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The game was developed as the first game by Irish developer Dreamfeel. Studio director Llaura McGee was the lead writer and designer.<ref name="SHinterview"/> It was published by [[Annapurna Interactive]].<ref name="pubhistory"/> Initial development on the game began in 2016. McGee sent a proposed design for "a swashbuckling space opera starring cats" to artist Liadh Young, who responded with concept art, and the two began developing game concepts. McGee wanted to create a game with a team rather than as a small solo project like her previous games, but wanted to keep it focused on the strengths of the people involved, such as Young's comics art background, and began to build a small team.<ref name="TVinterview"/> Some early concepts included an "anti-[[dating sim]]" or a game set in a "witch's academy" based around completing a diary through different tasks, but McGee and the other developers felt it was better to create a story and then let the game mechanics serve it to create a "complete experience".<ref name="TGinterview"/> She was interested at the time with notebooks and [[marginalia]], and the team focused on that idea for the game.<ref name="TVinterview"/> McGee and lead writer Eve Golden Woods describe the development process for ''If Found...'', once the design was decided on, as taking two years, with a team of "four or five core people" plus additional help working on it. Ideas were contributed from the whole team; the final credits list nine contributors from Dreamfeel.<ref name="TGinterview"/> The team created a demo for the game to demonstrate at events, but found it difficult to finish the project, which McGee says was a consistent pattern for them. They credit publisher Annapurna, who signed on to the project partway through, with pushing them to complete it in a polished fashion.<ref name="TVinterview"/>
The first part of the final design for the game was about a diary that the player would erase, and the studio then developed the idea of a woman in her 20s and her difficulties with her relationships. McGee, a trans woman from a coastal village in Ireland, drew heavily on her emotions growing up there in the 90s, though the story itself is not autobiographical. The interleaved science fiction story was intended to add an element of [[magic realism|magical realism]], as well as express the emotional feeling of a personal world falling apart with as a more direct metaphor.<ref name="SHinterview"/> The role of the black hole changed during development; while the final version has been described as "the physical manifestation of the terror, loneliness, shame and self-hatred that she encounters, all-consuming and impossible to outrun", earlier drafts had it as being a dark hole within Kasio preventing her from having relationships, or missing the relationships altogether. McGee felt that the game "missed its emotional gravity" without it, however.<ref name="EGinterview"/> McGee has said that the game, which is about two hours long, is intended to be
== Reception ==
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