HomeFeaturesThe Longing
The first week of The Longing: depressing royalist art and talking wallsClick to very slowly move
Click to very slowly move
Release:TBCOn:WindowsFrom:SteamFor:TBC
You may recall that for some time now I have been quietly longing, lol, forThe Longing, a “sad Tamagotchi” game where you, a small servant to a subterranean rock king, must hang about while he has a nap for 400 days. 400 real time days. This game takes over a year to finish. And it has multiple endings, which include reaching the surface, or just sitting in a sad, damp cave for the entire time.
This is, I suppose, technically a preview. The precise release date hasn’t been pinned down yet, but reviewing The Longing in a conventional way would be almost impossible in any case. Instead, I’m going to update you every month or so on my own progressin a diary. With the multiple endings in mind, our ultimate goal for this series will be… escape!
Escape to the surface, that is. There are many obstacles in the way, however, without even counting the entire year-and-change it will take to play the game. Here are some things you should know before we start.
Currently A Shade’s home is “not comfortable enough”. We know this because A Shade keeps a not-quite-diary of their thoughts, which functions as an undefined kind of quest list for the player. As such, while the ultimate goal for us over the next year is to escape, there are several mini-goals that I’m choosing to group together under the subheading of Making A Shade’s Life Less Awful. These include (but are not limited to):
Ready? Let’s begin.
January 3rd, 2020
On my way out, I explore the drawing options at A Shade’s art table, and immediately begin to worry about their state of mind.
A Shade achieves a lot in their first day, though! Mostly, it consists of walking, and discovering areas we can’t reach yet. The palace halls are a weird mix of ruined grandeur and damp, earthy caves that haven’t enjoyed any renovations at all. Lumps of coal regularly fall from the ceiling with a sad little echoey noise, and I collect them in the hope of making a fire soon. I briefly worry that we might enter a kind of The Descent scenario, encountering Bad Gollums, but that much excitement goes against the principle of the game.
To the east there is a large drop, but moss is slowly growing on the rocks below, which may eventually cushion A Shade’s frail little body from the fall. East-northeast reveals a flight of stairs with a big gap in them, which will become passable if the stalactite above falls down. In the West (I think – it is very hard to pinpoint directions in these tunnels) there is a maze of caves which, eventually, A Shade navigates to find the Halls Of Eternity. They appear to be an endless white room of spindly columns.
After a while, A Shade returns home. I get them to draw “Soul”, which is a crown shape. We’re going to have to divorce A Shade from their extreme royalist tendencies, somehow. It’s giving me flashbacks to Christmas Day, and having to pause frivolities in order to watch the Queen’s Speech.
January 6th, 2020
I didn’t play during the weekend, but that’s OK: while you’re not playing, A Shade will just hang out where you last left them. For me, that was readingThus Spoke Zarathustrain their chair. Reading can make time pass more quickly, as well.
Today A Shade finds red and white pigments for doing their art, so they make a lot of new paintings. Their diary indicates that A Shade likes drawings of lice, so another goal becomes to have a louse drawing in every colour (suck a dick, da Vinci, and other famous artists who didn’t draw lice).
A Shade finds a door that leads out of the palace and into, just,general caves. It takes two hours to open. I leave The Longing playing while I do some work, and listen to the grinding stone sound effect. But when I check in on it, A Shade had just curled up on the cold floor, with their back to the camera. So I feel bad and send them home… where they can make a fire, at last!
January 8th, 2020
Today is another busy day - and the day that I realise how clever this game has been, with these mini-goals to keep me occupied. Giving A Shade a room that’s abitshit means you want to improve it, but it’s nottotalshit to the point where you wouldn’t bother starting.
A Shade goes through the door they’d opened on Monday. They run into a lot of blocked tunnels and impassable ledges, so they collect Disappointments - six whole Disappointments! I want to get rid of them somehow, because A Shade seems the sort of person whose disappointments will weigh on them. On the other hand, they find blue for their art, and an old mine with a lot of wood for their bed (although there’s a whole other bit of mine they can’t get to yet).
They also make friends with a spider, which is now building a new web to help A Shade get up a difficult gap and into a new tunnel. It will take several days, but I think that’s the next step towards finding the exit.
January 9th, 2020
Yesterday I noticed that the stalactite mentioned on January 3rd had fallen down, but I didn’t want to go and investigate straight away. I have 400 days. I need to ration actions out, like zombie apocalypse survivors portioning out chickpeas and old Snickers bars with shaking hands. So A Shade goes and looks today, instead. They discover a weird talking face in a cave, demanding tributes of coal and moss in exchange for answers to questions.
Listen. A Shade doesn’t need this fucking Return To Oz shit right now. They have quite a weird frame of mind at the best of times. So they go straight home again.
My own project is to come up with a name for A Shade. Can’t believe the king didn’t even bother giving them a name. Fucksake.
January 10th, 2020
Today I finally realise how fast time ticks down in A Shade’s home. They’ve spent almost 15 days waiting in the caves already, when it’s only been about a week in human time. Being in their home, it turns out, makes three seconds pass in-game for every one on the outside (six, if there’s a fire lit). Potentially, this game could take alotless than 400 days…
A Shade is able to jump down and land safely on the mossy rocks! They discover a beautiful triple waterfall cascading onto bright white crystals. The air is alive with twinkling music. All A Shade could think about was the pissing king, however.
Did A Shade do a stint as an editor for a UK tabloid?? I wonder if finding all the colours for the art station will unlock the ability to scrawl LIBERTÉ, ÉGALITÉ, FRATERNITÉ across the king’s sleeping face, fratboy-prank-style. It seems unlikely.
I still haven’t thought of a name for A Shade, but I am fairly desperate to, so please offer suggestions. This diary feels more and more like I’m that weird assassin lad from Game Of Thrones that talked about everyone and everything, including himself, in the third person. I bet he got invited to loads of parties.
I have buried the lede though, because… A Shade has a mattock now! I leave them using it to carve out a set of steps down to a new area in their room. Soon it shall be a split-level flat. We’ve already made a lot of improvements with drawings and things we’ve found. It would probably go for £700pcm (excl bills) in London.
January 13th, 2020
A Shade has carved out a set of steps. I let them rest. Their reading today is Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
So far I am very much enjoying The Longing.
