Destroy a journal, defend the world in upcoming If Found...
Do pop it in the recycling, though
There’s not much more that feels better than tearing up a completed to-do list at the end of the day, which is why I’ve never moved to keeping track of my tasks electronically. Destroying a diary, as you’ll be doing in If Found… might be a less appealing process, depending what’s kept inside. But the fact that doing so may just stop a black hole from consuming the Earth is probably as good a motivation as you’re likely to get. Snoop inside the trailer below.
As demonstrated, scrubbing out the sketches and journal entries kept by protagonist Kasio will allow you to progress through the story. You’ll be digging into her experiences, relationships, and challenges even as you try to avert the apocalypse.
“Erase her diary, uncover secrets, meet a diverse cast of characters, go to a punk show, break into your own house, destroy the universe, find out who you really are,” reads the description on the game’s website. Now there’s a to-do list I’d love to complete.
If this is pulling at some long-forgotten memory, allow me to jog it for you: Pip (and possibly you!) played an earlier version of it at EGX Rezzed in 2016. Back then it was called If Found, Please Return, but the diary-erasing mechanic still formed its cathartic foundation.
“It took me a minute to figure out how the experience worked but once I did it properly sucked me in as this delicate, beautifully structured thing, peculiarly tactile thanks to the mixture of sketchy image, zooming and erasing,” said Pip.
Designer and writer Llaura McGee’s previous work includes Curtain, a pay what you want tale about a destructive relationship that I played a couple of years ago but whose itch.io page still invokes some sharp sense-memories about its intensity. So that bodes well.
If Found…is being published by Annapurna Interactive, and is scheduled to release on Steam and itch.io early next year.