What Happens After 400 Days, Explained
In The Longing, a king sleeps for 400 days to restore his power. When the Shade wakes him, will he use his power to fix the world (or wake up at all)?
Developed by Studio Seufz, The Longing, is a point-and-click, mythology inspired game that has become famous for taking 400 days to complete. These days pass in real-time, and the counter at the top of the game's HUD shows how many days, hours, minutes, and seconds are left in a painstakingly slow countdown. The goal of making it through all 400 days of The Longing, is to (hopefully) awaken a sleeping king.
[Warning: Spoilers for The Longing below]
The Longing is based off the German legend of Kyffhäuser, in which Kaiser Frederick Barbarossa didn't die during the Third Crusade. Instead, he lies asleep in a hidden chamber within the hills of Kyffhäuser, sitting motionless at a stone table where his beard growing so long that it grows through his stone table. Barbarossa awakes every hundred years to ask his gnome, Alberich, if the ravens have left the hill above and if they haven't, he sleeps for another hundred years - but if they have, he will rise and restore order to the world.
In The Longing's adaptation of Kyffhäuser, The Shade, whom the player controls, is a little dark creature that, like Alberich, the king trusts to awaken him after 400 days. Upon waking, the king promises to use his rejuvenated power "to end all fear and longing." However, if Kaiser Barbarossa has yet to rise from his slumber, what will happen after the sleeping king's 400 days of sleep in The Longing game?
The Longing: Waiting 400 Days Ending Explained
To pass the time while waiting 400 days in The Longing, the Shade can collect items and furnish their room, draw pictures, or read books - but the main activity is exploring the caves and tunnels of this underground world. Similar to titles like Paradise Lost, exploring the tunnels reveals some insight about this game's world but doing so can take a considerable amount of time. Roadblocks will be met that require the Shade to wait for a solution to become available; for example, one ascending cave requires interacting with a spider that, over the course of 2 days, will spin a climbable web.
As the Shade continues to explore, it will inevitably pass the sleeping king countless times and after it certain point, this can sow doubt as to if the king will ever wake up or is even still alive. This doubt can tempt the Shade to explore higher and higher towards the surface, where the king asked the Shade to avoid, and there are times that would allow the Shade to leave the tunnels, caves, and cliffs of the underground kingdom for the world above. However, if the Shade remains underground for all 400 days of The Longing, then the time will come to awaken the king.
At the end of 400 days, the Shade will return to the king's stone throne and tell him, "It's time to wake up." There is no movement for a long time as the king looks to truly be dead, or something like it, but he eventually rises and lets the stone foundation that's formed around him break and cave in around them. In the darkness, the king thanks the Shade for keeping its promise and states that "... I have kept my promises. I have created a world without longing by destroying everything in it."
In The Longing, after 400 days the King ends all life - and thus ends all fear and longing in the world, leaving only himself and the Shade. However, this is only one of the multiple endings that can be achieved in The Longing, as the Shade doesn't have to wait or even remain in the underground kingdom. For those who choose to wait though, The Longing rewards players with a melancholy and bittersweet conclusion both to the story and to its world.
