Hi!
Today I'm talking about a game I've played for the first time a loooooong time ago, in 2017. To be honest that was just the demo (I remember I found it on Gamejolt) a lot of time ago, so I was pretty much thrilled when I learned that the game was fully released on 10th October 2023 (found it here!). So I played it, and you know what? Not only now it's a complete adventure, but it also has fully revamped graphics compared to the one I saw in the demo (and I replayed it recently, just to be sure).

The game is a military role playing game and adventure set in a dystopic near-future, written and illustrated by Camila Gormaz, with Pablo Videla also as writer and Camilo Sáez as programmer. While the game was made in Unity, it shares a lot of aspects that I found in many rpgmaker games, such as the 1st person turn based battles (with special moves), the party of four different characters (even if there are more available), and puzzles.


Oh yes, the game is an adventure that includes some classic puzzles! Old good pushing rocks minigame.

The game is a story-driven adventure that tells us about Rourke, s young sniper that is called to replace the other sniper, Coyle, after he had an accident.
Rourke is a recruit in the Core, a secret isolated nation underground. So, after a tutorial inside the underground base, Rourke leaves the place for his first mission. But things will not go as planned, and he'll deserts together with a medic colleague Adair after witnessing the horrors he was forced to commit by the military. And that's just the beginning of the story that happened in the demo, but of course now there is much more to see... so play and see!

I'll start from the aestetics: it's something that really impressed me when I played the demo, because the game not only uses all custom assets, but also mixes two different styles: a great pixel art (for the exploration and sniping parts), and an "animesque" style for the portraits, battlers and cutscenes. And they mix really well, the game is full of nice details, colorful and immersive. It's also a pretty unusual setting for an rpg game. Music and sounds are likewise pretty good, they were already very good in the demo, so I expected no less!

Concerning the gameplay, this is a linear adventure that is also a mix of different genres: we have sniper shooting sections, classic rpgmaker-styled battles, puzzles, fetch quests, and also some visual-novel style parts. An important mechanic is in fact the morale, that influences how the various characters perform in battle, and this changes depending on the dialogues choices. Oh yes, I say characters because this adventure has a party of four different party members, each one with his or her own skills and abilities.


This is the modern world so all our battles are actually firefights!

For example Adair, he's the second party member we'll encounter, and he's a medic, and as you can guess he's pretty good at healing people. During battles we can target various body parts (more or less like in Fear & Hunger), with various results: hitting the head is hard but it ensures a quick victory, hitting the arms means disarming the opponent, while the chest... well it's resistant to damage (often protected by armor) but it's also the easiest target. Anyway we've battles also against non-human opponents like drones, and clearly the variout targettable "body parts" will be different.

I like how the game does not use random battles, but all encounters are fixed, meaning that there is no grinding, and that's good also because each battle is unique, and besides using the various skills and choosing the right targets, it's also necessary to manage the inventory item, like healing consumables and special bullets.

In this adventure we can save the game interacting with the ravens scattered around the world (why ravens? Because it's the name of Rourke's unit, the Ravens). The game is pretty much linear but there are two possible endings that are triggered by one choice towards the end that is possible only with high morale. Of course that is the best ending.


Well, you know which option I'll choose here of course. Anyway, just for this part only, it's GOTY!

Final Verdict
Long Gone Days for me was an excellent experience, because it was a mixture of genres (roleplay, shooter, visual novel, puzzle) that works. The story is very interesting and original, I'm pretty sure that there aren't many adventure games with a military near-future setting, but this is surely one of the best. As you can see this is a really pretty game and the gameplay is something that will let you enjoy the story but also use some strategy, even if it's not a particularly challenging game. Also do not expect supernatural events or magic, this is not a fantasy game but a "20 minutes into the future" story on how damaging the threat of war is to civilian society, a pretty dark theme. But the game is instead good, really. Recommended!