The Longing review

Of all the qualities that need to come together to produce a great game experience, one of the most critical is the pacing. Oftentimes, games approach the kind of experiences they want to give players and then the pace takes shape around what these actions are, but in the case of a game like The Longing, everything is built around a set pace that is very intentionally drawn way out. More specifically, the playtime here is stretched to the incredible length of 400 real-time days. I am not sure that this decision makes for a particularly enjoyable game experience in the traditional sense, but playing it can be so hands-off and reflective that engaging with it as an academic exercise is easy enough to do.

In The Longing, you control a tiny dark humanoid referred to as "The Shade." The Shade seems to act as a sort of servant to a stone king underground. The game opens with the king explaining that his powers have faded and that he needs to rest to restore them so he can "create a world without longing." As The Shade, your duty is to awaken the king after his 400 day rest.

With all that time on your hands, you can just wait patiently until it is time to do as you are told, or you can wander the elaborate underground cave system that the king and Shade reside in the meantime. All that the king warns you not to do is try to leave the caves and reach the surface. From there, you are on your own for the next 1.1 years.

Once the wait in The Longing starts, you are constantly aware of it via an in-game clock at the top of the screen. It advances whether you are actively playing the game or not. Active play generally means plodding very slowly between rooms and gathering collectibles like coal or books that can be brought to your home to start a fire and read. There are also puzzles, some of which are time-gated and require you to wait until something changes about them before you can proceed further.

Another option--and one I was fond of--is to instruct The Shade to go on a walk to a random location before closing the game, which led to always opening the game up to find myself in a different part of the cave system. No matter what you choose to do in The Longing, the pace at which is happens feels glacial compared to just about every other game, but that's also kind of the point. I'll also note here that in playing on mobile, popping in and out of the game is probably the easiest it will ever be.

The Longing is absolutely meant to be a slow and meditative game. There is no trick to suddenly get faster movement (though there are ways to manipulate the in-game time). The point is to spend time with it and develop patience--or not. Remember, time advances either way. What it does ask you to do is engage with this core premise until you reach the end, and doing this is an interesting and rewarding exercise.

I could see a situation where I just decided The Longing didn't move or feel the way I wanted it to and just deleted the app, but I didn't. I wouldn't say I spent a ton of the 400 day timer with The Longing open, but having it sit there on my device led to times where I would check in on it, find myself somewhere new, perhaps discover a book or a disappointment (perhaps the oddest in-game collectible), and then put it back down for a few days or more. Whenever I saw it's icon, I knew that even if I didn't tap it, The Shade was there, passing time, whether while walking or standing around waiting for a puzzle to open or my next commands to come in. In my time with the game, there was never a moment where my own life was not intertwined with The Shade, whether I was choosing to actively play The Longing or not. This is a neat idea! I like it, and it is remarkably well-executed! But I'll also say that there's a lot of reasons I've already mentioned why I didn't do a ton of active exploration in this game.

I guess at the end of reviews I'm supposed to assign some value that gives you an idea of whether it's "worth it" to play the game I'm reviewing. Games like The Longing make this practice seem silly and superfluous. In a more traditional "game rating" sense, The Longing isn't exactly something I'd say would net a particularly high score, but it has arguably more value as an experience than many other games I may rate more highly than it. Do I want to play it again? No. Am I glad I played it? I guess? Was it a worthwhile experience? Absolutely. If you're left here scratching your head, probably the best advice I can give you is that if anything I said above hasn't completely turned you off from trying it, you will probably like The Longing.