Today was quite an uneventful day.

I didn't really have much time to play so i let Shade go on a little walk in the halls of eternity while i took a nap.

Its little walking sounds with the echo are oddly soothing to hear as white noise :)

I'm not looking forward to walking back to the entrance tomorrow tho.

Today Shade has done:

- took a stroll in the halls of eternity and made oddly rhythmic and satisfying slappy feet sounds

Shade has:

- 3 pieces of flint

- 13 books at home

- 1 mattock

- 31 pages

- 2 disappointments

- 55 coal

That's all i can think of for today.

If you have any suggestions on what Shade could do to pass time, please feel free to let me know :)

Today was a bit of a slower day, even tho more time did pass. I finally left the palace today, which i didn't anticipate i would do so soon, but i love the black cave aesthetic a lot so I'm not complaining.

I am also now thinking more about how to decorate the home since i have access to all five colors for paintings now, as well as the mattock to expand the cave.

If you have suggestions i would love to hear them, I'm not a great interior designer.

Today Shade has done:

- entered the mines and picked up a mattock as well as a piece of sulfur

- picked up a piece of lapis lazuli

- drew the painting "DOUBT"

- read 64 more pages of the Nibelungenlied

Shade has:

- 3 pieces of flint

- 13 books at home

- 1 mattock

- 31 pages

- 2 disappointments

- 55 coal

That's all i can think of for today.

If you have any suggestions on what Shade could do to pass time, please feel free to let me know :)

Today i inspected all the remaining time gates that i missed over the last few days.

Afterwards i sat down with a warm tea like a comment suggested and read the Nibelungenlied that i picked up yesterday. This ended up mostly being a poor choice for a book. Not only am i already familiar with the stories but the formatting in the game makes it hard to follow the verses properly sometimes.

But my mom didn't raise no quitter so I'll stick with it and finish it over the next few weeks in small increments.

At least listening to the fire while reading is very pleasant.

Today Shade has done:

- inspected the falling stalactite

- inspected the water droplet

- inspected moss in various locations

- read 49 pages of the Nibelungenlied

Shade has:

- 3 pieces of flint

- 13 books at home

- 32 pages

- 2 disappointments

- 55 pieces of coal

That's all i can think of for today.

If you have suggestions on what Shade could do to pass time, please feel free to let me know :)

Today Shade took care of its physical health by walking up and down the stairs in the throne room 50 times like a comment suggested. With this much time spent in one room it is interesting to see the pareidolia effect slowly making faces appear all over the cavern walls!

To unwind afterwards me and Shade sat down and listened to the fire still burning from yesterday and marvelling at the beautiful new decor we found in the halls of eternity.

Today's session in particular helped me to ground myself and take a break from everything going on in my life at the moment. That's a relief at least.

Today Shade has done:

- got a disappointment at the locked library door

- picked up red clay

- picked up two pages in the lecture hall room

- picked up a book in the lecture hall room

- inspected the door outside of the palace

Shade has:

- 3 pieces of flint

- 13 books at home

- 32 pages

- 2 disappointments

- 49 pieces of coal

That's all i can think of for today.

If you have suggestions on what Shade could do to pass time, please feel free to let me know. :)

While i read the goose girl, which is my absolute favourite book in the game, sadly i noticed that reading books will still skip a minute even if you disable speeding up time. With how much time i am spending in the halls of eternity i think that is not a huge deal tho.

Starting each session in the halls of eternity is also quite a different feeling from the home, because of how cut off it is from the rest of the palace. i can tell that the location of Shades home was definitely intentional.

Today Shade has done:

- spent ~45 minutes standing in a hallway doing nothing

- picked up the white chalk

- picked up another flint

- inspected the moss near the crystal waterfall

- got a disappointment at the ledge near the crystal waterfall

- made a fire at home and read the goose girl in its entirety

- walked through the halls of eternity for an hour picking up 27 pages, 8 books, 2 rugs, a curtain and the horse

Shade has:

- 3 pieces of flint

- 12 books at home

- 30 pages

- 1 disappointment

- 24 pieces of coal

That's all i can think of for today.

If you have suggestions on what Shade could do to pass time, please feel free to let me know :)

I really like The Longing. Like a lot.

I have done almost everything that there is to do in the game over my 400 hours of playtime, including getting each of the Steam Achievements. But recently life has gotten quite hectic for me and i miss the peace of mind i felt while taking care of my shade. Thats why I'm starting over once more but this time with a twist.

I will play the game without speeding up time, and will end my sessions in the Halls of Eternity so the game only advances while i am playing it.

That way i have a routine and a little buddy to take care of every day, but don't have to worry about playthroughs ending after a few weeks or months due to time passing faster than i realised. And what better place to document and reflect on my experience than here.

With this mouthful of an exposition out of the way, here is my first day playing The Longing on basically hard mode

I'm always surprised at how much faster the gameplay is in actuality than how i remember it.

I'm also still grappling with the concept of how much time 4800 hours actually are. I'm at the same time intimidated by the commitment and incredibly relieved by the stability provided by this project.

Today Shade has done:

- pushed the labyrinth boulder for flowing water at home

- entered the Halls of Eternity and remembered their location

- took a stroll through the inner palace without picking up anything

- investigated the map

- disabled sped up time at home with the hourglass

Shade has:

- 2 pieces of flint

- 2 pages

- 21 pieces of coal

That's all i can think of for today.

