RPG Site has reviewed Long Gone Days:

Long Gone Days Review

Long Gone Days is a project that’s been in the works for many years, with a decent following throughout the original demo launch, crowdfunding, and early access release. Now with the final game out, it’s time to see the days through.

In Long Gone Days you play as Rourke, who was born and raised in The Core: an underground paramilitary (“underground” as in sub-surface, not secret, but also, it is secret). He’s been trained since birth to be a sniper, yet his first deployment opportunity arises when Rourke’s superior has broken his arm. On your first mission, you take out several enemies with ease, but when looking for stragglers you come across a kid. This is when you learn your true mission, and soon after, defect.

The first aspect of gameplay you'll experience is sniping, aiming for opponents with limited time and ammo. Thankfully these segments are pretty easy, and they don't show up very often after the beginning. The game is largely narrative-focused, with actual combat encounters being few and far between bouts of dialogue. These fights are turn-based, allowing up to the standard four party members at a time. As a sniper, you can choose to aim at different body parts. Aiming for the head has a lower chance of hitting but deals the most damage, hitting the arms or equivalent rolls a small chance to induce paralysis and the main body is the easiest to hit but can sometimes feel not worth the little damage it deals. In practice, however, I was able to land headshots frequently enough that I only aimed elsewhere if I needed to stall the enemy. I otherwise found paralysis so rare to trigger without special items.

[...]

I didn’t have any preconceptions about the game before experiencing it for myself, which given the changes to the game since early access is likely a good thing. The hand-holding was grating, but the overall story is good, mostly grounded, and the combat was decently balanced with every party member being viable outside of their strong connections. If you’re looking for a narrative-focused RPG that touches on modern issues, that have been long ongoing, Long Gone Days is a great option.

Score: 7/10

Thanks Couchpotato!

The modern RPG Long Gone Days will be released today:

Long Gone Days

Long Gone Days is a 2D modern-day military RPG set in our current times, with a focus on language and cultural barriers, inspired by classic dystopian literature and visual novels.

After being deployed to his first mission, Rourke leaves The Core's base for the very first time, only to discover the dark truth about the operation he's part of and the consequences of deserting an inescapable war.

With no place to call home now, he must prevent the war from spreading any further, forming strong bonds along the way that will forever change his life.

• Communication is Key: As Long Gone Days is set in the real world, you'll encounter several language barriers. Recruit interpreters in order to communicate with others.
• Keep Morale High: Choose dialogue options wisely as they impact your party members' Morale, affecting how they perform during battles. While doing so, keep in mind every character has different personality traits and motivations.
• Sniper Mode: Long Gone Days has two battle systems. Using Rourke's rifle, spot your enemies and take down your targets.
• No Random Encounters: Long Gone Days features front-view turn-based battles with body-targeting system, and every battle is directly related to the plot.

RPG Site interviewed the Camila Gormaz, the creator of Long Gone Days:

Long Gone Days Interview: Literary Inspirations and International Barriers

Long Gone Days is a long-awaited RPG by This I Dreamt. Crowdfunded in 2016, and then put into early access in 2018, it's been some time coming. With the release soon approaching I talked to Camila Gormaz, the project's creator, about the overall process and mechanics of the full release.

RPG Site: This game has been in the works for a while, once the game was announced how much change has it seen?

Camila Gormaz: The most important part of this release will be the addition of the final part of our story. We will finally see if our heroes are able to stop The Core once and for all. The player will also meet new allies in Poland, including a new interpreter that will help the party navigate this new environment.

Thanks to the feedback provided by the players during Early Access, we’ve made several changes and improvements. The most notable change is probably to our Morale mechanic. Originally it was integrated tightly into combat, but now it’s a bit decoupled and plays a bigger role in the story: your party’s morale can actually change the outcome of certain plotlines and unlock new quests.

Another major area of growth has been centered on characters and story. Based on all the love some characters got from the community, we also made sure to give them more screen time and more opportunities to get to know them better. We even added some additional scenes to the already released content, improved several levels and made plenty of quality-of-life changes.

RPG Site: It's my understanding that this was originally a solo project. As more people were added to work on this game, did anyone influence aspects of the game outside their roles?

Gormaz: Yes, Long Gone Days was originally my (Camila Gormaz) solo project. I started writing the story and the characters when I was about 12 years old, and growing up it was always at the back of my mind. In 2016 I released the prototype demo and then launched a crowdfunding campaign. After reaching its goal, the game had gotten too big to handle on my own, so I was going to need help. Since this game is so dear to me, I only wanted to work with people I fully trusted, and that’s where Camilo Valderrama and Pablo Videla come in.

All 3 of us share the same vision and values, and their input made the game way better than what I had in mind. Pablo has a lot of knowledge regarding history, storytelling and game design which made the world and lore of Long Gone Days feel more cohesive. Camilo’s the one who has more experience in this industry and he’s an amazing programmer as well, so thanks to him we improved a lot of the mechanics, performance and the quality of the game.

[...]

Thanks Couchpotato!

The modern day RPG Long Gone Days will leave Early Access on October 10:

Long Gone Days Announcement Trailer

Prepare for a thought-provoking journey where choices, language, and morality intertwine in the shadow of modern conflict. The gorgeous anti-war RPG Long Gone Days is releasing on PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox on October 10th!

