The MISSING: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories

Every market we collect.

For scale, across Steam · Top Sellers · Brazil over the last 30 days: the 26 chart moves that followed a price cut of more than 20% went a median of 7 places towards #1, and the 2,400 moves with no price cut behind them went 2 away. One store, one chart, one country — it is the only place we have enough observations to say even that.

Prices outside the United States have been collected since 6 August 2026 and chart positions since 19 July 2026, so a cut older than that has no market to compare and a market that joined later has no history yet. Nothing here is converted between currencies.

Matched by title — a reused name can pair the wrong games. * is a critic aggregate. Prices and positions are each store's United States storefront; Epic charts worldwide. Audience and Score too, except Steam's, which is worldwide.

Hours played at review time, across 63 reviews with recorded playtime.

positive critical· bar length = how often the theme comes up

This game makes a bad first impression. After realizing you can't remap the controls and the games glyphs for a controller don't change based on what you have plugged in, you're greeted with rough voice acting and an in game menu that is so broken you can't even use it without your mouse. Your cursor doesn't go away either. You have to drag it to the edge of the screen if you don't want it on top of your game. But if you can get past this strong attempt to turn you away, you'll soon come to realize that the game's actually really fun. The central mechanic of hurting or dismembering yourself in some way to solve the puzzles is used in various creative ways. It's grotesque and absurd and that's why it works. When you start having thoughts like "I could break my neck to shift gravity, then cut of my arm and throw it between the gears before setting myself on fire to open the gate" you know the game is successfully making a point to you. It's a classic high concept, horror adjacent 2.5D puzzler à la Limbo, Darq or Little Nightmares, in gameplay and in storytelling. Much of what makes this story so resonant comes from the metaphorical world. Everything is something else, symbolism is everywhere, meaning comes before reason. Very much in the spirit of the games that insipired it, the world of THE MISSING is constructed out of pieces of the real world, rearranged into something surreal, liminal and defamiliarised. This is where the storytelling shines the most. It's weird and it leans into that to be thought provoking. When you come across a place or a new object, you immediately question what it means to JJ. I'm vocal in my criticism of stories that throw metaphors and symbols at you without giving you a baseline for the character they're attached to. THE MISSING is not one of those stories. Through the text messages you unlock over time, you gain a basic understanding of who JJ is as a person. The experience of the game is where the rest is hidden. The secrets, the things that were only whispered between Emily and JJ. Piecing it together is a wonderful and emotional experience. What then bugs me is that the game sometimes doesn't trust you to figure these things out. To come to your own conclusion. Imagine you have been chased by a grotesque, four armed Monster throughout the game. It has earned its symbolic weight and meaning to you. And when the game enters its finale, JJ all but turns to the camers and tells you what it means. Suddenly, the meandering, personal note collapses into a singular vision. It's not special to you anymore. What was the point of thinking about it? The game doesn't do this too often because thankfully JJ doesn't talk all that much throughout the game. But when she does, she likes to tell you the meaning of things that were much more powerful unexplained. The mono- and dialogue is really the major weakpoint of the experience. It's shallow, direct and not very well acted. JJ's voice actress is great when doing pain sounds, but the actual spoken lines would actually have been more effective if they were simply written on screen, leaving the intonation up to imagination. The writing is better in the text messages. Those are clunky at times, but often they read believable to pretty subtext rich and even emotionally impacting. Thumbs up on that part. THE MISSING is a very personal experience. I love a protagonist that I can't relate too all that much, but whom I still understand and feel for. That is, in my opinion, a high achievement in the art of character writing. JJ is unlike most people. And for such a story to successfully create an experience that feels resonant and close, despite never, having lived comparable circumstances is a feat I applaud. A masterstroke in that aspect lies in a brutal, kind of soul-crushing moment at the very end. It gave me an understanding of an experience I have never felt in my life. I don't want to get too into it. You'll know it when it hits you. Overall, THE MISSING is quite rough around the edges, to the point that it occasionally sabotages itself. But the very core, the experience, told through gameplay, visual and atmosphere, is strong, resonant and unique. It's smarter than it gives itself credit for. On top of that the game is just fun and there's even some stuff to grind and secrets to uncover for the completionists like me. Another win for Limbo's legacy!