Developer: Studio Seufz
Price: $4.99/£4.99
Size: 610 MB
Version: 1.0.2
Platform: iPhone & iPad
The Longing doesn’t work on the same time scale as other games.
We generally talk about spending minutes and hours with games, or maybe days and weeks if we’re being particularly indulgent. The Longing sets its stall out early: it’s going to take more than a year to complete, no matter how many hours you plough in.
Collect items to brighten up your dreary existence
Potentially the most drawn-out idle game ever made, it’s set in a strange subterranean kingdom seen over by a giant god-king. At the outset this wizened ruler announces their impending slumber, which will last exactly 400 days of real-world time.
You, as a tiny servant ‘shade’ – puny, weak, and gloomy of disposition – are tasked with waiting out the king’s epic nap. You may wander the king’s dank halls as much as you like, pass the time in any way you see fit, but you must not leave the kingdom.
The game is not without its impressive sights
So what is there to do? Plenty of busy work, but nothing of particular note or consequence. You can assemble the components for a fire, locate materials to paint pictures, or locate a mattock to dig up precious loot and expand your home.
To do this, you must explore the vast, twisting labyrinth that is the kingdom, scrambling up crumbling stairways, wading through mossy caves, and forcing your way through huge rusty doors. Every yard gained takes an age, as your feeble Shade moves like an arthritic sloth. Some doors take two hours to open, while a potential bridging stalactite might take a week to drop.
Some events take weeks to take place
You’ll soon learn the value of the double-tap to move to a location rather than holding one side of the screen, as well as having secondary device to hand to keep yourself occupied in the lengthy down time. There’s even a random-roam button that lets you put your iPhone aside and chance upon locations while you’re off doing something else.
If you want to pursue your banal tasks more systematically, you can save interesting places and start an automatic (though no speedier) journey back there with a tap. There is no map.
Save scenes to return to with a tap
If all of this sounds laborious, well, it is. And that’s kinda the point. The Shade’s dour asides can be amusing, and the points made about patience, persistence, and loneliness, are refreshing within a mobile game context. A certain type of player may find solace in the Shade’s plodding progress, like taking care of a philosophical Tamagotchi. But the brutal truth is that – for me, at least – the premise for The Longing is way more interesting than the gameplay.
As it is, I’m glad I’ve started the game and had a little taster of its uniquely drawn-out and downbeat style. I’ve even set a reminder on my calendar to prod me to check back in after 400 days to witness the game’s ending. But as someone who appreciates a certain tactile immediacy to their games, I probably won’t be hurrying back to explore those dank caves in the meantime.