The Almost Gone

The Almost Gone is a puzzle game with room escape elements in which the player navigates five stages of three-dimensional dioramas of rooms to locate items of interest and solve puzzles. The player can rotate the room in all directions to see behind objects and corners of the space, and can enter other rooms using doors or directional arrows. Items can be combined and accessed using an inventory, with objects of interest, once acquired, highlighted at the side of the screen, with some providing additional background text. The game also features a map to show the player the current perspective and relationship between rooms.

The player follows Emily, a girl who has recently died, through a state of purgatory as she revisits places and events significant to her life. As the player pieces together connections from the locations across Emily's house and neighborhood, darker secrets about Emily's life family become unearthed, revealing themes of "addiction, abuse, neglect and murder".

The Almost Gone was developed by Happy Volcano, a Belgian independent studio founded by developer Peter Maasen, designer Jeroen Janssen, and art director David Prinsmel, featuring text by writer Joost Vandecasteele. The development team aimed to create a puzzle game that was integrated with a more mature, dark narrative around the theme of life and death. The narrative was left ambiguous as a "Lynchian experience" to encourage players to develop their own thoughts and theories about the game.

The Almost Gone received "mixed or average" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic. Fellow review aggregator OpenCritic assessed that the game received fair approval, being recommended by 62% of critics. Reviewers mostly praised the game's minimalistic visual presentation and design. Eurogamer found the "clean, undisturbed lines of an architect's drawing" to convey a "striking" visual presentation.

Critics viewed the art as dissonant from the dark tone of the game, with Pocket Gamer writing that the "minimalist, almost cartoonish art lulls you into a false sense of security". Nintendo Life highlighted the game's minimalistic design aided the puzzles, which were "carefully crafted to communicate areas of importance, whilst leaving out any unnecessary clutter". Adventure Gamers praised the game's design as "simple, clean and effective".