The Gap is a first person, narrative-centered sci-fi game with a twist of investigation/light puzzling thrown into it. I must say that this has been one of the most compelling and engaging "walking sims" I've played in recent years, and certainly lands among the top of the genre. Let's dive into some details.

The core of the story revolves around you, a person who's clearly suffering some kind of memory loss or affliction - and with that, the consequences you can anticipate: events that aren't clear if they're real or not, or missed parts of memories, etc. Your task is to start tieing up the threads by finding memories that link to a same event - every time you discover two of these, you unlock that memory and you can enter it, explore it, and find new clues inside it! So it also has some Inception flavor tossed in, which enhances the sci-fi setting and mixes really well with the atmosphere and general theme of the game.

It's a satisfactory game loop that will get you up and running really fast (appreciated) and hopefully engaged until the last twist of the story - which there are in abundance. There are also some roadblocks here and there that need you to really observe, think and put things together to solve which was a nice, seamless addition. Since it's a narrative game for the most part, I must say that the story is solid, entertaining, and rewarding to discover.

The visuals and the audio design also excel in their own departments. While the main locations are limited (your apartment in different eras, mostly, besides some minor memories' locations which are more varied) these are detailed, beautifully illuminated and crisp looking. These locations are believable and support the game's narrative very well. The audio design, in particular the voice acting is also quite good, never throwing you away of the situations, but rather sucking you in, making it feel like they were real, and that you're a part of it.

There's a technical aspect that I found to be clever and also well implemented: there are no human characters as such - you only see their silhouettes. After all, these are memories so this kinda makes sense in a way. By doing this, the developer avoided the most difficult part of realism in graphics (human faces) and provided an experience that feels integrated and consistent throughout. On the other hand, they cleverly avoided creating and animating so many people that would've been impossible to make them look good - and also the memory issues it would bring, since there are some scenes where there's quite some people involved. This may not be a huge budget game, but they played their cards in the most original, intelligent way possible.

There's not much more to say - if you like narrative-oriented games, this is a really strong contender. If you also like the idea of a slightly more investigative/deductive touch, and a sci-fi story that involves memory and mental conditions, then this is it! I personally super recommend this game to anyone of the above. My first playthrough took me about 5 hours and I did it in ONE sitting - couldn't put the controller down! A second playthrough, to see all it has in store and collect some trophies was half that time. Enjoy!