The Longing pairs real-time progression with narrative discovery as you tend to a shade in an underground kingdom, waiting 400 days for your king to awaken. While time passes whether you play or not, you'll uncover text-based stories, solve environmental puzzles, and gradually build a library of knowledge about your lonely world. It's designed for players who value contemplative pacing and atmospheric storytelling over optimization, rewarding curiosity and patience rather than constant engagement.
About this game
An unusual mix of adventure and idle game. In utter loneliness deep below the surface, it's your task to wait for the awakening of your king... for 400 days.
What players are saying
▲ Recommended641 hrs
As a retired senior during the pandemic, this is a very fun game, sorry to see it end soon. Loved the slow pace and discovery. Use of guides/walkthroughs/discussions allowed me to fully enjoy the adventure.
The Longing for me wasn't a game; it’s an existential partner that sat quietly with me as I worked, procrastinated, and questioned what it all meant
The shade became my silent coworker, a pixelated companion who never judged my productivity or the number of times I alt-tabbed to check emails or minimize it on a meeting call. Like a Tamagotchi for introverts, it needed just enough attention to remind me it was there but never demanded more than I could give. we explored caves, read books, and even stared at walls in contemplative silence.
And now, after some hours, I say goodbye to my loyal, brooding little friend. So long, my work companion. May your shadowy vigil continue in the deep halls of my eternal hall of memory.
The shade is the kind of character that you easily love. The game has really helped me to slow down and to appreciate everything you do. Normally when games are full of things to do, you care less about the next thing and want to proceed. In the longing, I cherish every (small) thing I find.
Update: I'm now much further in the game, and I can say that the game is very strong. The story and puzzles are well-rounded, the puzzles are easy in the beginning and more difficult in the end and the atmosphere is great.
There is however one thing that kind of destroyed the game for me, and that is the fact that time in speeds up way too fast. I expected to carry this game with me for over a year, an although I would have been okay with time passing two or maybe three times faster, it started passing over twenty times faster in the house of the shade. It kinda destroyed the whole "there is nothing to achieve, I can spend weeks just reading and sometimes going for a walk, I have so much time" atmosphere for me. There are some difficult puzzles in the end, and I would have liked to spend weeks keeping a puzzle in the back of my mind while I'm trying to read Moby ♥♥♥♥, but this isn't the way the game turned out (I looked up walkthroughs). I would very much like to see an option which gives a much weaker version of time speeding up, ten times as weak if you ask me.
Dear inhabitants of the caves, here's Anselm, creator of The Longing. As some of you might already know, The Longing took me over 4 years to make. After it was finished, I was sure that the next project would turn out much smoother... in a way I was right, but also very wrong. Long story short, Lucky Tower Ultimate has just been released, after spending over 5 years in production, from which 1.5 years were spent in Early Access. It's quite different from "The Longing" and doesn't share many similarities at first sight, except the art style and parts of the setting. That is by choice, since A) I wanted to do something entirely different after this long time and B) it was made by a "real" team and not primarily just myself. It's a roguelite/adventure that comes from a place of fascination for medieval-themed dungeon-crawlers, "Ghouls ’n Ghosts", "Kid Paddle" comics, and Tomi Ungerer books.Of course, I couldn't resist and put a cave into the game too; it even comes with a fitting soundtrack by Lord Redstone (composer for The Longing). If the game sounds like your cup of tea, you can check out the Steam page here: As I have been working mostly on Lucky Tower these past years, not much has happened in The Longing cosmos. But I plan to start working on a new idle-adventure game. It's too early to share any relevant information regarding this undertaking though, this is just so you know I have not forgotten the cavernous realms, and it's worth waiting for the next years/decades/centuries... All the best, Anselm
Dear inhabitants of the caves, Due to high demand for the original plushie, Makeship was kind enough to bring it back, again for a limited time only. They also started a campaign for new enamel pins of the Shade. Personally, I like the small pin of the Shade very much! The shipping for the pins is also a lot cheaper, in case you only want those. Here are the links for the campaigns: https://www.makeship.com/products/shade-enamel-pins https://www.makeship.com/products/shade-2-0-plushie So long, -Anselm {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33396686/4413703318ce60b9340838ff6c3fb66d813f709e.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/33396686/a797dc26aa4dc0cb3787eb41ae4077f3b4a6a342.png
Dear cave inhabitants, The maintenance update that was previously accessible only via the beta branch is now available to all players. It mainly consists of small bug fixes accumulated over the last few years. We have also improved the anti-cheat system and removed the online-only constraint. The game can now be played offline on desktop, just like on all other devices (The Longing has been available on mobile and console for some time). Thank you for your help with testing! -Anselm P.S. The original Shade plushie will have a re-run next month.
Posts come from Steam's official announcements feed.
