Somewhere on your hard drive, a small, wide-eyed creature named Shade will keep standing alone in the dark, waiting on a ticking timer to go down, whether you’re there, watching as well, or not. After you download The Longing, this will be your fate (and Shade’s) for over one real-time calendar year. Shade serves an underground king who has fallen into a 400-day sleep to recover his lost strength. Shade’s only job, and his entire reason for existing, is to wake the king when the time comes. He’s a sentient alarm clock, and now, so are you.

In The Longing , an adventure/idle game from Studio Seufz , as your king sleeps peacefully, you’ll spend much of your time shuffling Shade through hand-drawn caves at a punishingly slow walking pace. You’ll decorate your small underground home. You’ll draw pictures with lumps of coal you scavenge on your subterranean adventures. If you’re so inclined, you can read the complete text of Moby Dick in game. And then tackle The Secret Garden or Thus Spoke Zarathustra . While this game isn’t just a simple reading sim or dressed-up timer, the vast majority of the game’s progression does run via real-world time, not skill mastery or minigames or fetch quests. A patch of moss might need two full weeks to grow soft enough that Shade could survive a fall onto it. Mushrooms you’re counting on for various in-game objectives might need a full month to mature. ). Tunnels will collapse without warning, closing old paths off for good, so, hopefully you’ve made time to see them.

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