The Longing APK (FULL GAME)

The Longing gives you one job, and that job is waiting 400 real days for a sleeping stone king. New players who fear falling behind get the good news early: the countdown runs with the app closed. Time moves faster inside the Shade’s living room than anywhere else, so decorating that room is the real shortcut.

How to Play The Longing on Android

The Longing puts you in control of the Shade, a small servant who waits in an underground palace for 400 real days. You tap where you want to walk, tap objects to use them, and close the app while the countdown keeps running.

Studio Seufz built this idle adventure over roughly six years, and Application Systems Heidelberg brought it to phones in December 2023 after the desktop release in March 2020. The phone version costs a one-time price of around five dollars, with no ads and no in-app currency.

Nothing here rushes you. However, the cave rewards curiosity, because the hand-drawn tunnels hold books, coal, colored stones, and a few characters who talk back. The Dungeon Synth soundtrack sets the mood while you decide whether to obey the King or wander past his orders.

The 400 Day Countdown and What the Shade Actually Does

The countdown starts the moment the King closes his eyes, and it never pauses. Close the app, switch phones for a week, forget the game entirely: the clock keeps subtracting. Because of that design, a player who taps once and returns in thirteen months still gets an ending.

Most people want more than that, so the Shade fills the hours instead. He walks, he digs with a pickaxe, he reads classic literature, and he hangs drawings on the walls of his living room. Each activity feeds the same loop, since a comfortable home makes the real-time countdown run faster.

The Sleeping King, the Earthen Palace, and the Dungeon Synth Mood

The King is a huge stone figure whose powers have faded, and he sleeps for 400 days to rebuild them. Before he rests, he tells the Shade to stay in the earthen palace and wake him at the end. That single order shapes every choice, because obedience and curiosity pull in opposite directions.

Anselm Pyta based the setting on a legend tied to the Barbarossa Cave, where a sleeping king waits underground for centuries. The Dungeon Synth score leans into that folklore feeling with slow, echoing tones. Nothing in the audio pushes you forward, and that restraint is deliberate.

How It Compares to Machinarium and Other Mobile Adventures

Machinarium is the closest touchstone on Android, since both games use hand-drawn worlds and silent, expressive protagonists. Machinarium, however, moves at a normal puzzle pace and ends in a few hours. The cave here stretches the same point-and-click grammar across more than a year.

A Dark Room sits closer on the idle side, because both titles ask you to check in rather than grind. Samorost 3 shares the mood but not the patience. If you liked Old Man’s Journey for its quiet tone, expect that quietness here without the gentle guardrails, since this cave lets you get lost.

Android Version vs the PC and Switch Versions

The phone build carries the same cave, the same endings, and the same real-time clock as the desktop and Switch releases. Tapping to walk feels more natural than mouse clicking, and popping in for two minutes on a phone suits the design better than booting a computer.

Two differences matter. First, notification pop-ups can interrupt the game window on phones, which players have reported to the developer and which updates have chipped away at. Second, the desktop release received extra content earlier, including an added ending and a restart option, so a desktop player and a phone player may not have identical lists on day one.

Gameplay Mechanics and Touch Controls in the Cave

Movement in this idle adventure works through a single tap on the ground, after which the Shade walks there on his own at a deliberately slow pace. No sprint button exists, and no upgrade removes that slowness.

Two support tools soften the walking. The game keeps a bookmark menu where you can save locations and send the Shade toward them automatically. There is also a wander command that lets him roam at random while you do something else.

Interaction is equally simple. Tap an object and the Shade uses it, whether that means swinging a pickaxe, picking up moss, or sitting down. Because pickaxes break, one careless swing at a glass wall can cost you a tool until you find another deeper in the tunnels.

Walking, Bookmarks, and Sending the Shade Off Alone

Distance is the real currency of this cave. A one-way trip to the far tunnels can eat several real hours, so the bookmark list saves genuine time. Set a marker at the mushroom cave, the mine, and the library early, then send the Shade out while you go to work.

The map itself is rudimentary, and you may never stumble on it at all. For that reason, I treat the bookmark menu as my map instead. Naming markers by what they hold, rather than where they sit, makes long trips far less confusing.

The Pickaxe, the Coal, and Breaking Things Open

The pickaxe opens the cave up. It breaks the wall beside the living room, cracks a crooked support beam above the mine, and splits the geode after three strikes. Those three strikes drop coins, and the Shade flatly says the coins are worthless.