The latest progress report for Long Gone Days announces a new OST and shows off the new UI.

It’s time for a new progress report! These last couple of months we’ve been working on the very last dungeon of the game and some sidequests for chapter 4.

We've been asked a couple of times if there are going to be significant changes to the game. The plot will remain exactly the same, but if you replay it, the most noticeable changes will be that the UI has been completely revamped:

In addition to this, we have added a wider range of facial expressions to some of the portraits, and most importantly, the soundtrack will be updated with original music composed by Sebastian Marin. Here are two of the new tracks:

loading...

loading...

Another thing we’ve been asked a couple of times is whether or not we’ll be adding Steam Achievements, and yes, it’s always been in our plans to add them on the full release version.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lgdays

Discord: http://discord.gg/longgonedays

The latest progress report from Long Gone Days pushes back the expected release to when its ready.

Important Announcement + Progress Report

27 Mar @ 4:19am - BURA

Last year we announced Long Gone Days would be released this coming April, but even though we have been working hard all this time to achieve that, we feel that more time is needed to reach our desired level of polish.

When we started working on Chapter 2, we thought it would be ready in just a couple of months. Because the script wasn’t nearly as long as our first chapter, we decided to work on it together with Chapter 3 (there are 4 chapters in total), so we could release both at the same time. On top of that, there were still fixes to be made to Chapter 1, and down the road, we realized that the amount of work required for this update would be even larger than we expected. Still, we made the mistake of believing we'd be able to deliver the full release in April.

At the moment, we don’t have a definitive date on the full release, because we don’t really want to make the same mistake again, but we can say with certainty that the next big story update of Long Gone Days is almost finished and will be released really soon.

[...]

Long Gone Days will release on Steam April 2019.

loading...

Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/510...
Itchio: https://laburatory.itch.io/lgd
Game Jolt: https://gamejolt.com/games/long-gone-...
Humble: https://www.humblebundle.com/g/lgd
More info at: http://longgonedays.com/

Long Gone Days is a 2D modern-day military RPG set in our current times, with a focus on language and cultural barriers, inspired by classic dystopian literature and visual novels.

ABOUT LONG GONE DAYS After being deployed to his first mission, Rourke leaves The Core's base for the very first time, only to discover the dark truth about the operation he's part of and the consequences of deserting an inescapable war.

Gamingbolt reviewed the Early Access version of Long Gone Days:

Long Gone Days Review – A Fine Mix of Novels And RPG Mechanics

Long Gone Days is largely made of elements you’ve seen before but still manages to offer some compelling moments with an absorbing story and haunting soundtrack.

Long Gone Days may not have been on many gamers’ radars as it is a bit of a niche title and may not be for everybody, but as any fan of independent RPGs will tell you; the more the merrier. The genre is a great place for talented independent game developers to flourish and gamers to have access to lots of quality content at generally low cost. This particular game follows suit with many other entries in the growing scene of independent RPG’s that blend traditional mechanics like turn-based combat with visual novel elements and interesting choices to pick while conversing with characters.

For better and for worse, Long Gone Days plays it safe in a lot of ways. This game by no means features a unique blend of elements, and Long Gone Days does very little to expand on your expectations of the genre. If you have ever played a game of this type before, odds are, you are very unlikely to see much in this title that you haven’t seen somewhere else. On top of that, if you have much experience with RPGs you’ve also probably seen most of those elements done better. This doesn’t mean Long Gone Days isn’t worth your time though.

[...]

Long Gone Days is indeed a mixed bag, but fortunately the mixture is mostly comprised of things that range from good to great and very few actual problems. Whatever problems I do have, after put into context with the price point, are rendered basically negligible. The elements that make up this game are almost entirely things you’ve already seen in the genre it occupies, and like I said, it wouldn’t be hard to find games that pull off similar combinations much better, but between the largely above average presentation, outstanding soundtrack, a handful of truly compelling moments, and a very friendly price point, fans of independent RPGs and visual novels certainly shouldn’t ignore it.

Score: 7/10

The pixel art RPG Long Gone Days has been released as Early Access version:

Long Gone Days

Long Gone Days is a 2D modern-day military RPG set in our current times, with a focus on language and cultural barriers, inspired by classic dystopian literature and visual novels.

After being deployed to his first mission, Rourke leaves The Core's base for the very first time, only to discover the dark truth about the operation he's part of and the consequences of deserting an inescapable war.

With no place to call home now, he must prevent the war from spreading any further, forming strong bonds along the way that will forever change his life.

• Communication is Key: As Long Gone Days is set in the real world, you'll encounter several language barriers. Recruit interpreters in order to communicate with others.
• Keep Morale High: Choose dialogue options wisely as they impact your party members' Morale, affecting how they perform during battles. While doing so, keep in mind every character has different personality traits and motivations.
• Sniper Mode: Long Gone Days has two battle systems. Using Rourke's rifle, spot your enemies and take down your targets.
• No Random Encounters: Long Gone Days features front-view turn-based battles with body-targeting system, and every battle is directly related to the plot.