The Long Reach combines pixelated 2D with the horror genre, in a very interesting mix with an engaging story.
Baervox, where the game takes place, is a city created for the game, and its story begins following Calvin on his trip to the local store. After a few brief conversations, things take a dramatic turn, and then you find yourself controlling Stewart, the story’s true protagonist, who seems to be at the center of a laboratory experiment. The experiment, of course, goes wrong and it doesn’t take long before you find yourself in a horror situation with psychological twists and turns. You fight against your own mind, unable to tell the real from the unreal.
Throughout the campaign, you’ll find several conversations with other characters, with many choices, but nothing, as far as I could tell, affects the game’s story, since in some cases you only continue if you get the dialogue right. However this is the only way to understand the game’s story and advance. The game also uses these conversations to add an element of comic relief to the situations and does a great job, using pop culture references to take just enough of the horror away to let your mind recover before diving back in. However, some points of the story are left hanging; you don’t know how or why a certain event happened, and the game doesn’t explain it either, which may lead some players not to continue with the game.
GAMEPLAY
The gameplay is quite simple, even more so for this style of game: you only move sideways, with a button for running, one for actions, items and one for the flashlight. The game provides a helpful glow around objects and characters that can be interacted with. This, however, is more used for objects that are there just to look at, with no use. You find yourself revisiting places, just clicking on everything hoping to find exactly what you need, and it becomes a simple case of trial and error, with many of the objects you need seemingly connected in quite forced ways.
The game also has a tiny number of enemies, where the only thing to do is run and hide. You can’t fight any of them at any time, and in the whole game you don’t die more than about 10 times, if you pay close attention. Sometimes this can be quite frustrating, but it also increases the game’s suspense. There’s no option to save, but the game sets checkpoints regularly, usually after finding each item or performing an action.
The game is never clear about what needs to be done, so you find yourself running around clicking on everything to try to find the item you need, and sometimes trying to use it on any other item, which can leave you frustrated, since you lose a lot of time walking around without knowing what to do or using the item in the right place.
The Long Reach has a very short campaign. In about 2 to 3 hours you can complete the whole game, and it leaves many points of the story open. The game looks like it has a sequel coming, so we hope, so that this whole puzzle of a somewhat confusing story is fully explained.
AUDIOVISUAL
Graphically, there isn’t much to discuss; it delivers what it promises: a pixelated 2D horror game, with good lighting, helping even more to create the horror and suspense atmosphere it wants to convey.
The audio is used to very well-fitting effect, often heightening scares with loud noises and used to provide environmental cues. Sometimes it tries to signal a scare where there isn’t one, leaving you a bit tense, but the overall sound is used to an excellent degree. At the very least, it adds an extra layer of atmosphere that leads you to more horror.
CONCLUSION
Despite the story’s major flaws, which may make many players lose interest in the game quickly, The Long Reach, if played at a slow pace, has easy puzzles. You can calmly play a good 2D horror game, recalling the old days, where sound and pixels manage to convey a good suspenseful mood.
Fun: 4
Audiovisual: 7
Gameplay: 5
Max Xavier
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