The Long Journey Home by Daedalic is something of a survival game at its heart, but the way it goes about it is pretty novel in my opinion. You are the pilot of a spaceship with a four person crew to aid you. The backstory explains that your trip to Alpha Centauri did not go as planned and instead, you and your crew end up somewhere lost in space with a long journey home ahead of you. Along the way, you meet many different species of aliens with very different personalities. You’ll also have to stop by the different planets in star systems along the way to gather the resources necessary to keep your ship intact and fueled for the road.
This game is pretty hard, so I wouldn’t feel bad about not reaching Earth on your first, second, or even fifth try. It’s hard figuring out the perfect balance and taking the right risks. On my second playthrough, I ran out of the exotic matter necessary to make the jump between star systems, and the current system I was in didn’t have any planets with EM available to be harvested. My only option was to go the emergency route of fueling up from the star itself, and unfortunately the crew didn’t make it. It’s experiences like these that ultimately teach you how to play the game on a higher level. While it’s true that maneuvering your landing craft well will save you on repairs, there still remains the strategy of knowing when to use your fuel and where you should spend resources travelling to.
I think my favorite part of this game was the alien personalities. My first playthrough, I came upon a very friendly alien race named the Mizzurani. Upon contact with them, my entire crew started to become infected by some type of parasite and I couldn’t figure out why. What I found from an alien that I met later on in my second playthrough is that the Mizzurani, despite being so jovial and friendly, are themselves infested by parasites who spread the disease wherever they go. No one wants to be friends with them not because they’re mean, but because they’re accidentally harmful. Another noteworthy race which I was personally offended by was the Reeve. The Reeve are a people of trade. They value their customers, and are easily swayed to like or dislike you. I first made friends with the Reeve after receiving a transmission saying they needed help retrieving their unresponsive satellite from orbit. They compensated me with a tank of gas, of course, but right after I left their settlement, I headed to the nearby iron reserves. Just by drilling into their planet, I had made the Reeve strangers to me again. I didn’t even know such a thing was possible, but it definitely taught me a lesson moving forward to get to know each species individually and on a lower level to not get between the Reeve and their source of income.
My journey learning the ins and outs of The Long Journey Home was certainly a long one, though. There were many times where I just wished I could go faster without having to waste the precious fuel in my tank. A lot of the game was spent waiting to just drift along to where I wanted to end up. Along with that, the star systems themselves felt pretty sparse, and it felt a little bit luck dependent as to whether I could make it through any given cluster of stars knowing how much EM was contained within them. It’s these kinds of things that take me out of an experience. Overall, though, I enjoyed this game. There’s certainly room for improvement, and it’s always a pain failing most of the way into a permadeath run, but that comes with the territory, I suppose. I think it adds to the thrill and accomplishment at the end. If you like survival games and can handle permadeath, then I would recommend giving this game a try.
8/10
Check Out The Long Journey Home Trailer:
The Long Journey Home is available for Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC via Steam.
For more information, please visit here: https://www.daedalic.com/the-long-journey-home
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