pilgrimage with a friend to a chippy bathed in warm yellow light and the smell of vinegar. All gone.
It begs the question: what caused this change of heart? Clues appear in the guise of a parallel universe, in which you’re an astronaut attempting to halt impending doom in the form of a black hole that threatens to swallow the earth. The only way to stop it, it seems, is to identify the “anomaly”: the event that set all this in motion. These interstellar asides can feel distracting – slightly too removed from Kasio and friends’ orbit, with not quite enough done by game’s end to definitively link the two worlds. Still, there’s a sense that its purpose is to try to reframe and recontextualise your mission – maybe what you’re doing is not erasing, but uncovering.
And so, while your eraser tool essentially remains unchanged for the duration of If Found (except for, wonderfully, the fact that it wears down to a smaller nub as time goes on – something that helps contribute real emotional charge to your interactions in a lategame sequence), its function shifts. It isn’t just your means of erasing marks in a diary, but of transitioning between scenes. It opens doors. It can paint smiles onto faces, or light into a window. (There are a few things it can’t do that we wish it could; this is a mechanic, we feel, with outer limits beyond where it’s pushed to.) Call it progress, call it inevitability, but there’s no denying the power you feel in revealing an inky streak of midnight beneath the soft seashell pink of a sunset.
This last chronological example is just one of the many times If Found invokes the graphic novel oeuvre: Richard McGuire’s Here, an exploration of how a single spot in a home changes over time, comes to mind in this case; Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home is felt in other parts. The reader of a graphic novel has influence over how they absorb it, each individual’s eye drawn to different areas of the page, even as the author fights to direct it. But If Found directly hands this power of revelation to the player; in doing so, it not only enriches the graphic novel experience, but reinforces its narrative themes of the importance of discovering and learning to define the edges of your own identity. We are allowed to read scenes out of order, free to uncover the second half of a sentence before the first (one very late-game reveal of a single word comes even later because of our freeform influence, and is all the more moving for it). Many vignettes are streaked with clashing colours or multiple depictions of the same character, as we reveal the scene underneath only gradually. Differing emotions or scenarios sit side-by-side on the same screen. It feels as true a depiction of what loss feels like as any: messy, contradictory, and a process that’s personal.
Kasio’s particular process is representative of many other people like her, and will be all too familiar to LGBTQ+ players in particular. But people who haven’t had that experience will find themselves empathising by design. What Kasio must do to find herself involves a huge amount of work – often repetitive, even dull work. If all that mouse-wiggling or fingertip-swiping tires over the course of two hours, it’s only because it should. You will do the work too.
This is not to say that If Found is overly laborious. In fact, this look into the life, times and metamorphoses of a young outsider will most likely leave you feeling rejuvenated. The catharsis of this adventure in erasure is undeniable. Dreamfeel’s debut has the infectious punk energy of a zine with all the thematic elegance of a graphic novel, and the weight of something else entirely – something that could only have only come from the medium of interactive entertainment. In the end, we gain more from it than we imagined.
There’s a pang of relief as you wipe sadness away, getting a glimpse of what’s beneath, before deleting that too