The Longest Journey 1999

Is it still worth playing?

Funcom's 1999 point and click adventure for Windows, in which the art student April Ryan has strange dreams in the year 2209 that lead her into a parallel world, Arcadia, where magic exists. Her home world, Stark, is science fiction, and Arcadia is high fantasy. You play from a third person view, completing tasks, talking to characters and solving puzzles with the mouse. The cursor changes with the available action: an eye to examine, a mouth to talk and a hand to use or pick up. An inventory lets you combine items or use them on objects, close up views ask you to find hidden details, a map screen handles travel between major locations and a diary tracks key story moments. Puzzles rely on subtle clues from places and conversations. The slow pace of an adventure still suits clues that come from conversations and places, as each puzzle is a matter of paying attention.