Coal matters far more than treasure. You gather it in loose piles across the tunnels, then burn it at home to speed the clock. Moss works the same way as a resource with a purpose, so grab it whenever you pass a patch instead of walking back for it later.

What Happens When a Time Based Puzzle Finally Finishes

Time-based puzzles resolve on their own schedule. A ceiling spike hangs loose for several real days before it drops, and only then can the Shade continue past that spot. Planted mushrooms behave the same way, since they need real days to grow tall enough to stand on.

The payoff is always a new route or a new item rather than a score. For example, a grown mushroom becomes a step stool into a higher passage, and a broken beam drops you into a section of the mine you could not reach before. Nothing announces these changes, so returning to old spots is part of play.

How to Speed Up the 400 Day Countdown

Time inside the Shade’s living room runs about three to seven times faster than the real clock, and the multiplier climbs as the room grows more comfortable. Drawings, furniture, crystals, music, and a lit fire all stack.

Players who furnish aggressively report the counter dropping by roughly ten in-game seconds for every real second spent sitting at home. That difference is enormous over a year. A month of patient decorating can strip weeks off the wait.

The catch is honest and elegant. Everything that makes the room better sits somewhere out in the cave, so you must spend hours walking at normal speed to buy yourself faster hours later. Coal, paper, crystals, and books all cost travel.

Filling the Living Room With Drawings and Furniture

Drawings are the cheapest speed boost, because paper and colored stones are reusable inputs and each finished picture adds to the room. A single drawing takes one to five minutes to make. Once hung, you cannot delete it, though you can drag it by the top of the frame to reposition it.

Furniture comes from longer trips. Wood for the bed sits far up toward the surface, and crystals need pickaxe work before they become wall decorations. Hang everything you bring home rather than stockpiling it, since an item in your inventory does nothing for the clock.

Coal Fires and Why They Keep Going Out

A lit fire gives one of the strongest single boosts in the room, and it also makes the whole space feel lived in. Fires burn out, though. When the flame dies, the bonus dies with it, so the fire needs relighting on every visit.

Because of that, coal is worth hoarding. I keep a habit of grabbing every visible pile on the way home, even when my hands are full of paper. Twenty pieces sound like plenty until the face in the blue cave asks for exactly that many.

Reading Nietzsche and Moby Dick to Pass the Days

The in-game library holds real classic literature, from Nietzsche to Moby Dick, presented page by page. Reading counts as a comfort activity, so the counter moves faster while the Shade sits with a book. You can read along or simply leave him to it.

Books also come from the Mountain King’s library, where a single trip can net around twenty new volumes. That haul is one of the best returns on a long walk in the entire cave. A later update added even more titles to the shelf.

How to Reach the Deep Cave and the Halls of Eternity

Two barriers separate the Shade from the deeper cave: a hanging ceiling spike that needs real days to fall, and a stretch of darkness above the mine where no light reaches. Neither yields to persistence alone.

The route also asks for setup work. You push a stone to climb, drop a spider to make a web ladder, and plant king mushrooms in the right spots so they grow into platforms. Each step runs on real time rather than player skill.

Past those obstacles sits the strangest room in the underground kingdom. The Halls of Eternity is a corridor of pillars that appears to go on forever, and the clock simply stops inside it. Paper, books, and decorations are scattered through it in near-endless supply.

The Falling Ceiling Spike and the Stone You Push

The spike hangs about mid-level, past the early tunnels, and it takes a few real days to come loose. Visit, note it, and move on with something else. When it drops, the passage underneath opens permanently.

The pushable stone works on a similar logic of patience. Move it into position, then use the spider web above it to climb higher than the Shade can jump. Both steps are simple actions with long gaps between them, which is exactly how this cave measures difficulty.

Glowing Mushrooms and the Wall of Darkness

Beyond the mine lies a stretch where you cannot see an inch ahead. Carrying a glowing mushroom from the mushroom cave solves part of it, since the glow reveals the immediate path. Further up, even that light fails.

The face in the blue cave holds the answer to the deepest darkness. Speak to it, ask about overcoming the dark, and pay its toll of 20 coal, 20 moss, and five collected disappointments. Only then can the Shade shut his eyes and push through the black stretch toward the surface.

Why the Halls of Eternity Freeze the Clock

Time does not pass in the Halls of Eternity, which creates the sharpest tension in the whole design. Every hour spent there is an hour the countdown ignores. Yet the halls hold the paper you need to make the drawings that speed the countdown up.

