The Longing APK - You play as a lonely Shade, who is the last servant of an underground king who once ruled his country. The king has lost his power, so he sleeps for 400 days to get it back. Your job is to stay in the mud house until he wakes up. Once you start playing, the game will always count down the 400 days, even if you stop and quit. Now it's up to you to figure out what to do with your lonely life under the ground. Don't worry, you still have a lot of time.
THE LONGING is a strange mix of adventure and a game where you do nothing. As the king's last servant, the player takes on the part of a "shadow" who has to watch over the king for 400 days. The unique thing about these 400 days is that they start to go by in real time.
Once the player has started the game once, the clock, which is always visible in the game, starts ticking, even if the player isn't playing and closes the app. The huge underground kingdom is made up of caves that wind around each other, earthen state rooms, deep crystal lakes, and stone labyrinths. Deep underground, where the huge stone king is the deepest point, it feels like you are alone forever. The player can either do what the king says and wait for time, or try to get out of the cave.
The Idea
THE LONGING is a unique game that moves at a slow pace and uses time a lot as a game feature. The only thing the person has to do is wait. But you have to figure out on your own how to play the game's different parts: You can speed up time by adding more and more things to your basement "living room" right next to the king. You can also try to get out of the cave and leave the king behind. To get to the surface, you have to take the long, dangerous road that is often blocked. All of the problems on the way up have something to do with time. So you have to move a spider so it can build its web somewhere else, which can take days.
No matter how the player wants to play the game in the end, THE LONGING will be an odd, slow-paced experience that is different from most fast-paced games. Games can use time stretching more than any other art form, which is something this game does over and over again. At its heart, the game is about being alone and wanting something. These feelings, which give the game its name, become more emotional as the game goes on for a long time.
Fun facts
The Kyffhauser saga, in which King Barbarossa waits under a rock to wake up, was a big influence on THE LONGING. Friedrich Rückert's poem of the same name and the real Kyffhauser caves, as well as the famous Barbarossa sculpture, are also big parts of the story. The classics of world literature that you can read in their completeness in the game are made available for free by Project Gutenberg. Dungeon Synth, a type of dark ambient and black metal, is what the game's music and mood are based on.
