The Gap

Written by Elliot Hilderbrand on 4/10/2024 for SWI  

The Gap was put in front of me at the right time. My wife and I have been recently going through a scary phase. We’ve been watching a handful of good, creepy movies and tv shows, and now video games. It’s a genre I don’t delve into too deeply, for no other reason than I just typically don’t. I love to be scared when I read a book or watch a show; why not try it in a video game? The Gap isn’t a new title, just being released on the Switch. The idea of portable horror is something I have even less experience with. I can play it in the middle of the day, sitting in the backseat of a car, or in my bed before calling it a night. I like that idea, but I’m not sure if playing The Gap in passenger seat of my wife’s car had the same effect on it as it would have if I played in my office, on a Friday night, with the lights off and home alone.

You are thrown into a situation that looks as though it has come to its conclusion. The home you find yourself in is a mess. Papers are burnt in the fireplace, only offering small tidbits about what has happened. There’s something about going back through your memories and time, but only if you have the right amount of items required to do so. Talk about parallel worlds that are so similar to the one you live in you don’t know it's parallel. The whole apartment looks as though a tornado went through it. Everywhere are little clues that are lit up, waiting for you to inspect them as you stumble across the home. You can interact with just about anything. Want to pick up a teddy bear off the shelve just to see it up close? No problem. Open a dresser draw to find a picture of three people, two adults without faces and a child standing between the two. What does it mean? I have no idea, I’m only five minutes in, and nothing makes sense. I click on a rabbit’s cage, and suddenly I am sent into a memory.

That is most of The Gap. Find something of interest, inspect it further, and often times it leads to jumping into the middle of a memory. I wouldn’t think picking up a pair of headphones would lead to a cutscene taking place in a bowling alley. But then I learned about a time I went out on a double date with my wife and her brother. Memory after memory, slowly putting the pieces together about you and your family. I quickly learned that not all is right with my main character, Joshua. His memories, and his family are, well, wrong. I think. Maybe it has something to do with a new drug he’s taking to help with his memory. Joshua is trying to find a cure, but it is leading him further and further down a path he doesn’t know. As it’s happening, his memory is getting worse, it seems. There is a lot of mystery here, and The Gap feels like it wants you to experience a story more so than play it. There is a lot of story to experience, not just about Joshua’s memories, but events are happening. It’s confusing, it’s confusing to talk about. There are a lot of hard sci-fi concepts going on, I found myself getting into the ideas of The Gap without much effort - staying into the idea took a little work.

There doesn’t seem to be a right or wrong way to go through the experience of The Gap. Go through memories, learn something, add it to what you already know until you know everything. I loved being able to discover how I wanted to. Some items require more work than others to solve. You don’t know the passcode to your phone right away, that needs some research on your part first. Eventually you can find all the answers. Being able to play this way also makes the ending more satisfying than other titles. I’m guessing there were plenty of hints I did not see or scenes I did not experience, but still had a satisfying conclusion to The Gap. I’m not sure if I want to experience The Gap again, maybe in a few years when I don’t recall enough of the story, so I can enjoy it again properly. I didn’t feel the need to replay right away, but it wasn’t because of disliking the game, in fact, the opposite. I wanted this conclusion to be what I remembered from playing.

The version of The Gap I played was on Switch. A game being brought to Switch that was initially on the PC typically has me a little skeptical. Thankfully I had zero issues with my time, in either handheld or docked mode. I have yet to play a game that handles better when the Switch is in my hands, and that still holds true with The Gap. Docked performance is better, but I don’t think you notice much of a difference if you’re not searching for it.

The Gap has a lot to see and experience. I’m not sure if it used its small playtime wisely. Every memory, and a lot of the objects you can interact with are somehow trying to push the narrative of Joshua and his issue of not remembering. It could be in the form of a puzzle; I found myself baffled a few times. The puzzles here are nothing to walk over. I had a handful that left me blankly staring at my screen a few times. Some memories last only seconds, but I always felt like there was something to see or learn from that memory. I didn’t always see it, or it didn’t catch with me immediately, but those moments are usually there. There is a lot of reading to be done here too. Reading texts from a laptop, or cell phone. There are even a few user agreements, those lengthy things we get when an app updates, no one reads them in real life, but there could be something you overlooked if you don’t read through it. I found myself getting paranoid that I was going to miss the big clue, the sudden change in story, the big thing The Gap wanted me to experience. I can see how some people might be able to clear the game in a few hours, it took me over three.

The Gap has a lot going for it on Switch: a smooth gameplay experience and great voice acting that translate well to the portable console. The Gap has multiple endings, so each time through can be a little different. It doesn’t take long to see an ending, but I don’t know if I have the energy to check out the other endings, at least right now. The Gap feels like a walking simulator at times and, at others, a puzzle game with some solutions I found baffled. The atmosphere is right, the mature themes are handled with the right tone, I just don’t have the energy to see it through again. In a few years, when I am looking for something to kill the time I can see myself coming back. I would have no recollection of the order of events I went through originally, and be able to have another unique experience.