One of the heaviest criticisms from walking simulators is their failure to capture the “game” element necessary to put players in the proper mindset to enjoy the journey. As important as it is to create a first person perspective to properly tell a story, developers can sometimes forget to include things that make the game engaging. As much as we laud Gone Home or What Remains of Edith Finch, the key to their success is having compelling elements that allow you to still be an active participant and not just a viewer. It’s a balance that’s difficult to strike, and not every title finds wild success.

The Gap, a positively mindbending journey from Label This, seeks to create a tale that’s both engrossing and interactive in order to talk about their protagonist, Joshua. From the very beginning, obfuscation is the name of the game, as players will be confused immediately as to what’s happening. Over time, you’re able to put together some very rudimentary pieces, which includes Joshua’s wife, Amber, leaving with their daughter, Mia, and Joshua believing he can fix this all through investigating his mind. What unfolds from their is a twisted and complicated telling of a man seeking to solve a medical condition through any means necessary, and the trials and tribulations that are experienced in seeking to do the impossible: create more time.

This first mind palace of Joshua’s already tells me he’s in a great place, mentally.

I’ll do my best not to spoil the game, though The Gap does an excellent job of misdirection and suggestion from the very beginning. The ultimate answers are locked away in two places: Joshua’s computer and his memories. You cannot unlock the computer until you figure out the password, and, unlike some other games, you need to do the legwork to discover the words needed to create the password: no looking up the answer and speedrunning the ending. Joshua can discover these words through investigating various items in his ruined apartment, and, on occasion, the investigation will trigger a sort of memory hole which will bring you back to a different time and, possibly, a different reality.

Right away, I have to applaud the creation and ideas that went into The Gap because it does manage to tick some unique boxes without going completely overboard. The decision to craft everything in a sort of digitally ethereal way within the memories keeps Joshua’s vantage exactly how you’d picture a memory: just on the edge of detailed recognition. When you jump around within your head, so many things are crystal clear – the environment, the items you find, the conversations you had – but the people who might appear are fuzzy and vague. While you get an idea of how Amber, Mia, Chris and other important people look through photos, you never fully see them within your memories. I thought that was a bold choice.

Just three friends bowling and getting buried under their own conversation.

Additionally, the layers in which you move become more apparent even as they become more confusing. Joshua, like all people losing their minds, keeps a convenient string picture board on his wall, and the gradual progression is evident as more photos are added with timelines and connections. Unlocking more memories fully gives you better access to specific time waypoints, which allows the traversal to become more direct. Still, it can get jumbled when you fade into one memory only to find another piece of the puzzle that then fades into an even deeper memory. It’s Butterfly Effect meets Inception, and the cohesion is as clean as you could imagine it to be in that scenario.

There’s a lot to like visually and aurally, as The Gap was crafted to tell a story first and deliver a game second. The dialogue between the different characters is so frank and honest, especially dealing with someone who is undergoing some massive mental trauma in snapshots. The way memories will have giant dark gaps of unimportance (walking through the airport, connecting when Blake delivers the lasagna) helps underline what’s important to Joshua, yet his trip to see the Aurora Borealis with Amber is in perfect clarity…except for Amber herself. Having these vivid moment set against the floating text of dialogue so you never miss a single line is key, particularly when there’s a lot going on with stereo speaking that can be disorienting with headphones.

As for the puzzles…this is where the game becomes exceptionally hit or miss. The Gap relies on the discovery of words for important puzzles, but some simply require trial and error. The aforementioned lasagna scene makes you choose what happens next, but will kick you out of the memory if you get it wrong, making you restart the memory until you pick the right order of photos. In one memory, I kept failing because I didn’t realize I was supposed to slice the tomato on the counter before flipping the burgers, and there was NOTHING that I could see that indicated this was necessary. Personally, I like tomato on my burger, but given that the importance of the memory was a phone call from Chris inquiring about my mental health, I think I would have glossed over my burger topping when recalling this event.

This CVS is more cursed than usual. I mean, I’ll still go here instead of Walgreens, but it’s worth noting.

Additionally, some puzzles will tell you directly “you don’t have the clues to answer this puzzle,” which is helpful to a certain degree, but also sometimes unnecessary. One early puzzle had you trying to figure out which rabbit to adopt for Mia, and I had to traverse quite a few memories until I finally found the letter to Santa that described the rabbit to choose. On a whim, I restarted and went to the puzzle and could pick out the rabbit anyways. As much as the game wants you to do things correctly, you can brute force your way through some puzzles, which takes the air out of the tires. Having said that, there was also a cathartic sort of satisfaction to just keep taking my neurology final until I guessed a perfect score without bothering to study. 

As a Switch port, The Gap does its best to work as a successful title, and it mostly succeeds. I would have loved the hybrid of touchscreen and buttons to fully explore, but relegating movement to the joysticks is solid enough, and I never had issues interacting with the environment. The only thing that really confused me was that items all had the option to turn them over and look at the different angles, but I don’t think I ever once found useful information hidden on the back or bottom of anything. It’s like one more indignity was to give the illusion of control and then have it mean nothing. If this was on purpose as an allegorical choice from the developers, kudos. Otherwise, what the hell?

You see a man losing his grip on his life, I see someone getting ready to make banana bread.

By the time I finally got to the final set of clues in The Gap, I had almost completely lost steam. I was getting so confused as to what I should and shouldn’t go back and check, and the change in interaction symbols didn’t fully communicate if a memory was completely plumbed for information or if I needed to go back in. The path to certain spots got muddied and I ended up bouncing around back and forth, hitting my head (metaphorically) trying to figure out what to do next. Then, once I got the computer open, I just…read. I read and read and walked around and read some more and basically confirmed everything that I already thought happened through context clues and the massive trigger warning at the beginning of the game.

Folks, Joshua is doing awesome.

Unfortunately, The Gap doesn’t drop breadcrumbs to lead players to the end, it uses megaphones to scream answers at you while also keeping you completely in the dark. It’s like if Verbal had started his conversation with “I’m Keyser Soze” but then been frustratingly vague about what he was doing on the day in question. The result is something that’s an interesting and big swing in the world of game storytelling, but it only gets a piece of the ball: it doesn’t connect enough for a homerun. It’s worth seeing and playing with someone to discuss ideas and theories, but this isn’t something I’d revisit. Ironically, now that all is said and done, The Gap will be relegated to the recesses of my mind and, in time, forgotten.

The Gap is available now on Steam, Nintendo Switch, XBox Series One X/S and Playstation 4/5.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch.

A copy of The Gap was provided by the publisher.