For better and for worse, Long Gone Days plays it safe in a lot of ways. This game by no means features a unique blend of elements, and Long Gone Days does very little to expand on your expectations of the genre. If you have ever played a game of this type before, odds are, you are very unlikely to see much in this title that you haven’t seen somewhere else. On top of that, if you have much experience with RPGs you’ve also probably seen most of those elements done better. This doesn’t mean Long Gone Days isn’t worth your time though.

"The cast of characters is typical RPG fare. A NPC who later becomes a friend, an ambiguous love interest, and a handful of other characters that do very little to stay memorable."

What Long Gone Days lacks in innovation it usually makes up for in its execution. The gameplay, while somewhat shallow and predictable, is serviceable and manages to stay effectively entertaining most of the time. The majority of gameplay is either walking around talking to characters and exploring small to medium-sized areas, sniper sections, and relatively simple turn-based fights. Like I said, nothing you haven’t seen before. Past the half-way point, it did start to get a little old and the predictability did it no favors, but I wouldn’t say it got boring. The overall experience never totally lost its footing with me mostly thanks to the excellent pacing and the generous portions of above-average dialogue and storytelling between combat sections.

This brings me to my next point; the story. Long Gone Days is set in a dystopian near-future where the planet’s surface is engulfed in conflict and disarray, where our protagonist, Rourke, who has spent the majority of his life following military protocol and obeying orders finds himself faced with a situation that he cannot bear and decides to break free from his normal way of thinking as well as his superiors. Like most elements of Long Gone Days, the story and setting isn’t terribly unique, but also is executed well. Most of the more impactful moments in the story are interesting, and a few of them crossed into being straight-up compelling, and had me on the edge of my seat. The cast of characters is typical RPG fare. A NPC who later becomes a friend, an ambiguous love interest, and a handful of other characters that do very little to stay memorable.

This is perhaps the story’s weakest element. While none of the characters were completely worthless, none of them, including our hero, really reached the heights of being remarkable enough to really pull me into being consistently empathetic towards them. I also didn’t even really see any effort in the writing to try to do that, so I was left notably disappointed in the lack of surprises and intrigue from the individual cast members themselves. That being said, they do carry the story to the end and some of the choices you can make while talking to them do have serious impact on how they may behave later, so that did help a lot in terms of keeping me interested. I just wish it could have been a little more than that.

"While I do enjoy most of the visual elements of the game, the audio is probably where it shined the brightest for me. The ominous, haunting soundtrack goes a very long way to holding on to the mood and keeping the player emotionally connected to the moments that really need it."

Visually the game looks great. The stills during story-sections are beautifully crafted and fun to look at, with some of them featuring multiple layers that provide some much-appreciated depth. I would have enjoyed a few more of them per scene, though, as they did seem to linger a little longer than most moments called for, but I guess if my main complaint about your art is that I wish there was more of it, then I suppose that’s not the worst problem to have, right? The gameplay presentation is nice and colorful as well. Lots of nice little animations that you don’t see in every game of this genre- certainly not at this price point- and I rather enjoyed them all the way through.

From item boxes opening, enemy death animations, and even the casual little motions other non-playable characters make while talking to each other, the game takes most of the opportunities it could have to bring quality, thoughtful animations into the equation. Unfortunately the same cannot be said about the animations during fight scenes, which are bland, simple, and make the already simple combat feel more hollow than even some mobile games I’ve played for free. This is a shame because they did nail the fundamentals of classic RPG-style combat, and all they had to do was go a little further to not have these moments feel like such a step down from the rest of the game. A little more effort in this area would have gone a long way. Even still, for the price tag, Long Gone Days has a lot more to compliment in the visual department than complain about.

"Long Gone Days is indeed a mixed bag, but fortunately the mixture is mostly comprised of things that range from good to great and very few actual problems."

While I do enjoy most of the visual elements of the game, the audio is probably where it shined the brightest for me. The ominous, haunting soundtrack goes a very long way to holding on to the mood and keeping the player emotionally connected to the moments that really need it. Tracks differ greatly at times, but always feel like they are part of the same experience, which is a delicate balance lots of independent games struggle to master. The songs are simple and feature very few voices and I found the level of simplicity very complimentary to the other elements that make up the game. Where I might have had complaints about simplicity elsewhere in the game, I enjoyed it in the songs and ambiance that accompanied certain levels. Even the sound of dialogue text generating at the bottom of the screen stood out to me as an excellent choice.

