I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I love games that offer the chance to learn about a location through the lives of the people that call it home. That’s what is on offer in Long Gone, along with a side serving of zombie avoidance and more than a little mystery. 

Long Gone is being developed by Hillfort Games and has been for a while, but it’s just blown up thanks to receiving funding from a familiar publisher: Innersloth. If you’ve heard of them before, it’s likely because they created Among Us, and now they’re using their power to help other indie devs get their games out there through the Outersloth Fund.

2.5D point-and-click apocalypse

In Long Gone, you may be the main character, but you are not at the heart of the game; that’s the environment’s place. According to the Steam page, everything in the environment is interactive, from drawers to boxes to cupboards. Apparently, you can pick up everything, although not everything is useful. But what fun is the zombie apocalypse if you can’t hoard everything you find?

The environment in Long Gone switches between 3D interiors and 2D exteriors, offering up a recurring change of pace and perspective as you venture further into the ruins of civilization. Zombies can potentially be found anywhere, although its safer inside houses, but there is no combat. Every zombie is a puzzle to solve, and your surroundings and hoarded items might just come in handy. 

Those who came before

The biggest appeal of Long Gone, at least for me, is the fact that you’re trying to learn about the people who were there before the apocalypse hit simply by looking through their homes. Figuring out what was important to someone is easy when you take into account the things they left behind when they fled. You can learn a lot about someone you have never met by inspecting their possessions. 

The environments of Long Gone look like time capsules, only marred by the progression of time and the ever-creeping vines that seek to take back the buildings for nature. The art low-poly art style is utterly gorgeous, especially the lighting effects that bring everything to life, and there are endless things to simply look at in every environment.

A big change

Long Gone is not Hillfort Games’ first foray into game development. Previously, they created Ten Bells, a psychological horror anomaly-spotting game, and the art style between that the two games could not be more different. However, Ten Bells is an exceedingly fun game to play, as well as being unfathomably creepy.

Ten Bells released in August 2024, and there’s a demo to go and play on Steam. I highly recommend it, and buying the game helps to support Hillfort Games as they work towards development of Long Gone. It’s a win, win!

Long Gone does not have a release date just yet, but you can head to the Steam page and wishlist/follow to get updates as development progresses. I can’t wait to see how far this gorgeous indie can go.