THE LONGING Reviews

The Longing is an odd game. I bought and played this starting 1st of January, thinking it would be a neat journey to play this at the start of the year and see the ending twelve months later. Turns out, you can beat the game in three months [i](+ all achievements)[/i] by collecting a lot of stuff to make the in-game time go faster. In fact, playing this for almost ninety days while I was job hunting at the same time made me resonate with the patience factor more than I could have imagined. I even got hired around the same week I reached 34 days remaining. If you know, the significance of this, you’d know that it should have added to my enjoyment to the game. It didn’t. Well, to be honest, The Longing isn’t nearly as thought provoking for me as I thought it would be. For one, I'm fond of slow and artistic games. Death Stranding and Journey pops to mind. But The Longing sells itself as an artistic idle game that tests the player's patience. All of these accurately depicts The Longing to a point where, if you play the game right, you'd have found yourself liking your character, The Shade, and all the minor lore drops you'd find underground. But at the same time, it does feel like there could be more to the game because once you've found everything there is to be found, you'd likely have 250 days worth of waiting left. The later half of the game was what confused me for even as I paced myself with the exploration and all that, the only thing left for me to do at that point was to Achievement hunt. Once that's done (35 days left), you're left with two options: Wake the King or access the other endings. While I won't spoil any of these scenes, but I will say that if you figure out a way to see the good ending, you'll be rewarded for your eternal patience. The problem of course is that this ending isn't nearly as obvious unless you think about a certain riddle that hints to you how to attain it, which ultimately culminates in the game expecting the player to [spoiler] idle with the game open. Even then, there's a lethal ending waiting for anyone who is looking to get the good end, but isn't paying attention of who's walking above ground. It's not easy to notice this.[/spoiler] As for the Wake the King, there’s not much to say. [spoiler] Regardless of what you do, there's only one version of this ending. I don't think it would sit well with a lot of folks unless they're raring to go for another round to do the Shade justice. [/spoiler] I give this a 50/50 recommendation. I know you can just look up Youtube for all the endings but if you're looking a patience=payoff game with great art and music, I recommend giving this a shot. The bad half is that the urge to look up a guide 250 in game days later becomes too tempting when you start to question yourself if you'll want to be doing another run of this.

i feel like i achieved something when i completed this game even though i technically didnt play

A captivating little game with an interesting main mechanic filled with secrets and places to explore. A game you can start and return to as time ticks on. Not a game for everyone, but if you enjoy games where you can be idle for a while or games without a frantic pace, you might want to check this one out.

Next time I better listen to myself. masterpiece 10/10 and thanks to the devs for making such a great experience

as the name suggests, the end is longing, but I highly recommend this game to literally anyone. I am honestly unsure what this is telling me but I thinks it's about being content doing nothing, having patience for no real reason, I decorate my house as I wait slowly. To be honest though shade is such a buzzkill like who tallies their disappointments. 10/10 great game I'm not even done with my first day

Very fun and exciting game! I look forward to playing it everyday after work. I especially love the background noises for the different areas of the game. The little guy is really cute. -Wife

Great idle game. Great game to open up and check in on the lil guy. Buy it to check in on the lil guy every now and then. This is art folks.

This shouldn't exist. The idea of a game - if you can even call it that - designed around being as slow and mundane as possible would normally be brushed off as insane. But it works. It's not perfect by any means - I had my fair share of "how was I supposed to figure that out" moments after looking something up while stuck - but this game is a truly fascinating experience that perfectly displays the fact that video games are an amazingly expressive medium for works of art. The Longing is not for everyone, but if it piques your interest, I implore you to give it a try.

The magnum opus of "video games are art." Go into this as blind as possible. Trust me, there's a lot more to this game than you might think. The agony of boredom and loneliness adds to the feelings of true longing this game provides, and it nearly made me cry at the ending. To me this is not a game to have mindless fun to. This is a game to [i] feel. [/i]

This game is the definition of doing something that will take a long time, like 400 days, because the time will pass anyway. I picked up The Longing at a time when I was struggling to get through my weeks and each day seemed to blur indistinguishably into the next. While caring for my Shade and exploring the winding labyrinth of the caves and events that took time to unlock, my hours suddenly had meaning. I came to want the best possible life for my Shade and chose from the branching multitudes of endings accordingly. Maybe I also learned that I want the best possible ending for myself too, even if I’m not entirely sure how to get there yet :)