Game: The Longing
Genre: Adventure, Puzzle, Indie
System: Nintendo Switch (also on Steam)
Developers | Publishers: Studio Seufz | Application Systems Heidelberg Software GmbH | ASHGAMES
Age Rating: US E | EU 7+
Price: US $14.99 | UK £13.49 | EU € 14,99
Release Date: April 14th, 2021
Review code used, with many thanks to Emily Morganti on behalf of Application Systems
The Longing is an indie point-and-click adventure game about waiting….and waiting! The Longing opens on a single word, Wait. And it’s the perfect introduction to a game where waiting is quite literally the only thing you absolutely have to do. Based on the German Kyffhäuser Legend, It starts with a giant King addressing his trusted servant, the Shade, a yellow-eyed, beak-nosed, sooty-looking figure.
A game about Waiting
Upon informing his servant that his power is waning, the King tells him that he will sleep for 400 days to regather his strength after which time his servant is to wake him so that he may “end all fear and longing.”
The Shade has been commanded to remain as a custodian to the King as he sleeps through the next 400 days. That’s 400 days in real-time, 400 days!
After the Kings announcement, the Shade retires to a smaller cave within a sprawling underground network of caverns where he contemplates the weight of his task.
From the moment the king falls asleep, a timer counts down at the top of the screen, the clock continues even when you’ve quit the game or turned off your console. Until it is time to awaken the King, the Shade has to entertain himself within the confines of a completely abandoned realm. You have control of the Shade, so it up to you to occupy the Shade for those 400 days.
Choices to Make
Now, it is at this point that you can make choices. There is no learning curve beyond the basic movement of the Shade, you’ll be able to get started playing the game pretty much instantly. You could, if you really wanted, simply switch the game off at this point, return 400 days later, and see what happens. But I’d advise against that, as it not the most interesting way to play a game, it would also be a waste of money.
Within this unusual indie title, there is a lot to do and often not much to do at all. It is really a test of your patience. Waiting for the point where you break or will you wait or will curiosity “kill” the shade in the end? It’s all in your hands!
Why Hurry?!
So what’s a Shade to do for 400 days in his dank and dismal cave for a home. Well, he can go exploring at a snail’s pace, Shade moves very slowly but why rush when you have 400 days to kill. At first, it was frustrating, I really wanted Shade to walk faster, I didn’t like the dead-end corridors Shade walked ever so slowly down and back along again. At times I wanted to throw my Switch down and give up on the game. I didn’t and two weeks later I’m still checking in with “my Shade” as he has become as the game has drawn me in.
We have explored together and so far discovered the kingdom is made up of dozens of corridors and rooms, many of which will not be accessible at the beginning of the game. Time is a key component of gameplay here and you will need to wait in real-time for hours, days, and even weeks to pass before you will find new paths opened by, for example, a stalactite falling or a hole filling with water.
The Longing is a unique game in the sense that it is a part puzzler, part adventure game, and part Tamagotchi, all revolving around time as a concept. There is an overarching story, there are puzzles to solve, and there are activities to keep you occupied, I hope you like reading because the Shade does! But you could also just start the game and live four hundred real-life days, then come back to see what happens.
Simplistic Controls
The Shade walks into a lot of things that you might need and you can pick them up to use later. The controls are very simplistic. You can point at a place on the touchscreen and Shade will walk there, you can even turn automatic walk on and he will walk without your help. If you find an item that you can pick up or use when you walk near it, a dialogue box will pop up and if you click on it Shade will pick the item up. That’s pretty much it.
As you explore, you do have a little area where you can save up to some destinations in the menu to return to later. This can be handy because, with a single click on the destination, you can have your Shade walk from wherever he is now to that particular location. There are no enemies to fight, no particular goals to achieve other than those you set out for yourself.
The Cave
While it may take some time to actually reach anywhere of interest, “interest” is a rather vague concept in The Longing. Finding a scrap of paper, let alone a lump of coal which you might use to draw on that paper, becomes a major event. The discovery of a book, one of the many real-life books, like Moby Dick or Thus Spoke Zarathustra, that can be found and read in-game, is almost a major event.
Back in the Shade’s cave, I have found a number of things to make it cosy for the Shade. He can nap in his chair, read a long book, draw pictures and hang them on the wall. You know to brighten the place up and make it comfortable for him. As there is no place like home, time passes faster when the Shade is at home in his comfortable cave, and even faster yet when he gets a fire going in the fireplace.
Conclusion
Needless to say, I haven’t finished The Longing in the two weeks I’ve had with the game, how could I when it is 400 days long! We explored the hand-drawn, large kingdom, and listened to the atmospheric soundtrack that accompanies Shade on his slow shuffle. It began as a strange game that, after I spent 20 minutes with it waiting for Shade to climb the stairs, I was ready to pack it in and never look at again.
Shade and I have bonded, now I check in with him and go for a slow saunter along an undiscovered corridor, and make sure he is sitting comfortably in his chair when I leave the game.
He sits in his chair reading a book, with me pressing A to turn his pages while I myself play a video game on my PC. Nothing says comfortable bonding then sitting like this side by side, no words needed.
Who knows what the next few hundred days have in store for Shade and me but I think I’ll be sticking around to find out….eventually!
Final Verdict: I Like It
