If Found: Erasing Pain & Constructing a Future.
Words by Amy Louise.
*Please note, this article features slight spoilers for the plot of the game If Found… as well as spoilers for a game mechanic in the final chapter of the game*
“It’s not that type of game” I often thought to myself as I played If Found..., the 2020 visual novel released by Dublin-based studio Dreamfeel. Set in 1993, the game follows Kasio, a young trans woman who returns home to Achill Island for the month of December. What follows is an intimate glance into the young woman’s life as she moves into a squat with friends, navigates ill-fated crushes, and desperately tries to make her mother and brother understand and accept who she is. Interspersing this narrative is a separate story that follows astronaut Cassiopeia, as she endeavors to save the world from being literally swallowed by a black hole, a story that ultimately mirrors Kasio’s tale and her declining mental health.
Told via vignettes in Kassio’s diary, the player’s cursor is that of an eraser, carefully scrubbing away the fragments of Kasio’s story as it is told, articulating the notion that in order to move on, you must destroy. And destroy we must, as players are told to erase and erase. Erase all the good parts and the bad parts and everything in-between that make Kasio who she is, a young Irish trans woman set adrift in a stifling community well-known to anyone who has grown up in rural Ireland.
It is through these tiny vignettes, the notes, scribbles and beautiful illustrations courtesy of the game’s artist Liadh Young, that we learn about Kasio. In turn, it starts to hurt as we erase her story. As you play, you desperately wish you could keep the good parts and erase the bad, but unfortunately life and in turn, If Found, doesn’t work like that. It’s not that kind of game. Be it via mouse on a PC, or with a finger on a phone or tablet, the player must destroy Kasio’s story as it occurs.
The player is effectively given a lot of power in this respect. We’re allowed to linger where we want, gently teasing out the brief moments of warmth and peace for as long as we can - lying under the stars and discussing the future, watching the Late Late Toy Show with friends, waking up to the smell of cooking rashers in a place you feel safe. In turn, we’re forced to confront the more painful moments - a mother’s refusal to understand her daughter’s decisions, a heartbreaking rejection, a young woman’s descent into depression. It is in those moments where the player can become desperate, frantically erasing as quickly as possible because frankly, lingering any longer is painful. So onwards we go, destroying and destroying, as Kassio’s story takes a turn for the worse and she descends into the figurative version of the black hole that Cassopeia is desperately searching for. It is here where the visual novel mechanic frustrates to brilliant effect - you desperately want to control and change Kasio’s story and make it better for her but unfortunately, that’s not how visual novels work. Kasio’s story, both happy and sad, has already occured, we are just reliving it.
It is not until If Found...’s final chapter that the unique game mechanic changes. Set years after the events of the game, for the first time the player is met with a completely blank page. Instead of erasing, we must construct, gently pulling and placing the sentences as Kasio writes them. The player is invited to doodle in the margins, scribbling whatever they fancy amongst updated news on Kasio’s life as well as the other characters we met throughout the story. In the end, the player is presented with the ability to physically craft how Kasio now looks in the present day. Through a variety of options, the player can decide is Kasio’s hair long or short? Blonde or brunette? Does she have piercings? A tattoo? And finally, is she happy? We may not have been able to control what happened to Kasio in 1993, but we are able to decide how Kasio feels now, in a brilliant moment that hearkens to the idea that while you cannot change the past, we are all able to choose how we approach and feel about it in the present day.
One of the final choices the game presents us with is the ability to choose a backdrop for this modern-day portrait. Players can pick from a variety of options including the trans flag, the LGBTQ+ flag and an Irish flag, giving rise to a notion that all these aspects of Kasio’s identity deserve equal weight, they’re all valid and vitally important in constructing who she is as a person. The game finishes with the final shot of this modern-day Kasio, constructed by the player’s hands. While the past had to be erased in order to fully move on, the game finishes on the optimistic note that the future is in our hands, ready to be crafted.
If Found… can be quite literally found on Windows PC, Mac, iOs. An extended edition is also available on the Nintendo Switch.
