Long Gone Days is a promising character-driven RPG set in a modern-era dystopia.
Long Gone Days
Developer: Camila “Bura” Gormaz
Platform: PC (previewed), Mac
For twelve years, Camila Gormaz has been working on the story and characters for Long Gone Days. Now the game is in development and soon to begin a crowdfunding campaign, with a free demo available.
Long Gone Days describes itself as a “2D modern-day character-driven military RPG” with a dystopian setting and visual novel elements. It stars a sniper named Rourke, who has lived his entire life in the Core, an isolated, underground base. When he is finally deployed to the surface, he deserts when he learns the truth about their mission.
The blend of genres is handled well. Rourke presents his thoughts and narrates actions in a visual novel format, which extends to a strong focus on dialogue. At its core, Long Gone Days plays like a turn-based RPG, but with twists on the typical formula. There are no random encounters, only set battles during the story. You do not level up, but instead learn new skills and upgrade your weapons.
When you attack, you can aim at different parts of the enemy. Some parts are more vulnerable than others, but also less easy to hit. Targeting an enemy’s head might seem like the most effective, but your accuracy will be much lower than if you aim at their body.
Each character has skills, but they don’t consume an energy gauge. Instead, skills use items. For example, your party member in the demo is Adair, a medic. He can heal you in battle if you have the right items, such as bandages. Rourke’s skill is a special shot that uses more powerful bullets.
Finally, each party member has a Morale gauge. High Morale increases your evasion and chance of making critical hits, while Low Morale lowers your accuracy and defense. If a character’s Morale hits zero, they won’t be able to fight. Morale is impacted by dialogue choices, and the right answer isn’t always obvious. My attempts to boost Adair’s spirits through optimism lowered his Morale because he could tell I was lying.
A few other gameplay twists show up in the demo. At one point I scanned an area with Rourke’s sniper rifle to shoot down targets. At another point, I pushed rocks to clear a path as part of a simple puzzle.
Overall, the gameplay felt solid, so what about the story?
At first glance, it might not sound like anything special. Dystopian fiction has been popular enough over the last few years to no longer feel fresh. However, while the basic premise of the demo had enough familiarity for me to suspect where it was headed, the presentation and characters kept me interested. The demo takes under an hour to complete, but that short amount of time was enough for me to become invested in Rourke and Adair’s story.
Long Gone Days has a lot of potential. It has some interesting twists on typical RPG gameplay, paired with a character-driven story that is off to a good start.
