New game: 'The Almost Gone' for mobile, Switch and PC | Inquirer Technology

New game: ‘The Almost Gone’ for mobile, Switch and PC

/ 06:44 PM June 25, 2020

The Almost Gone

“The Almost Gone” is a journey through sweet revolving dioramas and a troubling personal story. Image: Courtesy of Happy Volcano via AFP Relaxnews

A sweetly presented rotation puzzle with a digital dollhouse aesthetic has players find their world through a strange, sometimes distressing, afterlife experience, piecing together the story of a young girl’s life.

Award-winning author Joost Vandecasteele and Belgian studio Happy Volcano have come up with a novel way of presenting a mystery story.

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Players of “The Almost Gone” turn and inspect each pixelated diorama, looking for clues in apparently abandoned places, solving puzzles and learning about their character’s memories and life story.

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That story takes them through various detailed and fully explorable locations: a house, a forest camping spot, an empty hospital, even a police car up a tree.

Adorably rendered and carefully presented, the game nonetheless takes some hard left turns into more difficult emotional territory.

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“The Almost Gone” is the result of a matchmaking exercise by the Dutch Literary Fund, which paired Vandecasteele with Happy Volcano.

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Even before Vandecasteele won Belgium’s 2017 Sabam Award for Literature with “Jungle”, an early prototype of “The Almost Gone” clinched the Best Mobile prize from the 2015 Belgian Game Awards.

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Since then, the project has been shown at game expos and book shows alike, such as the prestigious A MAZE Berlin and Frankfurt Book Fair.

“The Almost Gone” releases June 25 for Android, iOS, Nintendo Switch and, via Steam, Mac and Windows PC. A free demo containing the game’s first act is available via Steam. RGA

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TOPICS: Belgium, mystery, Nintendo Switch, puzzles, Steam
TAGS: Belgium, mystery, Nintendo Switch, puzzles, Steam

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