I love experimental, high concept games. They are a great way to break up the flow of my gaming hobby by introducing an interesting concept, design, or storytelling mechanism. These sort of games typically try to expand the meaning of what a game can be. Walk across the continental United States collecting stories, investigate strange occurrences on an island with a strong sense of deja vu, go on a journey, take a walk through your family’s old home, literally and figuratively battle mental illness, or in the case of The Longing, wait for 400 days, as in 400 real-time actual days. While real-time wait mechanics are usually more prominent in mobile games, The Longing takes it to another level. Let’s take our time, and explore The Longing.
The Longing starts out with a short cutscene introducing the main protagonist, a shade, a child of the mountain. He is instructed by his king to wait for 400 days while he rests, encouraging the shade to wander the halls of the kingdom, but also warns to not venture from the kingdom. It is all very Shakespearean and ominous. This setup is based on an old German legend, Kyffhauser, about the King Under the Mountain who is sleeping until it is time to emerge and save the kingdom.
400 days lay before you. What are you able to do with all that time? Honestly, the main thing you will be doing is waiting. The good news is the game does calculate the time remaining even when the game is closed. So you could choose to start the game, close it, and then come back 400 days later to see what happens at that time. Also at your disposal is lots of exploration. The various halls and passages sprawl all throughout the mountain. Will you step outside the kingdom? The King is asleep and is unable to stop you. Entire novels are available to read, including Moby Dick. You can also gather supplies to improve the small dwelling you have access to with things like running water, a bed, drawings and pictures, and even an expansion! Accomplishing all of these things takes time. Doors open slowly before it’s enough to pass through, a pool fills in drop by drop so you can swim across, a crystal has to be meticulously harvested with a mattock, and pretty much everything else requires some degree of waiting. There is one crucial tool to assist you in navigating the seemingly endless branches of tunnels. You can save locations and whenever you want you can return there, but the Shade will not be hurried. He slowly plods towards his destination.
All of this makes it a perfect background game while you are doing other things. Even writing this review I have the game running as the Shade slowly harvests crystals at about 1 every 30 minutes or so. Being able to save locations is a pretty essential mechanic because as you explore you will eventually run out of things that you can do as you wait for larger goals to be accomplished such as waiting for a stalactite to fall or a pool to fill with water over the course of weeks or months. At one point I just waited two weeks before starting the game back up again since I knew it was going to be at least that long before I could progress further. Selecting that location automatically made it a breeze to return to those locations and see if they were passable yet.
Visually, the game is striking with high contrast between the stark blacks of the shadows and the light grays and browns of the tunnels. Splashes of colors highlight unique rooms and areas. The Shade character is cute in an ugly sort of way. He’s honestly somewhat pitiful looking with his rag clothes, thin scrawny limbs, and bulbous yellow eyes. The features are all details with thin linework. The result is a simple, scratchy sketch style.
On the audio side of things, there is some light background music and some sound effects but often I had all of it muted while I played as I was often doing other things while I waited. When I did have the audio on, it did invoke feelings of loneliness and longing.
The Longing is an extremely interesting game that utilizes its core real-time mechanic to full effect. It’s a fascinating experiment in game design and I found it to be an enjoyable experience. My time under the mountain was quiet, reflective, lonely, an overall simple experience that is far from over. Due to the nature of the 400-day real-time mechanic it is hard to say what the replay value of this game is. Despite getting this game nearly over a month early, I am still well over 300 days from being done with The Longing. I was worried that after a while I would just forget to go back to the game as the next thing required waiting for 2 weeks. Those fears were lessened however after I realized that I was extremely curious about what I would find once I could progress. It is always sitting there in the back of my mind nagging at me that I don’t know what lays beyond those roadblocks.
I’m confident that I will be firing up The Longing on a regular basis throughout this year and beyond.
For more information about The Longing, check out the Steam listing. A digital copy of The Longing was provided for the purpose of review. For more reviews, check out my thoughts on Lightmatter, a strange puzzle game that gets a lot right. For another game with a lot of deep concepts, check out my thoughts on the stellar Disco Elysium, a murder mystery RPG with a super unique approach to characters and dialogue.
