The Longing

I think I got tired of waiting and jumped. I think the game looks great. It does not take 400 days, but it does take actual time waiting on the game. Does it really sound interesting to buy a game and leave it running in the background as you wait for a door to open or a puddle of water to fill. Or the musrooms. If you plant the wrong mushroom, then go away and wait for it to grow, or walk to your room and wait a little faster and then have the game walk back to try again. It works as an idea, but does a game about waiting really sound interesting. Philosophical? Yes but why. This game. It is a game, just not for very long. This game. It made me want to quit and start drawing. It made me want to quit and pick up my instrument. It made quit the game, get some of these books from gutenberg and just read them on a big screen. So if the point of this game was to get me to wake up and start with my other hobbies, then it worked. And yet I liked some parts of it enough, that I wanted to write down my thoughts and give it some stars.

I was excited about this game, not just for the innovative"real time" mechanic, but also for the underground setting and the art that reminds me of the early parts of "In the Hall of the Mountain King". I expected a dreamlike exploration of hidden worlds, with wonder and the peace of solitude - of discovering things so lost and secret that you are the only one to even know they exist. That was not my experience, unfortunately. The protagonist is - in a word - pathetic. I think this was supposed to be in the positive sense of the word, but it landed negatively for me. When faced with this, I initially tried to interpret its attitude (or the game's) as self-aware and comical, but as the shuffling around went on and on, the protagonist's self-pitying comments did not wane, and my patience with its attitude wore out. I wasn't looking for humor, but I also wasn't expecting the game's emphasis on constantly conveying that feeling of depression (or, well... "longing", I suppose). I feel bad reviewing a work of art so negatively, because it's obvious that a lot of care went into the concept, and I applaud the innovation here - but it did not have to be quite so insistently dreary. Maybe I should have paid more attention to the title rather than my hopes for it. Maybe my disappointment is just about misaligned expectations. All that said, the visual art is good, the setting is imaginative and massive in a way that feels bigger and more mysterious even than many open-world games, and the mechanics reinforce the scale of the kingdom in a positive way. If the emotional side of this doesn't bother you, you might like it. I hope this game's innovations pave the way for other games that focus more on what the positive aspects of an experience like the protagonist's can be. I only "finished" it in that I abandoned the game after maybe 6-8 hours over the course of weeks, and came back after the 400 days had passed. It's what it says on the tin, though: you will feel longing.

Time flies when you're having fun. Or relaxed. Or cozy. 400 days doesn't have to FEEL like 400 days. I wonder what things one could find or do to pass the time more quickly. I've longed for a game where the comfort or happiness of my character could directly influence the game, and I'm happy to have found one in such a lovely package.

After 20 hours with his i can say, the longing is interesting at first, but really boring after 20 hours. There are a few, time sensitive puzzles, but all-in-all the whole game is nothing but waiting. I got most of the achievements in the first 5 hours. After that its nothing but idling. Sure, at first, the whole exploration aspect was interesting, but now its just tedious. Waiting for the shade to walk from one place to another is boring. The entertainment 'the longing' delivered is only good for ~8 hours. Overall 3/5. The music is excellent, but the game-play gets old fast. Buy it only if its discounted for 5€ or less.

This game really surprised me with how much it's drawn me in. Fantastic music, art, and intriguing puzzles. There's a lot to be unraveled here even symbolically; as somebody that has previously spent a lot of time in self isolation there were a lot of things that were really cathartic to me. It will very likely test your patience at first, and for this reason it's fairly difficult to describe how enchanting this game is. If you take your time with it, savor it, and inhibit yourself from looking up anything about the game while you experience it, it is absolutely worth the $15 price tag.