What makes a good game?

There’s the conventional wisdom to go off, of course. A game is supposed to be fun to play and pretty to look at, and if there’s a great story, that’s an added bonus. For years, these standards have dictated how we perceive standout games, and for years, those focuses have reduced the artform down to impersonal consumer-grade products. If it plays good, looks good, and has lots to do, it’s a good game, right?

Well, no. But don’t tell most critics – or gamers, for that matter – that.

Thankfully, developers like Llaura McGee and Eve Golden Woods are pushing back against that homogenization of games with If Found…, an ambitious and endearing snapshot of being trans in early ‘90s Ireland while a black hole threatens to envelop the planet. The story is unraveled through erasing and filling pages of a journal, giving players a unique and tangible mechanic to discover the story with. While the experience could technically be described as a visual novel, that would be a bit disingenuous to the overall experience – and to its intent.

That’s because one of McGee’s original visions was a pushback against dating sims.

“When we were making this game, it was going to be an anti-dating sim,” McGee tells me via Zoom interview. “You were going to meet this quirky cast and have an exciting experience with all of them." The core loop of the game would have seen players cultivating bonds with that cast, only to erase them at the end of their arcs.

But that’s not the only way If Found… could have gone. McGee, the game’s director, also speaks to an earlier idea that involved a witch’s academy. Each chapter would task players with completing a diary, and each would be tied directly to a new mechanic. It was, in the director’s own words, “a grab bag of experimental ideas.”

That, however, presented a major problem to McGee. “If each chapter had one mechanic,” she says, “it became kind of corny.” Which went against her intent to make something feel like a cohesive, focused work. “One of the things I wanted to do… I wanted to play something that is a complete experience.”

This idea of a cohesive, singular goal is echoed by Woods – the game’s lead writer. “It wasn’t ever a goal to make twists on mechanics. It came naturally.” According to both developers, the game’s mechanics ultimately acted in service of the mechanics, and not the other way around.

“This can’t be anything else,” says McGee, “because the idea is so desperately attached to it.”

After settling on the basic narrative, the team at DreamFeel dug in. The small team, comprised of “four or five core people,” alongside “a bunch of people helping out with different stuff,” worked for around two years on the title. That small core team, according to both developers, was vital in informing the project.

McGee described the process as “a big canvas,” with “all these other insights, all these other things that mix into it.”

If Found… is hitting digital marketplaces next week, and McGee is already thinking to the future. “[I have a] pretty clear idea of what I want to do next,” she says. “There’s one game I’m probably gonna finish soon.” She also has plans to make a type of game maker over the course of the summer. There’s no shortage of ideas brimming from the team at Dreamfeel, from the sound of it, and if If Found… is any indication, those ideas are sure to come together in clever and inventive ways.

So – what makes a good game, exactly? Is it the bog-standard industry trappings of bloated budgets, focus-tested mechanics, and stories that are palatable to the masses? I’d say not. My talk with DreamFeel reaffirmed my belief that truly great games are more than products. They’re expressions of self, with mechanics that service ideas as opposed to sales numbers. In order to get those experiences, to truly get a thriving industry teeming with great art, the industry needs to prioritize uplifting smaller projects headed up by diverse voices.

Or, as McGee so succinctly puts it?

“We need more trans people making shit.”

If Found… will be released by Annapurna Interactive on May 19, 2020.