Based on an old German legend about a ruler who sleeps in an underground cave, The Longing is an unconventional point-and-click game that delves into the concept of waiting.

The story begins with a giant King speaking to his loyal servant, the Shade (a tiny dark figure with yellow eyes). The King tells him that he will rest for 400 days to recover his strength but promises that once awake he will end all fear and longing. The servant’s (and the player’s) job will be to watch over him during this long sleeping time and wake him up once 400 real-life days have passed.

The clock is constantly ticking, even when you’re not playing. This means you’ll have plenty of time to explore the vast kingdom and its many secrets. Every second, minute, hour, and day counts, and the choice is yours to decide what to see and do.

Of course, you can keep playing the game for many days, but it’s probably something that will test your patience and eventually get you bored. That’s why this game is definitely not suitable for a livestream, there isn’t much to do in the game and every action, including Shade’s movements, are slow on purpose, because the whole logic behind is the meaning of time and how you decide to spend it. For example, just after the prologue, you must wait some minutes for a door to simply open or climb very long stairs.

The Longing is a story about time, isolation and identity

In The Longing, there’s no need to follow a predetermined path. The gameplay requires you to find ways to pass time before the king’s awakening, it’s up to you how you want to spend that time.

You have a small cave, which feels like home, that you can decorate through various resources you can find scattered in the Kingdom. You can spend time decorating your place, drawing or reading a book (there are Moby Dick and Thus Spoke Zarathustra entire books) and time runs a little bit faster when doing activities inside your home.

If being sedentary is not something you like, you can freely explore the Kingdom almost immediately. There isn’t a map though and even the Shade asks you to remember the road back to the King if you want to explore further.

You can actually save screenshots in-game to help you remember each area, but fortunately, there is also an option to make the Shade return back to his path (although very slowly). You will probably get lost anyway because the Kingdom looks like a maze with doors and stairs that apparently lead to nowhere.

In any case, much of the story is told through the environment. You must decipher the history behind the Kingdom by following scenery details and reading Shade thoughts, which include the possibility of escaping from the Kingdom (and thus, disobeying the King orders).

Where the exit is located is a mystery though and if you want to follow that path you must be ready to spend a lot of time because the Kingdom is huge and you can’t run.

Replayability is a mystery too. Waiting for the King’s awakening would be of course the easiest ending to obtain, as it only takes waiting (even if you are not really playing the game). On the other side, the possibility to find an exit and escape is very tempting, but also incredibly hard and filled with puzzles (requiring to find and manipulate items in order to unlock new areas) that can take days or even a month to complete.

The game automatically saves your progress (there are no manual saves), so reaching each ending requires to start the game again and that’s something most players and streamers probably won’t have time and patience to do.

The Longing is not just like any other game; its deeply philosophical themes will keep you company for a very long time, as you explore the Kingdom in search of a meaning, until you realize that many days, weeks and months have passed. A truly innovative work of art, sadly not for everyone.