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Of all the qualities that need to come together to produce a great game experience, one of the most critical is the pacing. Oftentimes, games approach the kind of experiences they want to give players and then the pace takes shape around what these actions are, but in the case of a game like The Longing, everything is built around a set pace that is very intentionally drawn way out. More specifically, the playtime here is stretched to the incredible length of 400 real-time days. I am not sure that this decision makes for a particularly enjoyable game experience in the traditional sense, but playing it can be so hands-off and reflective that engaging with it as an academic exercise is easy enough to do.

Shades of adventure

In The Longing, you control a tiny dark humanoid referred to as “The Shade.” The Shade seems to act as a sort of servant to a stone king underground. The game opens with the king explaining that his powers have faded and that he needs to rest to restore them so he can “create a world without longing.” As The Shade, your duty is to awaken the king after his 400 day rest.

With all that time on your hands, you can just wait patiently until it is time to do as you are told, or you can wander the elaborate underground cave system that the king and Shade reside in the meantime. All that the king warns you not to do is try to leave the caves and reach the surface. From there, you are on your own for the next 1.1 years.

Slow burn

Once the wait in The Longing starts, you are constantly aware of it via an in-game clock at the top of the screen. It advances whether you are actively playing the game or not. Active play generally means plodding very slowly between rooms and gathering collectibles like coal or books that can be brought to your home to start a fire and read. There are also puzzles, some of which are time-gated and require you to wait until something changes about them before you can proceed further.

Another option–and one I was fond of–is to instruct The Shade to go on a walk to a random location before closing the game, which led to always opening the game up to find myself in a different part of the cave system. No matter what you choose to do in The Longing, the pace at which is happens feels glacial compared to just about every other game, but that's also kind of the point. I'll also note here that in playing on mobile, popping in and out of the game is probably the easiest it will ever be.

400 Days of Shade

The Longing is absolutely meant to be a slow and meditative game. There is no trick to suddenly get faster movement (though there are ways to manipulate the in-game time). The point is to spend time with it and develop patience–or not. Remember, time advances either way. What it does ask you to do is engage with this core premise until you reach the end, and doing this is an interesting and rewarding exercise.

I could see a situation where I just decided The Longing didn't move or feel the way I wanted it to and just deleted the app, but I didn't. I wouldn't say I spent a ton of the 400 day timer with The Longing open, but having it sit there on my device led to times where I would check in on it, find myself somewhere new, perhaps discover a book or a disappointment (perhaps the oddest in-game collectible), and then put it back down for a few days or more. Whenever I saw it's icon, I knew that even if I didn't tap it, The Shade was there, passing time, whether while walking or standing around waiting for a puzzle to open or my next commands to come in. In my time with the game, there was never a moment where my own life was not intertwined with The Shade, whether I was choosing to actively play The Longing or not. This is a neat idea! I like it, and it is remarkably well-executed! But I'll also say that there's a lot of reasons I've already mentioned why I didn't do a ton of active exploration in this game.

The bottom line

I guess at the end of reviews I'm supposed to assign some value that gives you an idea of whether it's “worth it” to play the game I'm reviewing. Games like The Longing make this practice seem silly and superfluous. In a more traditional “game rating” sense, The Longing isn't exactly something I'd say would net a particularly high score, but it has arguably more value as an experience than many other games I may rate more highly than it. Do I want to play it again? No. Am I glad I played it? I guess? Was it a worthwhile experience? Absolutely. If you're left here scratching your head, probably the best advice I can give you is that if anything I said above hasn't completely turned you off from trying it, you will probably like The Longing.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/review-270307/

I've always like the idea of a mobile game taking advantage of something like your step count or other data to fuel or integrate with gameplay. That said, I am not sure I have ever really found something that really pushes all the right buttons for making this click. Prado Traveler is probably the closest thing to what I'd want to see out of a pedometer-based rpg, and that's good enough for me considering the fact that it is completely free.

Walking simulator

Prado Traveler is an rpg where you make a character and send them out on adventures to gain loot and experience. There's not really any story and a lot of the draw is just grinding out more levels and loot to let you go to tougher locales. It's very boilerplate and rote outside of the fact that the whole thing can only progress by walking around.

Each location in Prado Traveler is represented by a deck of cards, which have a random distribution of events in them (usually skill checks and fights), and your goal is to be able to complete these decks without being defeated to earn the most rewards possible. The catch is that each card flip costs a certain amount of steps, which is tied into the step counter of your mobile device.

Pedestrian progression

Smartly (in my view, anyway), the core “gameplay” in Prado Traveler is walking. There is no real interactivity with combat or skill checks, nor do you do a ton of character building as you level up. All of that takes care of itself automatically. That said, between adventures you can visit shops to upgrade your gear, buy components for potions and/or food, and–of course–open and examine the loot from your latest adventure.

If for any reason you are away from the app for awhile, Prado Traveler has a system for banking a certain amount of steps, so you are rarely in a situation where you earn a bunch of steps that can't be used to further your adventures or go on a new one. There are also party mechanics for multiplayer and a PvP mode but I could not get either of those to work and they seem like game modes that are largely impractical anyway.

Stepping awkwardly

Speaking of things not working, Prado Traveler definitely has quite a few problems with it. In addition to certain game modes or menus not really loading properly, there have been times where the app hasn't been able to initially load and others where I completed an adventure and the loot I earned failed to appear in my inventory.

These are pretty glaring problems, but I find it hard to get too upset about them considering the game is so low-stakes and free. My bigger problem is that it seems clear that some of the game's visuals are AI-generated, which sucks ass. I don't know what the plan for this game is for further development or sustainability, but if it makes any amount of money, the first thing the developer should do is find an artist and pay them to do some art for it.

The bottom line

Maybe I am being too forgiving of a game that doesn't work all that well, but there's something about Prado Traveler's low bar of entry that makes a lot of its issues not seem like huge sticking points. This is a game I can open up after being out and about all day and get a new sword or something as I track my progress of dungeon-crawling and step-counting, and I don't have to think too hard about any of that, provided the app is working.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/review-270313/