Find Someone Else

Find Someone Else is a first-person visual novel that explores the heavy themes of loss, illness, and the changing nature of relationships. Players step into the shoes of Noah, a protagonist struggling to cope with his girlfriend’s hospitalization and worsening condition. His life becomes further complicated when a figure from his past re-emerges and a mysterious voice begins whispering troubling questions in the night. Set against the darker side of Stockholm, the game features a branching narrative where player choices lead to several different endings, offering a personal and introspective experience about whether love is unconditional.

Find Someone Else: A Haunting Meditation on Love, Loss, and the Ghosts We Carry

In the vast and often noisy landscape of indie gaming, where titles frequently shout for attention with pixel-art nostalgia or bombastic mechanics, there exists a quieter, more somber corner. Here, games function not as escapism, but as introspection. Red Skald’s 2017 visual novel, Find Someone Else, is a paramount example of this form—a raw, unflinching, and deeply personal excavation of grief, guilt, and the unbearable weight of a loved one’s mortality. It is a game that asks not for your skill, but for your empathy, leaving a lingering, melancholic resonance long after its brief runtime concludes.

Development History & Context

The Studio & The Vision
Find Someone Else was developed and published by the enigmatic collective Red Skald. Unlike major studios with sprawling teams, Red Skald operated as a tight-knit group of seven core developers, with two additional contributors thanked for their personal and technical input. The credits reveal a project born from necessity rather than commercial ambition; a note in the thank-yous to “Kattokan” states the game is “a little too personal,” immediately framing the experience as a piece of vulnerable, autobiographical art.

The game was built using Ren’Py, the open-source visual novel engine beloved by indie creators for its accessibility and focus on narrative. This technological choice is significant. It places Find Someone Else firmly within a tradition of personal storytelling and low-fi aesthetics, freeing the developers from the constraints of complex programming and allowing them to focus exclusively on writing, mood, and thematic depth. Released on November 24, 2017, on Windows via Steam and itch.io, the game entered a digital marketplace saturated with titles vying for dollars. Its decision to be free-to-play was a clear statement: this was an experience meant to be shared, not sold.

The Gaming Landscape of 2017
In 2017, the indie scene was thriving with narrative-driven games. Titles like Night in the Woods and What Remains of Edith Finch were demonstrating the medium’s capacity for mature, emotionally complex storytelling. Find Someone Else is a part of this movement but carves its own distinct niche. It forgoes the fantastical or the mysterious for a stark, painful realism. It is less a puzzle to be solved and more an emotional state to be inhabited, aligning it with a wave of “empathy games” that sought to use interactivity to foster profound human connection and understanding.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

The Plot: A Portrait of Paralysis
You play as Noah, a young man trapped in a purgatory of his own making. His girlfriend is hospitalized, her condition worsening due to an unnamed but terminal illness. Life has narrowed to a suffocating routine of hospital visits, empty apartments, and the gnawing anxiety of impending loss. The central conflict is ignited when a figure from Noah’s past re-enters his life, offering a potential path away from his pain, while a mysterious, demonic voice begins haunting his nights, vocalizing his deepest insecurities and fears.

The game’s core mechanic and its primary philosophical question are one and the same: “Is it guilty to leave?” The title, Find Someone Else, is a heartbreaking imperative—a request from his dying girlfriend for him to find happiness after she’s gone. This sets up an impossible paradox for Noah: to obey is to betray the love he feels in the present, but to refuse is to betray her final wish.

Characters as Manifestations of Trauma
The characters are less traditional archetypes and more like facets of a fractured psyche:
* Noah: Our protagonist is defined by his exhaustion and paralysis. He is not a hero, but a witness to his own life crumbling, making him a profoundly relatable and human anchor for the player.
* The Girlfriend: Though largely absent, her presence is the gravitational center of the entire narrative. She represents pure, unconditional love juxtaposed with the “unfair inevitability of illness and death.”
* The Returned Figure: This character represents temptation and the possibility of life moving forward, but also complicates Noah’s guilt, making him question the constancy of his own emotions.
* The Demonic Voice: This is the game’s masterstroke. The voice is Noah’s id unleashed—his fear, his anger, his lust, and his despair. Its nightly interrogations force Noah (and the player) to confront ugly, uncomfortable truths about human nature under duress.

