Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 14, 2023

The Longing is a 2020 point-and-click adventure game by independent game developer Studio Seufz. The player controls the Shade, a creature tasked with watching over a sleeping king in an underground kingdom for 400 days. Developer Anselm Pyta conceived of The Longing after hearing the Kyffhäuser legend while visiting the Barbarossa Cave (pictured). Pyta sought to explore emotional themes in a narrative-driven story, and used time as a game mechanism. As the primary developer for most of the game's six-year production, he had to rely upon intuition to design the pacing due to playtesting difficulties. The Longing was released for Windows, macOS, and Linux on March 5, 2020, and for the Nintendo Switch on April 14, 2021. It gained praise for its soundtrack, visuals, and experimental nature, but the slow-paced gameplay divided critics. Released during the COVID-19 pandemic, it was compared by many to life under quarantine, and won the "Best Debut" award at the 2020 Deutscher Computerspielpreis.