| The Long Journey Home | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer(s) | Daedalic Entertainment |
| Publisher(s) | Daedalic Entertainment |
| Writer(s) | Richard Cobbett [1] |
| Platform(s) | |
| Release | Windows May 30, 2017 macOS June 28, 2018 PlayStation 4, Xbox One November 14, 2018 Nintendo Switch September 4, 2019 |
| Genre(s) | Adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
The Long Journey Home is a 2017 space exploration video game by Daedalic Entertainment for Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.
The player controls the crew of Earth's first jump-capable starship. The game begins after a jump to Alpha Centauri goes wrong, leaving the misfit crew stranded on the far end of the galaxy. [2] As the crew journeys back home, they meet aliens who offer them various quests. [1]
The goal of the game is to return home after being lost in space. [2] The player navigates a procedurally generated universe, [3] which is randomized to make the experience of exploring more open-ended and diverse. [4]
The physics of ship movement are realistic, as the player has to use gravitational slingshot to navigate. [1] There is a steep learning curve to be proficient to travel. [1] [5]
The player will encounter aliens who offer them quests. The player can choose to help, ignore, attack, or even betray the quest-giver. [2] For example, when an alien asks a player to transport a box, the player can decide to open the box and steal what's inside of it. [3] Each alien has their own culture, which creates challenges around cultural misunderstanding. [5]
Daedalic was a game studio known for point-and-click adventure games with a narrative focus. [4] The team has described the game as a roguelike space role-playing game, drawing its main inspiration from Star Control II and Starflight . [2] Where Star Control II described many aspects of the alien cultures through dialog, writer Richard Cobbett pushed to improve on this by making this culture more visible and interactive. [2]
The team strived to maximize player choice, allowing them to break or ignore quests, or attack even friendly encounters. [2] Quests were designed to encourage forward momentum, and also illustrate the different alien cultures and personalities. [3] This led to what Cobbett described as "a lot of writing", which was organized in spreadsheets using proprietary tools. [3] A goal for the game's writing was to create feelings of loneliness, vulnerability, and desperation. [2]
Initially, the game featured a trade system, but this was simplified in favor of credits. [2] A month after the game's release, The Long Journey Home was updated with an easier story mode. [6]
| Aggregator | Score |
|---|---|
| Metacritic | PC: 68/100 [7] |
The reception to The Long Journey Home has been mixed. Its aggregate Metacritic score is 68/100. [7] Adam Smith of Rock Paper Shotgun compared the game favorably to the openness of No Man's Sky with the short minigames of Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space, but felt that there was "not quite enough here to win me over completely". [8] Polygon , giving the game a 55% rating, explained that it was "extraordinarily difficult to navigate" and "infuriating," concluding that the game had failed to live up to the promise of a "truly narrative-driven roguelike." [9] Giving the game a 6/10, PC Games N praised the characters and setting, but criticized the different minigames as tedious. [10] IGN , which gave the game a 6.4, complained of "the weight of frustrating and tedious minigames" that were "often unfair." [11] Kotaku dismissed the game as built upon "a poorly-implemented version" of Lunar Lander, "an infuriating experience" and "a poorly thought-out homage." [12]
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