Thematic Exegesis: The Weight of Conditional Love
The game relentlessly explores its central theme: Is love unconditional? In the face of immense suffering, do our obligations to others or to ourselves take precedence? The multiple endings and branching paths are not about “winning” but about exploring different answers to this harrowing question. Each route, tied to a different color and a different aspect of Noah’s personality (paranoia, depression, aggression), leads to a form of Game Over. As one player review on RAWG astutely noted, “there is no happy ending here.” Every conclusion is a form of loss, because the game posits that in such situations, there can be no clean victory—only different shades of sorrow and survival.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

The Core Loop: Choice as Introspection
As a visual novel, the gameplay is intentionally minimalist. Players progress through text-based narrative segments, with key decisions presented at branching points. These choices are not the typical “good/evil” binaries but are nuanced, emotionally charged responses that feel authentic to the situation.

The innovation lies in the “point” system. Interactions with different characters earn Noah “points” color-coded to them. These points are a brilliant, abstract representation of his shifting emotional alignment. Furthermore, the choices made during dialogues with the demonic voice at the end of each day determine which “vice” or personality trait Noah is succumbing to, locking him onto a corresponding path. This mechanic directly ties player agency to Noah’s psychological state, making the gameplay a process of self-discovery—often a painful one.

UI and Pacing
The interface is clean and unobtrusive, typical of Ren’Py projects, ensuring nothing distracts from the narrative. The game is designed to be completed in roughly an hour, but its value is in replays. This short length is not a deficit but a design feature; it’s a concentrated dose of emotion that encourages multiple playthroughs to see all the nuanced outcomes, each one adding another layer to the game’s complex thematic portrait.

World-Building, Art & Sound

The “Darker Side of Stockholm”
The setting is not a fantastical realm but a real, tangible place: Stockholm. The world is built through a series of fixed, first-person perspective backgrounds that are described as “closed, processed photos.” This approach creates a powerful, haunting atmosphere. The environments feel real yet eerily stagnant, mirroring Noah’s emotional paralysis. The “darker side” explored is not one of crime, but of quiet despair in everyday places—a hospital room, a dimly lit apartment, a barren city street at night.

Visual Direction: Rough and Real
The character art avoids anime tropes, leaning instead into a “rough Scandinavian manner.” The characters feel grounded, imperfect, and real, which heightens the sense of emotional authenticity. Their designs are simple but expressive, effectively conveying a wide range of pain, anxiety, and weariness.

Soundscape of Sorrow
The soundtrack, composed primarily by Ian Alex Mac with contributions from Nihilore (James Opie) and others, is a character in itself. The track titles—”The Ghost Strings,” “In Darkness,” “Blood Loss”—tell their own story. The music is described as “pressing,” “disturbing,” and “melancholic.” It is a low, ambient drone that perfectly encapsulates the game’s oppressive mood, never offering relief, only deepening the sense of introspection and dread. The sound design is minimal, making the moments of silence just as powerful as the score.

Reception & Legacy

Critical and Commercial Reception
While mainstream critical reviews are absent from major outlets, the player response speaks volumes. On Steam, the game holds a “Very Positive” rating based on 126 reviews, with 92% of users recommending it. This user-driven acclaim highlights its impact on its niche audience. Players frequently describe it as “gloomy,” “depressing,” “realistic,” and “resonant.” One reviewer on RAWG called it “a kind of novel that makes you feel even bigger than you are in real life.”

Its commercial impact was non-existent by design, given its free-to-play model. Its success is measured not in revenue but in its ability to connect and affect those who played it.

Enduring Influence and Legacy
Find Someone Else may not have shifted the industry paradigm, but it stands as a quintessential example of the visual novel as a potent vehicle for adult, literary themes. It demonstrates how minimalistic mechanics can serve a profound narrative purpose. Its legacy is felt in the continued appreciation for hyper-personal, autobiographical games that explore mental health and trauma with unflinching honesty. It is a game studied and appreciated by a dedicated community that values emotional resonance over graphical fidelity, proving that the most powerful worlds can be built with words, a few images, and a haunting score.

Conclusion

Find Someone Else is not a game for everyone. It is a challenging, emotionally draining experience that offers no catharsis or easy answers. It is a solemn, beautifully crafted meditation on the human condition at its most vulnerable. Red Skald did not set out to create a fun diversion; they created a necessary, therapeutic piece of art that holds a mirror to the universal fears of loss, guilt, and the terrifying freedom of moving on.

Its place in video game history is secure not as a blockbuster, but as a benchmark for narrative ambition and emotional authenticity. It is a raw nerve of a game, a short story written in interactive form that proves the unique power of the medium to foster empathy and self-reflection. For those willing to sit with its darkness, Find Someone Else is an unforgettable, and essential, experience.