Critical Play: Puzzles – The Almost Gone

I played the game The Almost Gone, developed by Happy Volcano. I actually once tried playing this game on Switch but quit early on because it is really a precision tap game where you tap on tiny objects on the screen and see how they fit into the narrative and progress your story. It is a mystery game about a person who’s parents have presumably died or are gone and you are left to figure out who they really are. The game’s mechanics are pretty simple – explore the box cutouts of rooms up down and around the house and solve the puzzles/locks that your parents laid out around the interior. I quite enjoyed it at first–each room gave me a clue as to a new puzzle to solve or a piece to put back in place. However, I tired of the mechanics a bit in Act 2. It’s possible that I don’t like tap to discover puzzle games where any tiny piece in the scene could be important and it’s only a matter of hitting in the right place. I found the puzzles sort of disjoint from the overall narrative–why would your parents be leaving around all of these locked passageways? What do the supernatural elements have to do with anything? It’s also possible that I just haven’t explored enough of the game — I ended halfway through Act 2 of 4 acts. However, I don’t feel enticed to play. The story isn’t developing as much as I wish it would–there are only one or two sentences that play in the beginning of the acts. I wish maybe there was a cut scene that showed me a bit more about the main character’s family, something like What Remains of Edith Finch. Overall, I’m slightly disappointed with this game but I did enjoy the puzzles in the beginning although it all left me wondering–why?

About the author

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.