Long Gone Days is indeed a mixed bag, but fortunately the mixture is mostly comprised of things that range from good to great and very few actual problems. Whatever problems I do have, after put into context with the price point, are rendered basically negligible. The elements that make up this game are almost entirely things you’ve already seen in the genre it occupies, and like I said, it wouldn’t be hard to find games that pull off similar combinations much better, but between the largely above average presentation, outstanding soundtrack, a handful of truly compelling moments, and a very friendly price point, fans of independent RPGs and visual novels certainly shouldn’t ignore it.

This game was reviewed on the PC.

• 1. Development
• 2. Story
• 3. Gameplay
• 4. Characters

Development

The concept of Long Gone Days was first played with in 2003 by creator Camila Gormaz in the RPG Maker 2000 toolkit. The characters would be developed over 12 years inside Gormaz’s mind and she would begin development in earnest sometime in 2015. Gormaz would release a demo of the title on RPG Maker forums and itch.io on May 13, 2016 and the OSX port of the demo became available on July 14.

The game was posted to Steam Greenlight on May 25, 2016 where it reached 9th place before being approved by the community driven service. It will be available on a variety of other services as well.

The demo became popular and received incredibly glowing praise from users, with a 5/5 rating on itch.io. The success of the demo spurred Gormaz to launch a crowdfunding campaign on July 11, 2016 to Indiegogo, which reached its funding goal with $21,300 USD just one month later on August 11, 2016. One of the questions answered during the campaign was how long the game will be, to which it was revealed that a single play through should last roughly 4 to 5 hours, but the game has two distinct endings to achieve.

Story

Something of a mixture of a wartime thriller and the Metro series, players take control of Rourke, a hot-headed sniper from the unofficial underground country known as “The Core”. The Core is a dystopian regime where every single person is trained for a singular job from birth and very little else. Rourke was of course, raised to be a sniper. However on his first ever deployment where he’s sent with little warning to aid Polish forces in Kaliningrad, Rourke discovered a horrifying truth about his mission and The Core’s true aims after he unknowingly kills civilians in a false flag operation.

Leaving behind everything he has ever known he allies with with a combat medic known as Adair. Rourke decides that he cannot partake in the war crimes of The Core and desserts his post. Without much of a clue of the direction he hopes to take to do it, the two become hunted deserters, enemies of The Core and hope only to prevent the war that their homeland wants to start. The two join up with a shelter who fights from the shadows shortly before the demo cuts off.

Gameplay

Long Gone Days is ostensibly an RPG with some visual novel elements, but very unique in its mechanics. The story is similar to modern day plots, and does not feature supernatural or fantasy elements like magic. Turn based RPG battles allow players to decide where to aim on a target, all of which have their own likelihood of being hit and effects for doing so. Your party is driven by their morale, which can change  based on dialog choices throughout the game and informs how they do in battle. A character without any morale will lose the will to fight and will be unable to engage in battle. As to exactly how to keep your party motivated, that varies from character to character, and the player will need to get to know them personally to do it effectively.

Aside from the turn based battles, a sniper mode feature is also available which asks the player to locate the correct targets and perform reconnaissance. The makeup of the team for each mission will matter as well, as each member has unique skills that make them shine for specific things and less adept in others. As the story takes place in a world not unlike our own, the NPCs will speak the native language of their country, demanding unique character classes called interpreters in order to act effectively.

Characters

A limited number of characters have been featured in the demo or profiled in prerelease media, and of those who have been profiled, there’s stunningly little for them. Nevertheless, that’s what updates are for and we’ll run down what we have.

The hero of the story is Rourke, and he’s a hard headed 22 year old man born and raised in The Core to be a deadly sniper. He has never been on a deployment before the events of the story, shadowing the other snipers instead as he trained. While he comes across as disinterested and self absorbed, he’s mostly bored. His deployment comes as a chance to escape his monotonous life, but when he realizes the horrors of his mission, his moral compass leads him to abandon his post without much hesitation.

He meets the serious and stoic combat medic Adair during his deployment. He’s a caring young man who unintentionally comes off rude because of his lack of humour. Underneath he’s a straightforward, honest guy who deeply cares about his fellow man.

Lynn is a 23 year old woman living in Kaliningrad with a great smile that keeps the team positive. She’s an expert at bomb crafting and a strategist who arrived to the shelter a few months before Rourke. She lives with a pacifistic older man, 29 year old Ivan Cherevatenko. He refused to partake in the fighting, but uses his skills as an English-Russian translator to help the party on their missions and teaches them about the world around them.

There is said to be a large cast of party members and a wide variety of characters to engage with in the full game, and we’ll be expanding this section once we know more about them.

Note: This wiki will be updated once we have more information about the game.