Faster than light travel sounds more trouble than it’s worth. Releasing May 30 on Steam, the procedurally generated space RPG The Long Journey Home has players trying to make their way back to Earth, after their first hyper-jump goes horribly wrong.
Our preview of The Long Journey Home should help you decide if you want to take this trip.
Abandoning you at the far edge of the universe following your disastrous jump, The Long Journey Home has you taking charge of a four-person spaceship with dwindling supplies. As your ship wasn’t prepared for being catapulted to the other side of the universe, ship captains will have to constantly repair their vessel as they hop from planet to planet. Just landing on a new world isn’t easy, as The Long Journey Home has players grappling with actual planetary gravity when trying to land for a reconnaissance mission. From there, explorers will have to scavenge whatever they can from a planet’s surface, with each excursion risking ship damage and the possible loss of a crew member.
You will meet aliens along the way, with each run featuring four of the eight possible empires that exist within The Long Journey Home’s wider universe. Just successfully communicating with one of these alien races is a challenge, as you’ll have to factor in the natural language barrier between you and that multi-armed ship commander. Certain responses may be considered polite or highly disrespectful, so mind your manners around other species. While the aliens you may meet in a run may differ, key characters and behaviours will stay the same.
An average journey home should take your average space captain about six to eight hours to complete, with one successful run showing you about 20% of the game’s content according to Daedelic. With players gaining mastery of their ship’s controls and learning how to schmooze aliens from here to Betelgeuse, each successive journey back to Earth should reveal new content for players to enjoy.
The Long Journey Home will launch May 30 on Steam, going for $39.99.