Rating
The Long Reach
At its heart The Long Reach is an adventure game. Closer inspection also reveals it's a thrilling horror story, flavoured with sci-fi ideology, psychological context and a skeptical view on the human psyche.
Details
- Released
- March 13, 2018
- Developer
- Painted Black Games
- Genres
- Puzzle · Role-playing (RPG) · Adventure · Indie
- Publisher
- Merge Games
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The Long Reach Reviews
Professional reviews from gaming critics
What The Long Reach may occasionally lack in originality, it more than makes up for in inventiveness, personality, and bubbling slow-burn horror chills. This is a well-written, atmospheric horror adventure, and it deserves your attention.
A deeply layered story with the scares to match, The Long Reach brings back the basics of psychological-horror by keeping players both intrigued and nervous until the very end.
Overall, The Long Reach was an interesting experience encompassed with an array of psychological horrors. The happenings in Baervox are a bit of a headscratcher, but that's the point - you're not supposed to fully comprehend what's going on.
All told, The Long Reach could have used some more time in the oven. It presents issues that seem readily solvable—lighting, object highlighting, proof reading—but in its current form, the game is frustrating and not particularly enjoyable. Maybe some of the problems can be patched out, but until that happens, I can’t recommend The Long Reach despite its intriguing storyline.
I left the game feeling frustrated more than anything else. With arbitrary, esoteric puzzles and a wildly inconsistent tone exacerbated by technical issues, I found it hard to get sucked into the game’s atmosphere. The clever plot twists and unique setting were all but drowned out by errant jokes about office politics. Your co-worker is demanding blood sacrifice to an eldritch abomination named Alan, and you’re still going to make a quip about your coffee cup going missing?! Get your act together, Stewart.
For $14.99, I think The Long Reach is a solid game that should be looked at by anyone interested in adventure games or short, bite-sized indie titles. While it doesn't do anything that's new gameplay-wise, I found the narrative to be intriguing throughout and worth sitting through to the end. I'd say the game is best experienced on a big screen, with speakers or a headset that'll make each scenario feel all the tenser. I can't imagine the experience would be nearly as compelling on-the-go with the Switch version. While it's by no means the best the genre has to offer, this adventure is definit...