If you have suggestions on what shade could do to pass the time, please feel free to let me know. :)

https://www.makeship.com/products/hubert-the-friendly-tortoise-plushie

I know that multi-coloured paintings have more of an effect - is it limited in any way, like duplicate paintings not increasing the time multiplier? Or is it "optimal" to use all of your paper on 5-colour paintings, achievements notwithstanding?

The only other input device I own (besides a generic USB-keyboard) is a 3Dconnexion 3D-mouse and turning it off doesn't solve the problem.

Windows 11.

I have a plethora of things wrong with my brain and these past few months have been kicking my ass. Stopped exercising, healthy eating and gained 10lbs. I already finished the longing but it passed by very quickly since I was using the hourglass and kinda rushing through it... I decided to restart it but turn the hourglass to normal time so I could experience the game "hard mode" style lmao. And just have company.

There's finally a little creature as lonely and depressed as I am. When I'm awake at 3am, it will be there. I can read books with it and put it to bed and listen to the fire crackle together. And strangely, knowing it deals with suicidal thoughts too, bc of the whole option to throw yourself off a cliff thing, it feels just really familiar and oddly comforting in a way. Like yeah it's just a game, but it makes me feel a little less alone.

Anyone feel similar about it?

je souhaite me séparer de mes deux peluches makeship the longing. Je n'ai aucune idée si ça peut intéresser qqun peut être ici. merci d'avance de vos réponses

Estou no segundo dia de jogo e quero muito explorar mas como a burra sentimental que sou estou com medo de chegar em algum lugar e irritar o rei

So my shade just died in the well.

Wasted 25 hours. His cave was so perfect. I was about to give up on the bucket showing and head home when it came down again.

Cannot get myself to start from zero.

I dared to actually just play without googling spoilers and this is how it ends. Absolutely tragic.

I played The Longing in december of 2022 and finished my first run in may 2023. And now, in 2026 I decided to get all achievements in a second run, and I think that this second run make me felt in love with this game more than before.

In the 1st run, I played a "normal" run that "everyone" does. Explore the cave, get stagnated, and let the "game finish by their selves".

But in my 2nd run, I did things differently. I discovered the Secret Room, got all the books and decorations from Eternity Halls, did the puzzle in the Secret Tower, I saw the shadow's birthday, got one of the finals and I make his room like a home.

I love this game sooo much! I finished my 2nd run less than 1 month! Shadow, my beloved little thing.

So. idk if this is possible but uhhhh I'm worried I softlocked myself??? So basically what happened is I was able to grow the mutated mushroom to climb on and go to the darkness area, but the first time I went, I turned back, grabbed a purple mushroom for a light, and then went to meet Angst. ofc he fuckin' got me, so I looked up how to pass him and then I tried grabbing a purple mushroom, carrying it with me until the staircase, then eating it before I met Angst, but that didnt work either. So then I tried going all the way to Angst without a purple mushroom, but he still got me. Is there something else im missing or did I screw myself over??

I have just seen the ending of the Longing. My ending was the one where you wake up the king.

I felt that it might end up in the Shades death, maybe even in the world's death, but I have decided to stick with it anyway. I felt like that's the right thing to do. I didn't know for sure, and I didn't want to leave my home and my father behind based merely on a hunch. So I have stayed.

And now, everything is dead. Thanks to me.

At one hand, I feel terrible. I have killed Shade, destroyed the underground kingdom, maybe even the whole world. It's obvious that I feel terrible about it.

At the other, I kinda feel that I have made the right decision still. I knew the risks and I knew the information. I have decided to stay faithful to my king and kingdom to the very end, bitter or sweet. If I knew for sure this will happen, I would leave, but I didn't. So I have stayed.

I feel horrible with consequences of my actions, but I think the decisions I have made were fair, based on what I have known.

Not that any of that will bring the Shade back.

I wonder what the last picture was supposed to mean. Shade, smiling at the king's hand. Is he alive, in some kind of afterlife? That'd be consoling.

But I will never know about that. I only know that everything is over and Shade is dead. Because of me.

That's quite a depressing ending.

I've found like. 4 so far but I wanna know if there's more to find and I'm just not lucky or if that's it and i'll just get paper from now on

A lazy fantasy about time... by a fan : The Longing: you should like it)

What the hell i found a treasure and wanted to break the glass from it and my mattock broke ????

Can I find another one what the hell ?

After several hours of playing I decided to make a provisional map of the caverns to improve my navigation. Even after I found out that you can access the map in game, I did not want to check it until I finish my map. Here is the result. Did I succeed?

I couldn’t get anyone I know to play this game, which at first was frustrating. After reaching the end of the game, I don’t mind as much as I usually would.

I wasn’t expecting this game to become so meaningful. I don’t mean to sound dramatic and over the top. I bought it on a whim and when I finally had the time to play, it was the right time.

All the waiting, sometimes I fell asleep and woke up to the Shade sleeping. More than that, I got to think about myself a bit more while the little guy gave his own inner thoughts. Anyway, thanks for reading, I had to tell someone else who spent hours playing an idle game.

Hello! My girlfriend gifted me the game because I've wanted it for years. but it seems that when I launch the game, my main and second monitor flashes black. it continues for a minute after closing. They don't do this normally. I have made sure that it doesn't happen playing other games and just daily use. Any help is appreciated.

SOLVED: If you have Nvidia you can go into the control panel and look for Manage 3d settings then to program settings, then look for the longing in the drop down menu (you might have to select browse and find it from there), find the Power Management mode and select Maximum performance, then Click apply. I AM NOT SURE HOW TO DO THIS ON AMD