Today we are talking about the first part of a long journey – the longest of all journeys to be exact. In the first part of the game series “The Longest Journey”, we get caught up in an adventure with art student April Ryan that directly threatens the existence of two worlds. Let’s talk about how that worked out here.

I started “The Longest Journey” ages ago; Unfortunately, I can’t remember why I never played it that far. However, it came back to me recently, and since I love playing point and click games, I bought it for the stream; since it’s not available digitally, oldschool on a CD.

After a few technical difficulties, due to the time difference between the release of the game and the release of Windows 10, we got going: we dived into a dream from April, which explained the basic game mechanics on the one hand and on the other was an important part of the plot – which we were only able to understand later.

In terms of game mechanics, “The Longest Journey” doesn’t reinvent anything: we click to run, we click to interact. We can examine, combine and use things to solve easier and harder puzzles – some of them were really tough, but more on that later.

The game really surprised me graphically. Although it comes in a crisp 800×600 pixels, it looks very detailed – hardly anything blurred so much with the surroundings that it was no longer recognizable, which is a challenge with this resolution – as difficult as the puzzles were sometimes, it never was due to the fact that we couldn’t find items. The cutscenes, on the other hand, were elaborately (well, for the time) made movies that looked superb (again, for the age). I have to say it was really fun to watch.

But what is the game actually about? As I said before, we’re April Ryan – an art student at a prestigious university who desperately needs to get a painting done. But for some reason, strange things are happening. First we only see shadows of another world, later we are completely drawn in. We think it’s a dream, but soon learn the truth – there’s actually more worlds than we thought.

I want to keep the article as spoiler-free as possible regarding the story of the game, so here is just some background information: the world originally had two sides: one logical (scientific) and one magical. However, there were many problems with it, so that the worlds were separated at some point: Stark (the logical, “real” world) and Arcadia (the magical world). A person has been appointed keeper, and that keeper controls the balance of both worlds. Although, controls is the wrong word, he maintains it more and makes sure there are no problems.

Now that there are indeed problems, you can probably guess what happened. The old keeper is gone, the new keeper is nowhere to be found. Therefore, we take on the matter more or less voluntarily and go on a journey to prepare everything for the new keeper – this is where the description of the story ends.

It should be clear to every Point & Click fan that the journey is not particularly straightforward – but I didn’t know beforehand how far we would deviate from the course. Because “The Longest Journey” lives up to its name. In Arcadia as well as in Stark we visit many different places and have to solve various puzzles – but somehow you don’t get tired of the game. I don’t know why, but I was totally engrossed in the very extensive backstory, which continues to expand as you play – although we spent a lot of time on this game, it could have been longer for my sake.

In addition to the extensive, complex, and well told story, there is of course the second main element of such a game – the puzzles. I’ve mentioned several times that they pack a punch, and I mean it. There are many complex connections between the goal we want to achieve and the items we have. Some are fairly simple and clear, however some are very complex and require you to think very far outside the box – I had a lot of fun. Unfortunately, there were also a puzzle or two that I didn’t come up with, but they were all criticized for their design in reviews of the game – so at least I wasn’t the only one.

At this point I have to commend the solution book available on the CD. You can jump right to the point where you get stuck and get an explanation. It’s a shame I have to admit that I resorted to it – luckily I didn’t spoil myself for subsequent puzzles.

All in all, I was enthusiastic about this game – so enthusiastic that we also played the two sequels straight away. But we will deal with that in another article. For me it remains to be seen that I don’t know why I stopped the game at the time. But starting it again was definitely the right decision. The game offers very appropriate humor, beautiful designs, great voice acting and a gripping story with a lot of details – I hope we will find another masterpiece like this soon!

How did you like the game? Was it exciting to watch? Have you played it yourself? Was the journey too long for you? Feel free to join the discussion on Discord!