Release Date: 05/03/2020
Played On: Win
Available On: Lin / Mac / Win
Time Played: 49h 8m
Progress: Completed + All Achievements
Developer: Studio Seufz
Publisher: Application Systems Heidelberg
Occasionally a game comes along that manages to subvert our expectations of what we think a game can be. I, of course, love this kind of creative diversion from the norm, even though it doesn't always pay off. Then again, it's only when a developer makes a strong artistic choice, that they enter the realm of opportunity that may provide room for creativity to truly grow until it becomes something special.
I remember there was a game that came out years ago that had a finite timeline of existence. I'm not sure if it was a very good game, as I never played it and only took notice thanks to its built-in lifespan. As far as I can remember, this was a multiplayer game with some kind of horror theme that related to player deaths in some way. It might have had something to do with how more enemies entered the game as more players died during multiplayer sessions. I'm not sure about the details, but the one thing I do remember is that after a certain number of player deaths, the game was over and could no longer be played.
Naturally this caused quite a stir and became a talking point in various gaming pod-casts I listen to, simply because it seemed like a unique and controversial aspect to include in a game. After all, it still cost money to purchase and it still required a time investment to play, so was it okay for the developer to cut off its players after a set number of in-game deaths had occurred? A lot of people had an issue with this business model, but I quite enjoyed it for a couple of simple reasons.
The first being that this is nothing new in the world of entertainment media. When you watch a movie, it ends. When you read a book, it ends. When you listen to music, it inevitably ends. Sure, you can repeat these things to try and get more value out of the product, but ultimately, it's nothing new to purchase something that will provide us with a finite amount of entertainment. The debatable part is the quality and value of each portion, but at the end of the day this is nothing new.
Secondly, this isn't even anything new for video games. In fact, if you play a few games in your lifetime you might realise that most games come to an end. The vast majority even signpost the ending with a long roll of credits, just like when you watch a movie. The only thing that made this other game stand out, was that it created a hard ending for a multiplayer game, which meant you could never replay the same experience multiple times. Once it was over, it might as well have never existed in the first place.
Of course, I'm the kind of person who loves this kind of thing and always enjoys a bit of impermanent art. There are valid ways to include built-in obsolescence when it serves the purpose of the game experience and enhances the narrative of the project. Playing with storytelling devices and formats has been a wonderful way for writers and artists to mess with their audience for as long as stories have been told, and it's great to find some video games where this same philosophy is employed. I never played that multiplayer game where it shut down after a predetermined number of deaths, but I have just finished playing another game that I will never be able to play again.
The Longing is an odd little game that had me scratching my head at first, but eventually I fell in love with everything about it. Reading reviews and forums will only tell you part of the story, as most of the discussion seems to be around whether anyone should charge for a game like this, or whether it's actually 'worth' playing in the first place. We seem to place a lot of value on having options in games, but I'm often partial to a curated experience that's be carefully structured to take me on a journey and tell an interesting story.
The big sticking point is that The Longing takes place over 400 days, which occur in real time. When I say real time, I mean it as well. The game timer starts counting down when you start it for the first time, but it doesn't stop until it reaches zero - even when you're not playing. Much like other idle games, the timer keeps on ticking whether you're playing or not, so once you initiate the game for the first time, you're on the clock. In theory you could fire it up for a minute, then open it again 400 days later and find that your game is now over. This raises some interesting questions, but first let's talk about the actual mechanics and gameplay that The Longing has on offer.
This is a story about a character called The Shade, who is assigned caretaker of an underground kingdom while the King sleeps. Right at the start we are told to wake the King in 400 days and to keep an eye on the kingdom until that time comes. Pretty soon we're left to our own devices and have a bit over a real-time year to explore and occupy ourselves before waking the king.
Throughout the game we're given control of The Shade and are able to explore the kingdom and make discoveries along the way. The minute-to-minute gameplay consists of little more than clicking on the screen to move The Shade, or interacting with objects to pick them up or gain access to locations. What's more, The Shade walks at a snail's pace, so we quickly get used to the fact that doing anything in The Longing will take a while to complete.
