The Almost Gone Reviews

（Due to dissatisfaction with the game, I used AI to translate an English version and placed it at the end, attempting to show it to international friends.） 优秀的美术，架空的创意，利用率极低的地图，不合的格游戏性和碎片化剧情，还有反人类的成就，音效我开的很低，不作评价。单看美术部分的确非常清新，风格也很适合这一类点击解密游戏，结合其三维旋转的玩法有一些纪念碑谷的意思，但也仅仅只有表皮，除了美术外并无长处。 整个游戏流程中需要玩家进行旋转操作的次数非常多，然而除了第三章的一次数字拼合，大部分的游戏时间内这个创意并没有和其他的解密游戏拉开区别，都是通过点击寻找线索，第四章在了解了解密思路后就只剩下无意义的对齐管道；以上只能说明这个游戏其创意并没能以足够有新意的形式体现在谜题上，但这个游戏的地图设计才是最大的败笔，是它令人感到“无聊”、被称为“迷路模拟器”的根源。 一个章节内至少有十几个房间，每张房间内通过点击能得到有效信息的交互点4-5个，每2-3个房间才能出现一个有可操作谜题的交互点，这就意味着玩家好不容易接触到一个谜题，在得到解密用的道具后想玩一下解密，会需要移动好几个房间；但是由于房间是可以旋转的，每一次找完线索后玩家视角的方向会变，房间数量又非常多，想要回到原先的地点难免迷路；章节内有内置小地图，但是这个小地图并不能显示出每一个房间的布局，玩家依旧无法知道自己要去的地方在哪里、该怎么走——在走完了这么多弯弯绕绕的路以后，玩家会发现，自己并没有进行多少实质性的操作，章节居然结束了，时间都花在找路上。这样一通操作，给人的体会便是：可玩性低、有效交互少、谜题质量低下，地图信息量小、冗余严重。 当然，从谜题处会有高亮提示可以看出，制作组有意简化游戏的游戏部分，让它变得更简单，来为叙事服务，那叙事部分做的又怎么样？以下是个人观点：我没看懂，只是隐约能看出来主角的一家三代都过的不是很好，它或许是一个巨大的悲剧，但是演出又太简单，需要玩家从主角的自言自语里拼凑事情的真相，这种不沉浸的剧情叙述方式并不值得用一个不好玩的游戏来包饺子。 The game features impressive art, imaginative concepts, but suffers from underutilized maps, subpar gameplay, fragmented storytelling, and anti-human achievements. I kept the sound effects low and won't comment on them. The art style alone is refreshingly crisp and well-suited for this type of point-and-click puzzle game. Its three-dimensional rotation mechanic bears a resemblance to Monument Valley, yet it only scratches the surface; aside from the visuals, there are no other redeeming qualities. Throughout the game, players frequently need to perform rotational actions. However, apart from one instance of numerical combination in Chapter 3, this creative element fails to distinguish itself from other puzzle games during most of the gameplay. It relies heavily on clicking to find clues. Once the solution to the puzzle in Chapter 4 is understood, it reduces to merely aligning pipes without purpose. This indicates that the game's creativity doesn't manifest in its puzzles with enough novelty. However, the game's map design is its biggest flaw, being the root cause of its "boring" reputation and why it's dubbed a "straying simulator." Each chapter contains at least a dozen rooms, with each room offering only 4-5 interactive points where effective information can be obtained via clicking. Only every 2-3 rooms presents an interactive puzzle point that is actionable. This means that after finding a puzzle and acquiring the necessary item to solve it, players must traverse several rooms to engage with it. Due to the rotatable nature of the rooms, the direction changes after each clue search, making it easy to lose one's way given the sheer number of rooms. Although there is an in-built mini-map within chapters, it doesn't display the layout of each room, leaving players unable to know their destination or how to get there. After navigating these convoluted paths, players realize they haven't performed many substantial actions before a chapter concludes, with much time wasted on wandering. This experience leads to a feeling of low playability, scarce effective interaction, poor puzzle quality, and minimal map information amidst excessive redundancy. It's evident from the highlighted hints in puzzles that the developers intended to simplify the gaming aspect to make it easier and serve the narrative better. But how about the narrative itself? Here's my personal view: I didn't quite understand it but could vaguely discern that the protagonist's family has been through tough times across three generations, possibly indicating a grand tragedy. However, the performance is too simplistic, requiring players to piece together the truth from the protagonist's monologues. This disengaging method of storytelling isn't worth experiencing through an otherwise unenjoyable game.

