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+--- Thread: The Longing (2020) (/showthread.php?tid=111)
The Longing (2020) - Geisterfaust - 10-06-2025
Just yesterday I realised that the amazing, dungeon synth-inspired soundtrack for The Longing (2020) is finally available for streaming, and while listenening to it again, it got me thinking about how absolutely unique and intriguing the game itself is.
On the surface level, it's a very basic point and click adventure: You control Shade, a dark little figure who lives deep underground in seemlingly endless grottos and catacombs together with the mountain king, who is asleep. Your task is to watch over the king and wake him up in 400 days. You can choose to either honor his request and wait patiently, or try to explore the caves and find out what lies above... Freedom? Death? Or nothing at all? Sound easy enough - but here's the catch: everything in the game is in real time, even when you close the game. So if you want to wake the king up, you have to wait for 400 actual days - or find a way to make time go faster.
There are elements of both puzzling and exploring in The Longing, but since the real time element is such a big part of the game's core gameplay mechanic, a lot of puzzles can't be solved and a lot of paths can't be explored unless you have a good amount of patience. You might be able to break a rock to pass through a tunnel, but it'll take several real time hours of hacking away with your pickaxe. You might be able to jump down a chasm, but not until a big enough fungus has grown at the bottom. A lot of the time, patience is the puzzle and the solution.
The game rewards taking your time, while at the same time encouraging you to find little things to pass the time: there's different actual full length books all over the caverns that you can read(this will actually speed up time in-game), as well as other trinkets and things that you can use to decorate your home and make the waiting process a bit nicer for Shade. This being said, you don't actually need to do anything to "beat" the game, time will pass regardless of what you do, and you can essentially just start the game and wait for the king to wake up. Whether or not you want to explore or not is ultimately up to you.
The Longing is not a game for everyone. It's philosophical and experimental in a way that might deter most people: we're so used to being able to speed run things, click to skip dialogue and cutscenes, etc, that the hypnotically slow tempo of The Longing almost feels like a standstill. Here, even the walk speed is at an unsusually leisurely pace, with the clapping of Shades foot soles against the hard rock floors serving as a constant reminder of the slow, relentless marching of time.
It's a melancholy game too, not just because of the eerie dungeon synth music and empty hallways, but because of how endearing our little protagonist is. Shade is seemingly content with whatever fate befalls him, and would gladly stay down in the caves forever unless we as the player force him to strive upwards and find something new - and yet it's impossible to deny his simmering loneliness as he muses to himself about how he'd love to have someone to talk to sometimes. (It's one of lifes big ironies that the game was released in 2020, during the beginning of the covid pandemic and the lock-downs, making this a particularly relatable game to all of the people isolated in their homes, longing for the world outside, much like Shade)
I personally haven't even managed to finish the game yet. I played it quite far, exploring almost everything, forgot about it, and then picked it up again only to realise that the 400 days had passed in-game, and that I had lost the opportunity to solve certain timed puzzles and get to the surface(luckily, there are ways to rewind time in-game).
I'm still thinking I will return to it some day to try and finish it for real, but even if I don't, the overall impact of this game has been immense for me. Its sense of scale and atmosphere as you explore the winding tunnels and desolate caves combined with the deliberately slow gameplay makes this one of the most moving and rewarding gaming experiences I've had. I can totally understand that the slow tempo is a dealbreaker for most sane people, but something about this kind of deconstruction of the point and click adventure genre just delighted me and still occupies my mind from time to time.
Sorry for the wall of text, I was just reimmersed into the world of this game and would love to hear if anyone else played it, either when it came out or recently, and what your thoughts are about it? It's truly a one of a kind game, whichever way you look at it.
RE: The Longing (2020) - Joe - 10-06-2025
I played this game with the Cheat Engine speed hack x8, and I won't apologise for it
RE: The Longing (2020) - Geisterfaust - 10-06-2025
(10-06-2025, 12:19 PM)Joe Wrote: I played this game with the Cheat Engine speed hack x8, and I won't apologise for it
Hahaha, I mean, even though it goes against the whole concept of the game I can totally understand that.
I think it truly works best as a game that you play simultaneously as you do other things/chores during a long day a home, which is what we did when we played it.
RE: The Longing (2020) - Karlok - 10-06-2025
I absolutely loved my time with this lonely but courageous little guy. For months he was always present in the background whenever I was doing stuff on my computer and I regularly checked on him, even when he was just sleeping. At first the slow pace of the game was frustrating but after a while it became meaningful, if that makes sense. Most puzzles were easy, all of them time-based, but I have vague memories of one or two that were pretty hard to solve. The game has several endings and fortunately you can also go back in time, so I found a few and watched the other endings on youtube. I'm definitely not a Tamakotchi type of person but to my surprise I grew very attached to my little Shade and missed him when the game was over.
PS: I would not recommend this essentially sad game with its existential themes to anyone going through a depression.
RE: The Longing (2020) - Joe - 10-06-2025
I played and finished it over the span of a month.
I played it for about half an hour each day and did some exploring. When I encountered a locked door or something that would take a long time to open, I exited the game and came back the following day.
RE: The Longing (2020) - Joshua AGH - 10-06-2025
I love the color pallete.
RE: The Longing (2020) - LadyKestrel - 10-06-2025
I've played through the game 3 times and experienced 3 of the 5 possible endings, one which left me stunned. Like Karlok and Geisterfaust, I became very attached to the little guy. Yes, the pace is slow, but I've never been one to race through a game, so it didn't bother me. There are so many neat things to discover, quite a few by chance. I had fun discovering ways to speed up time.