At first there's not a lot to do other than explore the map and find all the limitations of the kingdom. It turns out that your home is a winding complex of caves and corridors, many of which terminate in dead ends or are inaccessible. While exploring with The Shade, we can pick up lumps of coal, or sulphur, or a number of other minerals that are laying about underground. At the same time there's wood to be found, and mushrooms, but none of it is mandatory or explicitly needed. If you wanted, you could literally just watch The Shade sit and wait for the time to pass by.
Similarly, there are areas of the map that are only accessible after a certain period of time has passed. One of the first I encountered was a gap in a path with a large stalactite hanging overhead. The Shade commented that it looked as if the stalactite may fall within a couple of weeks, at which point it would fill the gap and allow us to progress. Surely enough, two weeks later I checked again, and the rock had fallen to fill the gap, opening the path ahead.
There are a number of these kind of 'time gates' that block areas of the map for various periods. There are even some that will leave you waiting for months before you're able to continue exploring every nook and cranny of the kingdom. There are mushrooms and moss that grow over time, pools that slowly fill with water, even a spider that builds a web that acts as a ladder, but it takes a few days to complete.
However, while all of this is happening, you're free to explore and collect items for The Shade's own little hovel. There's a mattock, which lets you break crystals from the wall, or mine away coal and stone to open passages. Although, perhaps the most important collectibles that you can find in The Longing, are books.
There are a fair number of public domain books that can be found lying around the kingdom, which can be brought back to The Shade's hovel where they are given the chance to read and pass the time more enjoyably. Not only does this give you something to look for and find, but when The Shade is at home, time passes quickly.
Suddenly exploration isn't the only goal of The Longing, as collecting more and more items and decorations for The Shade's hovel will mean that the ever-present countdown timer will tick by faster and faster. Everything you find to decorate you little hovel, increases the speed at which the timer counts down while The Shade is at home. By the end of the game my counter was ticking down by about 30 seconds for every 1 second of IRL time. This is simultaneously a blessing and a point of stress and worry that changes the game completely from that point on.
You see, The Longing starts out a slow and methodical plod of a game, as you spend most of your time walking The Shade around, discovering locations on the map, and picking things up. The 400 day timer seems like it will take ages to count down, as it's more than an entire IRL year, so there never seems to be a rush to get anything done.
Although, once you realise that time can be manipulated and sped up in various ways, the slow and plodding nature of the game morphs into one of time management and efficiency. Suddenly I found myself in the position of having a lot of places to explore and a lot of different things to interact with, so I had to consciously decide whether I wanted to leave the clock ticking ahead fast or slow each time I shut down the game. After all, the timer keeps ticking even when the game isn't running, so it's easy to lose a couple of months when the clock is zooming along and you go to bed IRL.
The upside is that this is where we get to the real point of The Longing, and to the core of the game itself. Of course, this isn't a game about trying to get things done with a time limit, but it's definitely a game about time and place. Additionally, I don't believe that the portrayal of time and place in The Longing would have been so perfectly realised if it didn't have the ticking clock front and centre. Without a doubt, this is one of those times where putting a finite cap on how long you're able to play the game really works, and serves the overall narrative excellently.
Throughout the game, as you're looking around and exploring the kingdom, The Shade will remark on various things they encounter. Walking through a cave and finding a dead end might prompt The Shade to note down a disappointment and start counting how many disappointing things they have encountered. Trying to reach a ledge that too high to get to might add another disappointment to the list, while discovering new areas both inside and outside the kingdom will bring a whole lot of commentary from The Shade about what they think.
Even the simple act of walking through the empty kingdom might bring on a comment form The Shade contemplating their loneliness and the passage of time. In fact, if there's one thing The Shade likes to talk to themselves about, it's time and loneliness. This led me to be acutely aware of how slowly time was passing and how my own game was progressing. Sometimes I would leave The Shade in a dark cave because I had to shut down the game and come back later, but didn't want to walk all that way again. As I loaded the game up again, The Shade would be waking from sleeping on the stone floor and say something about starting another carbon-copy day of a repetitive cycle. It made me feel guilty for leaving the poor Shade sleeping on the floor, even though they're nothing more than a collection of pixels and code.
By the time the game ended, I found myself quite attached to The Shade, as if it were my responsibility to ensure that they were able to endure their vocation in the best way possible. I found loads of books for them to read back in the hovel; I collected many colours of crystals to decorate their walls; and I carefully explored every inch of the map to ensure that I hadn't missed a thing.
