While I typically enjoy playing a mindless shooter or platformer, I’m not afraid to broaden my horizons and try genres I otherwise wouldn’t. I had the opportunity to do just that with The Almost Gone. My puzzle game experience doesn’t extend much farther than the Humongous Entertainment games with the odd Myst or Talos Principle thrown in, but I wanted to give my critical-thinking an exercise with this new title from Happy Volcano Games.

The Almost Gone is minimalistic in its presentation, opting to present its setting within the confines of the middle of the players’ screen. The environment is on an axis, so you can rotate it to view it from four angles to uncover secrets not visible in other views. Each screen only has about a handful of interactive objects, but you’ll do plenty of backtracking to find things otherwise locked, with transitions between screens being almost instantaneous.

This is pretty par-for-the-course for a puzzle title, but The Almost Gone won’t come without its frustration. With no tutorial or guide, I was stuck for a few minutes trying to figure out how to actually use one of the items in my inventory. Even a quick five-second screen before the first act would have sufficed, but sadly there wasn’t any sort of guidance given. It was through trial-and-error that  I discovered the control scheme, which is not ideal for a main mechanic in a game.

Once I had a handle on how the game actually worked, I ran into cryptic roadblocks that prevented me from progressing. Some solutions were common sense, others were a wild guess that had no clear-cut explanation. There were really only a few moments where I found myself figuring out how to proceed by connecting the dots. The rest of the experience came from a developer walkthrough that basically speedruns the game.

It is due to this frustration that the game’s depressive plot is weakened. Centering around a toxic household, ample backstory is delivered through the game’s acts. The player pieces together what transpired to lead to the failing marriage, including a vitriolic upbringing and living up to another’s expectations. These trite, played-out themes aren’t helped by the presentation through the eyes of a jaded teen that leans far too much into the victim role, not having a shred of hope or happiness to offer.

To pile onto the game’s issues, the set design, while impressive and pleasing to the eye, is marred by hitboxes that extend a bit too far in multiple instances. For example, I’ll be looking at a bookcase with several items of interest, but it’s all confined to one angsty quote from the narrator that erases all intrigue and mystique. Where other puzzle games have engaging, fascinating set-pieces, The Almost Gone‘s is just too restricting.

There are some good things going for The Almost Gone, but the game lacks polish and could use more time in the oven to cement its status within the puzzle greats like Deponia or The Witness. Perhaps if this engine was refined and explored with a more concise, fruitful plot, it could be the start of something great. For the time being, though, The Almost Gone is hardly worth the price of entry and is most likely not worth your time.

A PC review copy of The Almost Gone was provided by Playdigious for this review.

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The Almost Gone

$14.99 USD

5.5

Score

5.5/10

Pros

• Good environmental design
• Decent "a-ha!" moments
• Narrative continuity

Cons

• Frustrating UI
• Guesswork half the time
• Played-out plot