This Missing is a heartfelt affirmation of identity expressed through emotional turbulence and macabre staging. Its performance as a puzzle-platformer—suspiciously slapdash and presumably exploitative—revels in instability, but finds resolution through a singular and concordant message. The Missing's pieces fit its puzzle, even if the player (and The Missing's protagonist) believe they won't.
I needed to put ten bricks on a scale. I canvassed the entire level, scouring every inch, and only came away with nine bricks. I examined everything again and reached the same conclusion; there were no hidden bricks to be found. I was dumbfounded until I remembered one of The Missing’s more gruesome features. I could chop my arm off, throw it on the scale, and qualify it as a brick. This worked.
The MISSING: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories is a 2D, side-scrolling puzzle platformer. It is easy to look at its intensity and environmentally-aware puzzle solving and draw comparisons to Playdead’s similarly morbid Limbo. This comparison isn’t without merit, but it ignores The Missing’s most important and versatile underpinning; it is written and directed by Hidetaka Suehiro, more famously known as SWERY, and built by his new team at White Owls Inc.
Swery makes weird, divisive, and unapologetically honest games. It is possible to declare 2010’s Deadly Premonition both a surreal masterpiece and bizarre failure and neither party is wrong. Before its remaining episodes were axed by Microsoft, 2014’s D4: Dreams Don’t Die was poised to be another idiosyncratic dive into the mundane and the divine. When Swery is allowed any sort of budget, the forthcoming creation fits fluctuating definitions of abrasive and unique.
The Missing, at least, opens with a relatively grounded premise. First-year college student J.J. Macfield and Emily, a best friend from back home, go on a camping trip to Memoria Island, a fictional slice of rural Americana off the coast of Maine. Emily goes missing the middle of the night and J.J. resolves to find what’s behind Emily’s abrupt disappearance.
J.J. is immediately killed, except not. A strange, uncomfortable magic that envelopes Memoria Island allows J.J. to suffer but not to die. Legs can be broken or removed, causing J.J. to hop around and fall over. Arms can be cut off. J.J. can be set of fire and used as a mobile torch, or hit so hard that it breaks J.J.’s neck and literally flips the world upside down. Screams of pain and confusion are audible every time this happens.
It’s fine, kind of. With the touch of a button J.J. reforms and is as good as new. But still, those screams. There’s a real concern that The Missing is indulging in J.J.’s pain and exploiting weary horror tropes. I believe The Missing is conscious of what it’s doing and ultimately drives its actions in a controlled and intended direction, but the ride is full of intended, and unintended, discomfort.
The Missing’s levels wear a veneer of mundane while containing tricky puzzles and thoughtful orders of operation. A bowling alley, a diner, a train, and a graveyard match ambiance with ambition, juxtaposing their abandoned character with acute measures of logic and skill. You’ll figure out that electrical cords double as swinging vines, electricity is an enemy and ally, and nothing, if you think hard enough, is out of reach. Not much in The Missing makes sense in reality, but a mixture of dream logic and basic intuition grant safe passage. When I got stuck, which only happened twice, I always found I was trying too hard.
Saw blades are a constant enemy of J.J. Blades are presented as obstacles across different, classic measures of platforming challenges. Blades are also parts of knife demons and blade spiders that attempt to capture and mutilate J.J. Intense corridor momentum, when J.J. is just a head rolling around, tell also tell the player that blades, dismemberment, and mutilation are constant threats. The Missing simultaneously carries themes of self-harm, doubt, and even suicide—all with explicit detail. The challenges J.J. faces in on Memoria Island tie deeply into personal struggles and function as an expression of those challenges.
Control is kind of mushy. J.J. is ill-equipped for quick action, lacking the tightness, poise, and reaction speed one might expect of more capable platformers. Portions of The Missing demand J.J. crawl on all fours, a transition that seems equally laborious. This could be written off as a side-effect of The Missing’s modest budget and Sweary’s first swing at a platformer. A more generous take labels it a convenient side-effect of The Missing’s themes. J.J.’s body does not perform or act as J.J. wishes. It feels uncomfortable and incapable, even as J.J. and the player use it to push forward and find Emily.
Finding Emily is J.J.’s priority, but texts messages from friends and family provide narrative support. Blocks of old messages from J.J.’s mother, Emily, and a perplexing plush doll are delivered with natural progression through The Missing. J.J.’s mother expresses the typical fears and paranoia of a parent who just sent her kid off to college, only with the added touch of social conservatism and well-meaning but ultimately poisonous family values. Emily functions as a mutual support mechanism and allows the audience to witness J.J.’s growth as an adult human being. While vague, it feels like the messages date back to when J.J. first started college a few months prior.
Back dated messages from four other friends and acquaintances are available by locating and collecting donuts and donut shop signs scattered throughout The Missing’s levels. These chains mostly focus on J.J.’s new friends from college, including a girl who doesn’t take shit from anyone, a rich kid trying to make it on a streaming service, and one of J.J.’s nerdy professors. These stories occasionally intersect with The Missing’s main threads (the professors’ relationship with his daughter provide contrast with J.J.’s mother), but I do wish they weren’t gated behind collectibles. I only found about 85% on my run through The Missing, ultimately leaving these threads unresolved.
Texting, in 2018, is an ideal mechanism for a young person to present their identity without the baggage of their physical appearance. Acerbic stickers, usually depicting an anthropomorphic raisin delivering intense profanity, are shortcuts for sharp and direct emotion and blur the line between genuine rage and a friendly riposte. It’s in these messages where J.J. is most comfortable expressing genuine feelings and careful introspection, and each is usually blended with an anecdotal college-age problem like late assignments, the ambiguous lines of a relationship, and the identity we all (try to) present to other people.
At the same time, Emily’s crisis quickly becomes J.J.’s. Witnessing the breakdown The Missing slowly telegraphs isn’t as much surprise as it is a cry for empathy. Its framing devices, whether it’s emulating Twin Peaks or finding ways to hide stories inside of stories, function and build toward a cohesive finale, and while The Missing could have been more elegant with the way it handles its characters and conclusion, it’s certainly trying to act as a force of good.
The Missing opens with the message: this game was made with the belief that nobody is wrong for being what they are. This is an admirable and uncommon foundation when games are typically consumed with traditional ideas of player empowerment. Games in the indie space have been trying to relate issues behind dysphoria, identity, and social fallout for a while. The Missing is what happens when the same earnestness is delivered through a modest budget and a prominent, if not schismatic, name. It’s a dip in the mainstream, and personally more interesting than games without either the will or interest in making statements beyond gameplay.
When The Missing concludes, the relationship between its themes and its content is made clear. There is a reason for self-harm as a mean of progress, that J.J.’s world is literally turned upside down, and the fear and embrace of blades as an antagonist. It buries purpose inside of tragedy and carves optimism from a frightening story. It’s genuine honesty from a medium typically consumed by cynicism. The Missing’s pieces fit its puzzle, even if the player (and J.J.) believe it won’t eventually come together.