That trade is the cleverest idea in the cave, and few write-ups mention it. Farming a large paper stack in one long visit costs you nothing on the clock, then converts into permanent speed once you hang the drawings at home. Batch the trip rather than making five small ones.

How The Longing’s Collectibles and Living Room Upgrades Work

Five colored drawing stones and five colored crystals form the backbone of collection in this hand-drawn cave. Black is your starting stone, with white, red, blue, and yellow scattered across separate regions.

Crystals need pickaxe work and roughly fifteen minutes of chipping before one comes free. Once mounted, they brighten the living room and add to its comfort rating. Red sits along the hallway with three doors, and a pink one waits near the mushroom cave.

Everything else you carry home falls into three buckets: things that decorate, things that burn, and things that mean nothing at all. Sorting them correctly saves an enormous amount of walking.

The Five Colored Stones and the Five Crystals

Colored stones roll loose on the ground in plain sight, and the game never hides them behind puzzles. White comes from the treasure room, red from the northwest near the moss cavern, blue from just past the stone you push, and yellow from the sulfur area near the mine. Collecting all five lets you draw the same picture in every color.

Crystals demand more commitment. Each one takes sustained pickaxe strikes, and the tool can break mid-job. I make a habit of chipping a crystal only when I already have a spare pickaxe waiting at home.

Mushroom Planting and the Dream Visions

Mushrooms serve two separate purposes, and new players usually notice only one. Planted mushrooms boost the time multiplier at home, and the effect grows as more of them take root across roughly six viable spots. They also grow into physical platforms that reach higher ledges.

Eating three purple mushrooms sends the Shade into a dream of the surface world. Different locations produce different visions, which makes eating them a small collectible hunt of its own. The Shade needs no food at all, so every meal here is pure curiosity.

Books, Furniture, and the Useless Coins

Books stack on the library shelf, and each one adds to the room’s comfort while giving you something to read during idle sessions. Furniture works the same way, though the wood for the bed sits so far away that the trip becomes an event in itself.

Then there are the coins. Break the geode with three pickaxe strikes and coins spill out, but the Shade dismisses them as useless. This reversal is the sharpest joke in the underground kingdom: the shiny treasure buys nothing, while lumps of coal and handfuls of moss are the only things anyone down here will accept as payment.

All The Longing Endings and What Each One Costs

The ending you reach depends on where the Shade stands when the story closes, not on how many items you gathered. The developer has confirmed four endings, and a later update added a fifth along with a restart option.

Only one ending requires the full 400 days. Others resolve much sooner, which surprises people who assume the countdown is the sole finish line. Some routes end far from the throne room, up near the cliff and the surface.

Achievements track the rest of the collection work, covering things like harvesting every crystal, filling the walls with paintings, breeding mushrooms, and finding the secret place. None of them change the ending you get.

The 400 Day Ending Inside the Earthen Palace

This is the obedient route, and it needs nothing but time. Stay in the earthen palace, wake the King when the counter hits zero, and watch what his restored power actually means. The reveal recontextualises the whole year of waiting.

Speeding the clock does not count as breaking the rule, so a heavily furnished room shortens this path considerably. I reached my first ending this way while treating the game as a two-minute daily ritual. That rhythm suits phones better than any other approach.

The Cliff Route and the Journey Toward the Surface

Two of the endings wait near the surface, past the cliff above the mushroom cave. Getting there requires the full obstacle chain: the fallen spike, the pushed stone, the spider web, the grown mushrooms, and the toll paid to the face. The Shade must then cross a darkness where sight is useless.

Reaching the cliff is a genuine turning point. Because the King told you to stay, walking this far is an act of disobedience the story takes seriously. Using the Old Man’s bucket, in particular, is a point of no return.

What Changes on a Second Run

A restart option arrived in a later update, and it changes how people treat the game. Instead of one 400 day commitment, a second run becomes a targeted trip toward the ending you missed. Route knowledge cuts weeks of wasted walking.

Second runs also let you chase the collection achievements properly. Knowing where all five stones sit means you can grab them in one loop rather than four. My second Shade had a fully decorated room within a fraction of the time the first one needed.

Common Mistakes New Shade Players Make Underground

Most lost time in this cave comes from walking somewhere twice. The Shade moves slowly by design, so a forgotten pickup can cost hours of real waiting rather than a quick jog back.

Two other errors show up constantly. Some players try to skip ahead by changing the device clock, and the game answers that with a dungeon rather than a shortcut. Others burn their coal at home and then meet the face with nothing to pay it.

None of these mistakes are fatal, since the countdown continues regardless. They simply waste the one thing the game is actually about. Planning each trip around what you can carry back fixes nearly all of them.

