As Long As You’re Here tells a very heartfelt tale, based upon real events, and for the condition of Alzheimer’s disease, something which is all too sadly present, and which everyone will have come across in some elderly relatives over time.
You see this game through the eyes of Annie, who’s moving into her new flat, but when we first become her, she’s at the bus stop on a rainy day, yet has no idea where she is, and needs to think about phoning her daughter, Elisabeth.
It also brilliantly brings to mind that feels that someone in that situation will go through, such as losing track of time, and moments of rooms appearing to change around – both of which came up in the incredible film, The Father, as portrayed by Anthony Hopkins.
Similarly, as you go about your day, following a routine of making a coffee, watering the plants, etc, one day, I found the cup wasn’t where I left it. I had to go round the flat to look for it, and found it on a coaster elsewhere. How did that happen? Yes, that’s how this condition goes.
As Long As You’re Here does have a feel of 2021’s Before Your Eyes, and there’s similar moments where you click on an eye – which then closes – as you go to bed at the end of each day.
On some technical points, this game needs to include an option for “invert vertical axis”, since that always throws me when I’m using a controller. Also, it needs graphics options for borderless/fullscreen. There seems to be an AMD issue with my 7900XTX card that makes a few games go a bit sluggish when fullscreen, but a ‘Borderless Windowed’ option fixes this. As such, I couldn’t quite make it fullscreen, so played with the Windows bar at the top, where it says “As Long As You’re Here“, and for the gameplay video, I pushed that up a bit so it was cut off the top, but it then leaves a small gap at the bottom.
This will be a problem when Steam achievements pop up at the bottom, as they get cut off, since that part is off the screen, but As Long As You’re Here is not the sort of game that has achievements. It’s more an experience.
As for how long the experience is, it’s suggested that it takes an hour to go through. As you’ll see from my gameplay, I took it leisurely and it ran for 90 minutes. I wish I could give this more than 7/10, but while it’s something everyone should check out, it doesn’t really have replayability.
For the price, As Long As You’re Here is normally £8.50, but it’s 15% off, at £7.22, until November 4th.
Check out the FULL GAME gameplay below!
Score: 7/10
Thanks to our friends at Autoscopia Interactive for the review code for this game.
As Long As You’re Here is out now on Steam.
Important info:
- Developer: Autoscopia Interactive
- Publisher: Autoscopia Interactive
- Players: single-player
PC specs:
CPU: AMD RYZEN 9 7950X3D
Motherboard: MSI MPG X670E CARBON WIFI AMD X670 S AM5 DDR5 PCIe 5.0 4x M.2 2.5GbE AMD EXPO™ ATX
RAM: 64GB (2x32GB) Corsair DDR5 Vengeance RGB PC5-44800 (5600Mhz)
Graphics Card: Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 XTX NITRO+ 24GB GDDR6 Ray-Tracing RDNA3 6144 Streams
1st Storage Drive: 2TB Samsung 990 PRO M.2 (2280) PCIe 4.0 (x4) NVMe SSD TLC V-NAND 7450MB/s Read 6900MB/s
2nd Storage Drive: 2TB Samsung 870 QVO 2.5” SSD SATA III 6Gb/s MJX MLC V-NAND 2GB Cache Read 560MB/s Write 530MB/s 98k/88k IOPS
3rd Storage Drive: 2TB Samsung 870 QVO 2.5” SSD SATA III 6Gb/s MJX MLC V-NAND 2GB Cache Read 560MB/s Write 530MB/s 98k/88k IOPS
4th Storage Drive: Seagate IronWolf Pro 14TB NAS 3.5″ SATA HDD/Hard Drive
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.