The Long Journey Home is a Fantastic Procedural Voyage

It feels a lot like the Oregon Trail in space

Imagine you are a space explorer but a crucial test goes awry. As a result, you get hurled through space to the far side of the galaxy, and suddenly your short trip turns into an epic journey for survival and to find a way to get back home. Welcome to The Long Journey Home, which feels a lot like the Oregon Trail in space. The Long Journey Home blends a combination of simulation, strategy, and exploration into a seamless and beautiful game.

At the beginning of each game the first order of business is to select a team of four people to be your crewmates. Each person has different abilities and different abilities and weaknesses, so the combination you chose will make a big difference. Although, since an individual gameplay is procedurally generated after you make the team selections there is some uncertainty in making these choices. When I played at PAX East I tried to choose a balanced crew which covered the most areas, but it is impossible to cover everything with only four people to choose from.

The first thing I noticed after I was flung to the far side of the galaxy was there are a lot of star systems on the way back home. There is some flexibility on where I could go but there were some star systems which would only let you travel to certain other ones so it’s not quite linear but it isn’t completely free for all travel.

Additionally, resources are a concern. For instance, traveling around expends fuel and landing on a planet also expends fuel. I could harvest things to make more fuel but of course that also costs resources. Balancing these factors is a huge part of the game.

Once I got into a solar system figuring out how to maneuver the ship to get caught by the gravity of one of the planets was much more of a challenge than I expected it to be. I not only had to get the trajectory right but the speed of the ship also needed to be good or else I would just blow by the planet completely. Since all of this happens in space once the ship got going it pretty much kept going until I would turn the ship around and fire the thrusters in the opposite direction. All of this is pretty simple in concept but was difficult to get the hang of.

What would space travel be without aliens? It’d be super boring that’s what! As I traveled around I encountered some aliens who were looking to barter with me and I was given a variety of options to deal with them. While I ran into traders there’s also the potential to run into pirates, warriors, or aliens who are none to happy about your crew taking resources from their planets. How each are handled is left up to the player and helps to create a different experience each time a game is started.

Daeldalic Entertainment wasn’t ready to discuss when Long Journey Home would be released but it will be available on Steam, PS4, and Xbox One.

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