Each story is up for interpretation – what story lives inside you for each character and the world around them? Be swept away by the haunting and sentimental lyrics of over twenty-four original, emotionally charged songs, sung by one of the developers. Play in the songs of four short stories featuring stripped down mechanics and no words. The Longest Road on Earth is a deeply personal and meditative narrative title. So what is it about? That, I think, should be up to you.Play in a song. It's a striking soundtrack, and it reinforces the mood wonderfully, and I think in the lyrics you can find some of the strongest clues as to what the game is about. And throughout it all, that folk music plays. It's a slow game, though it lasts only around two hours. Am I, in some way, seeing the things I see in life reflected back at me? And those are the people on the train you look at.Īnd is the person she let go the one you walk around a metropolis (that is probably New York) with a toolbox, while looking for work? And why does he gaze at tuxedos in shop windows, and why does he always seem to gravitate towards pianos? Is he a pianist underneath all of that, dreaming of performing on the big stages?Īnd what of the two workers at the shipping company? Are they two sides of the same coin, one fortunate, and one not? Or have I got it all wrong? Am I simply seeing in these vignettes the kinds of stories that revolve around me in my life. I had to choose my lunch below, for example. The game is usually seen side-on like this but it's interspersed with close-ups of objects in lots of detail. Or is she? This is the mouse lady on her porch. She seems lonely, she seems nostalgic for days gone by. Now, she eats alone, and sits on the porch on her own. What is the mouse lady's story about at the beginning? She seems to be suddenly in an empty house, thinking about someone who's no longer there, who has perhaps grown up and gone out into the world to find their own life. These are the questions that bubble up, the 'what's going on?'s. Is that why no one runs? Is that why the world has no colour in it? Incidentally, there is a wonderful moment when someone does run, unshackled by life, and it feels joyous. And while you're on the train, there's nothing to do but observe: to look at the lamp on the table, or to look at the people opposite you, faces pulled down by life. Actually, there's a lot of riding the train. They hang out washing, they walk to work, they ride the train. They are normal people doing normal things. We don't run around all day do we? No, so why should they? They are not ninjas or people doing extraordinary things, as in many games.
Even little things like characters walking instead of running creates a jarring feeling. There's a real delicacy to the way the game moves, a grace. Watch on YouTube This is the opening part of the game, after the credits. What connects them, if anything? You decide. There are just animal-people going about their lives. There's no dialogue, no text, no overt declaration of what is going on. Not only is the game about the silences in life, it's deliberately creating silence so you can fill them with interpretations of what you think they're about. Unlatch the mind from whatever you have it attached to and it begins to wander, and wonder.
#The longest road on earth android
Availability: Released 27th May on Steam (£8), and on iOS and Android (£3.59)Ĭurious things happen when you slow down.And that's the point of the opening: to settle you down and prepare you for something quite different. I'm hammering every button I can think of to get the game moving because normally games get moving by now, and who has time for this? But The Longest Road on Earth makes you make time. But, unhurriedly, the names of the developers appear on the screen, and breathy folk music whispers in your ear. Three minutes feels like an eternity to not do something in a game. It's a gutsy game that makes you sit through a three-minute opening credits sequence of just a slow pan along a long road - a pixelated black and white road - and not let you skip it.
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