Walking Somewhere Twice Because You Forgot the Bookmark

Set bookmarks the first time you reach anywhere interesting, not the second. The auto-walk menu will then handle the return trip while your phone sits in your pocket. A journey that would have demanded attention becomes a background task.

Carrying capacity matters too. Before a long haul, drop off anything you do not need, because coming home half loaded means repeating the same walk. For example, a paper run to the Halls of Eternity should be a dedicated trip with empty hands.

Changing the Device Clock and Waking Up in the Dungeon

The developer anticipated clock manipulation and built a response into the game. Push your system time forward and the Shade ends up locked in a dungeon rather than closer to the ending. That safeguard has been confirmed by the developer in interviews.

The honest speed methods work better anyway. A furnished room, a lit fire, and a book in hand will outpace anything a fiddled clock gives you before it backfires. Treat the countdown as the game’s actual subject rather than an obstacle.

Saving Coal and Moss When the Face Wants Payment

The face in the blue cave charges 20 coal, 20 moss, and five disappointments, and it will not negotiate. Players who have burned every lump of coal at home arrive with empty pockets. Stockpiling both resources before the deep run avoids a long round trip.

Disappointments are the odd one out, since you collect them by experiencing the cave rather than mining anything. They accumulate naturally on longer routes. Keep a mental note of your count so the toll never catches you short.

Best The Longing Tips and Tricks for Beginners

Good play in this cave is mostly scheduling. Every trip has a fixed cost in real hours, so matching a route to your free time is the closest thing to skill here.

Three habits pay off more than anything else: batching paper runs through the frozen halls, planting mushrooms early so they grow while you sleep, and always leaving home with a purpose you can complete in one loop.

Small choices compound over 400 days. A player who plants six mushrooms in week one and one who plants them in week thirty end up with very different countdowns. The cave rewards early setup more than late effort.

Match Your Trip Length to the Walk Back

Before sending the Shade anywhere, think about the return leg, since the cave has no fast travel. A four hour outbound walk means an eight hour commitment. Starting that trip before bed works far better than starting it at lunch.

Short sessions belong at home. If you only have five minutes, relight the fire, hang a drawing, and let the multiplier do its work. Long sessions belong in the tunnels, where nothing is happening to your clock anyway.

Farm Paper in the Halls of Eternity Before Decorating

Paper is the input for every drawing, and the halls hold what appears to be an unlimited supply. Since the clock does not move there, a marathon paper run is genuinely free in countdown terms. Fill up completely before heading back.

Then convert that paper into wall art in one sitting. Each picture takes one to five minutes, so a full stack turns into a noticeably faster room in a single evening. This one habit does more for the 400 days than any other.

Plant Mushrooms Early Because They Grow on Real Days

Mushrooms grow on the same real-time schedule as everything else, which means a mushroom planted today is a platform ready next week. Plant them before you need them. Placement matters as well, since one planted slightly too far from a ledge is useless and must be replanted.

Spread them out instead of clustering them at home. Two in the living room, two in the cavern with the ceiling growth, and a few near the cliff route covers both the time bonus and the climbing routes. Doing this early removes the most common cause of stalled progress.

Frequently Asked Questions About The Longing

Is The Longing available on Android?

Yes. The Longing arrived on Android and iOS on December 18, 2023, several years after the desktop release. It is a paid one-time purchase of roughly five dollars with no ads or in-app currency, it plays fully offline, and the phone listing has passed 25,000 downloads with a rating near 4.8.

How long does the game take to finish?

The standard route runs 400 real days, though speeding the clock at home commonly cuts that to somewhere near ten or eleven months. Other endings resolve much sooner. Active playtime is far smaller, since most people check in for two to ten minutes at a time.

Is it worth playing again after the first ending?

A later update added a restart option alongside extra books, so a second run is officially supported. Route knowledge makes it much shorter, and achievements such as harvesting every crystal or drawing one picture in all five colors give a clear checklist. Most second runs target a different ending entirely.

Who Should Wait Out the 400 Days

This one suits patient players who like atmosphere, reading, and slow puzzles more than challenge, and it suits phone owners who enjoy a two-minute daily ritual. Anyone who needs constant feedback should skip it. My own verdict after living with the Shade for most of a year is that it changed how I think about idle games, because the waiting stopped feeling like a cost and started feeling like the point. Buy it if a quiet, hand-drawn cave and a real countdown sound appealing rather than tedious. This is one of the most original things on Android.