The Longing

The Longing is a point-and-click adventure game that takes place in an underground kingdom. The player controls the Shade, a lonely creature serving an elderly king. After the king falls asleep to regain his diminished powers, the Shade is tasked with awakening its master after 400 days in real time. The Shade can explore caves, gather resources to furnish its home, or perform other activities such as reading classical literature and drawing.

Interaction with the world is slow-paced, with the Shade's walking speed being particularly slow. Many aspects of gameplay depend upon the passage of time, including puzzles that require the player to wait for a certain period to progress. Performing actions inside the Shade's home causes time to pass at an increased rate. For example, reading books and decorating the walls with drawings makes the in-game timer advance more rapidly.

The Longing begins with an old king informing the Shade that he will sleep for 400 days to recover his powers. After that time has passed, the Shade may awaken its master, and will be rewarded with "a world without longing". The king permits the Shade to wander inside his underground kingdom but warns it against leaving. While waiting to awaken the king, the Shade contemplates its own loneliness and muses over the nature of the king's reward. It considers leaving the kingdom for the outside world and recalls that an exit from the caves exists far above where the king sleeps.

If the Shade waits all 400 days and awakens its master, the stirring of the king causes a cave-in. Once the event subsides, the king explains that he has given the Shade exactly what he promised and created a world without longing "by destroying everything inside of it". The world ceases to exist, and the king and Shade rule over the endless void of the universe for eternity. Alternatively, if the Shade explores enough of the caves close to the surface world, it discovers a dark cavern at the edge of a bottomless pit.

Development of The Longing began in 2014 and lasted six years. Developer Anselm Pyta had a background creating Flash animations that were released on Newgrounds, until he co-founded Studio Seufz in 2017. The concept for The Longing came from Pyta's experience hiking in the Barbarossa Cave. According to the Kyffhäuser legend, the cave was home to an old king who slept inside for hundreds of years; a related poem mentioned a dwarf checking on the king once per century to see if he would awaken.

Pyta was struck by the character, perplexed about how the dwarf lived its life with so much waiting. He created most of the game alone, including its art, sound design, and mechanics, but received some help with the coding. He used Photoshop to draw the backgrounds, and Adobe Flash to animate the characters; both elements were coded and merged in Unity.

Reception of the game was largely positive. On the review aggregator website Metacritic, the PC and Switch versions received generally favorable reviews. OpenCritic assessed that the game was recommended by 74% of reviewers. Some critics praised The Longing's experimental premise.

Adventure Gamers recommended it to players who liked unusual gameplay, or enjoyed video games as an art form. PC Gamer in Swedish called it a "fascinating experiment" with plenty of atmosphere. The Washington Post said that it demonstrated the potential of what video games could do.