This is the genius of The Longing, as it forced you to actually stop and consider the philosophical implications of the narrative. There are no hints or guides in the game itself, short of a few comments from The Shade that suggest possible solutions, or certain discoveries that offer cryptic indicators of how to progress. The fact of the matter is that you're told to hang out in the kingdom until 400 days have passed, and it's up to you to find anything else that might be going on in the meantime.
While all of that is happening, the ambient soundtrack drones and shrieks along in the background to further emphasise the environment you're in. The Shade's footsteps fall on the stone floors with a wet slap that echoes through the halls, as wind blows a gale through caverns and dark corridors. Coupled with the excellent art you can see in the screenshots on this post, and you've got one hell of a beautiful game to explore.
Perhaps the only thing that actually annoyed me about this game, is that there are multiple endings, but no save states. In most games I'll just accept whatever outcome I end up with and rarely go back to see all the different options. However, I went online to figure out a certain puzzle in The Longing, and discovered that there were multiple endings and no way to start again if an ending was triggered. Considering that one of the endings can be found and triggered quite early in the game, it struck me that this would have been quite disappointing if I'd been cut off after only about 6 months of time had passed.
Apparently this annoyed a lot of players, as I read somewhere else that the developer had patched the game so that you would be able to back up the save file on your computer and restore it if you wanted to wind back your game to that point. This was the only way to try different things and be able to reset bad outcomes, so I immediately started backing up my game regularly.
I'd be the first to write a dissertation on how any game is poorly designed if you have to use online wikis and guides to figure out how to play the thing, but in this instance I actually didn't mind. I feel like the only alternative would be to implement a save system within the game itself, but that would negate the entire premise of time progressing without interference. If you knew that you could easily create a save state at any point in the game, having a countdown timer would become pointless, as you'd always be able to undo your decisions. Hence why I didn't mind having to back up my save files in order to mess with the game, as it still maintained the urgency of not running out of time.
At this point you might be thinking that none of this really makes sense and it seems like a bit of a wank to be exploring caves and finding books to help pass the in-game time that will eventually reach zero and prevent you from playing the game ever again, and I'd say that you might be right. Thankfully though, that seems to be the whole point of the game, as it makes an original and fresh commentary on the themes of time and loneliness. It's only through its unique design that The Longing is able to force you into the space that it wants you to be. Only then do we finally understand The Shade's existence in their lonely kingdom, tasked with the responsibility of waking the king when the time comes.
Without leaning into spoilers and getting all existential on you, this is a game that genuinely has to be played to be experienced. It's not about mechanics and systems, and it's not even really about narrative and plot. This is a culmination of circumstance that brings on a defined emotional state of being, highlighting the intersection between reality and time itself. To that end, I found The Longing to be a strong art piece that stretches its own limitations by manipulating our perspective on its own function. This isn't a narrative, as it tells a story in a different way. This is more of an interaction between game and player.
That's all well and good, but it's also why I wouldn't recommend this game to everyone, even though I think more people need to play it. There are a number of reasonable forum posts and reviews that argue why The Longing is not an appealing game, but it's one of those games where the reasons other people dislike it, are the reasons I loved it.
This is painfully slow at times, which restricts your options and pulls you closer to The Shade. There's very little to do other than explore and discover, as even the minor puzzles are quick to solve and can even be ignored entirely. it's not hard to dissect this "video game" and point out all the mechanics and systems it lacks when compared to other games, but this is simply not that kind of game.
The Longing is a slow and contemplative game that helps expand the definition of contemporary gaming and shows how hard-edged design decisions can force players into a state that isn't always comfortable. Its premise of waiting and time slowly passing, brings about different interactions and unique ways to experience what the game has to offer. Thankfully, it's just these kinds of innovations that get me really excited about gaming in general, as it shows how diverse gaming can be.
There are so many ways to tell stories and interact with audiences that I hope more video games will try new an interesting way to present themselves. Even if there's nothing else on the table, The Longing should be applauded for successfully telling its story in a unique way that's fresh and compelling. I'm not sure I'd want to wait 400 days for every game to end, but I thoroughly enjoyed discovering everything that this one has to offer.