Allie<p>March 27, 2024 - Day 452 - NewPlay Review<br>Total NewPlays: 487</p><p>Game: If Found...</p><p>Platform: Steam<br>Released: May 20, 2020<br>Installed: Jul 27, 2022<br>Unplayed: 609d (1y8m)<br>Playtime: 24m</p><p>If Found... is a 2D hand-drawn visual novel, that's telling two seemingly disconnected stories.</p><p>One is the story of an astronaut, Cassiopeia, and her entry into a black hole.</p><p>The other is the story of Kasio, a young Irish trans woman in the 1990's, and the fallout of her coming out as trans.</p><p>The UI is unique in my experience; you only have an eraser. You move through the story, partly as presented in Kasio's journal, by erasing your way through Kasio's life, and experiencing different memories as you go.</p><p>Sci-fi? A trans woman's coming out story? It's very much right up my alley, thematically. </p><p>I just wish I enjoyed it. There's a story there I want to engage with, but I wonder if it's the autistic part of my brain that's just struggling to connect with the story of a early-20's trans woman in a queer share house in Dublin (I think?).</p><p>The metaphor inherent in the UI is lovely, but it starts to get frustrating after a while.</p><p>I appreciate the love that's gone into the story, but I just found myself struggling to remain engaged, and that's something I often experience with visual novel style games, so I found that particularly disappointing in this regard.</p><p>I wonder if it's the kind of game that I could play in a different context and would be more enjoyable (perhaps remote Steam on the iPad).</p><p>In the end, I would say that for me If Found... is:</p><p>3: OK</p><p><a href="https://aus.social/tags/IfFound" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>IfFound</span></a>... <a href="https://aus.social/tags/2D" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>2D</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/HandDrawn" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>HandDrawn</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/VisualNovel" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>VisualNovel</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/Gaming" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Gaming</span></a> <a href="https://aus.social/tags/ProjectONG" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>ProjectONG</span></a></p>