The Almost Gone is a nice 3D puzzle game with a cool ambiant and some great designs. I recommend it!!! 💗

I bought this game a long time ago and played it once, and forgot how was the game. After replaying it now i can remember why it was forgotten The good: - Nice art style, it has an aesthetic appeal to it, like playing in a miniature/ dollhouse setting, and you can toggle between different parts of the scene which is fun. - Point and click with no time limits/ time challenges - No deaths/ game over - There is a link in the game which leads you to a walkthrough, but kind of tedious to switch tabs The not so good: - Some of the puzzles are kind of obscure to solve, and you wouldn't figure out that an item was supposed to go somewhere without trial and error at some point (or with a walkthrough) [spoiler]the flying tube puzzle is the one that is the most annoying of all, and not to mention repetitive, and WOW a flying tube can knock off a rock statue's head and still remain intact, WHY didn't i think of that solution?[/spoiler] - The scenes are very small, and there are no options to highlight which areas can be interacted with, as well as no option to zoom in/ out, [spoiler]one part which makes me angry is the one that we have to find a digging/ hiding spot for a bone, there is a crudely drawn map which shows us the location but the hiding area is SO SMALL in the scene and is actually hidden in a corner of the house, disguised as a small black lump which could have been part of the background since the house is so broken, and this is just ONE example, there are few other scenes which equally frustrates me[/spoiler] - Story is short but provides no real explanations, just snippets of what happened and no real narrative from the characters involved, so we have to make guesses most of the time, and the ending is so obscure that it makes me question what was the story from the beginning, like we don't know what really happened to the main character. Plus, we don't really know what most of the characters in the story were thinking about or what is their actual personality; there are letters and notes throughout the game but they were just scribbles of incomprehensible words which is a shame, because maybe if there were letters to read or some notes written in the drawings etc, then maybe we would have some idea of how the character is like or what actually happened, and that would have add more depth to the game i think [spoiler]the scene where there is a police car in the tree is the one that baffles me, like what is the relationship of this scene to the whole story? i can assume someone died? maybe? but who? everyone in the scene died? why and how did it happened?? or maybe nobody died and the scene was just a product of main character's imagination??? and what's up with the tree roots and the tree house? the roots could represent the root of the family problems but what about the tree house?? IDK so many questions....[/spoiler] - Music is meh, like most of the time it's just quiet silence, and only certain parts of the game have some real music - You can't jump to a particular scene by looking at the map, instead you have to click allllllllll the way to the scene that you want to go, very fun 4/10, maybe if you want to know the story just watch a walkthrough video

For me, this felt a bit like a neutral experience, so I suppose it's a "not recommend." tl;dr, the content length felt contrived, the soundtrack is not enjoyable, and the story ended very abruptly. I do like the art style, though. I completed my first run at a slow pace of 2.5 hours, with frequent backtracking and spam clicking when I didn't understand a puzzle (happened frequently - thank goodness for walkthroughs). There are four achievements that pad playtime - doing an activity for 2 min, staying in a room for 30 min, completing the game twice, and spending 5 hours in the game - so I wouldn't really count that as new content. Overall, I think the art direction is well-done, but I had difficulty traversing the rooms and the music is pretty bare-bones spooky ambiance. I was interested in where the story was going before it abruptly ended in the final chapter; overall, it was too subtle for me to grasp, so I do feel like now I need to find an essay writeup explaining the plot.