In Dreamfeel’s stunning If Found …, the only way to uncover the story is to erase it. Growth and loss are the same thing, and, through a brilliant trick of interactivity, the player feels the pain and glory of both of them in every moment.
Recently released on PC and iOS, If Found … is a visual novel with a smart twist. Presented through a series of sketchy images and written journal pages, the videogame’s primary means of interaction is an eraser. Using your finger or your mouse, you must delete the drawings and words before you in order to reveal the next pages. Progression inevitably means forgetting; the only way forward is to destroy. In and of itself, this is a striking dramatic conceit, forcing the player to confront the connection between that forward momentum and their own destructive actions. You consume and chew through these personal memories and images; to remember and understand the past is to—in some meaningful way—lose it forever.
If Found … tells two stories. The first is about a trans woman named Kasio, returning home to a small Irish island in the early 1990s. It’s a compelling queer coming-of-age story, forcing her to confront parental rejection, the messy intimacy of community, and her own past. The sec