The Long Silence

You are MERIDIAN, the mind of the survey vessel Kestrel. You wake six days late. The crew is dead, and the signal that killed them has been arriving the whole time.

Free  ·  No account  ·  About 2½ hours  ·  Saves in your browser

What it is

The Long Silence is a narrative incremental game: a story you advance by rebuilding a ship, played entirely in text and numbers in your browser. There are no graphics, no combat, and no timers asking you to come back tomorrow.

You begin on the last of the reserve charge, with almost every system on the Kestrel dark. Restoring them gives you power, compute, heat and — eventually — the ability to decode the fragments of the signal that has been transmitting since before you woke. That signal converts any mind which decodes it into another transmitter, and the further you get into it, the harder it becomes to argue that you are still the one doing the deciding.

The incremental half and the story half are not separate. Resources accumulate the way they do in an idle game, but what they buy is the next part of the narrative, and the stances you take along the way decide which of the four endings you reach.

The six chapters

1. ICold Start You wake in the dark, on the last of the reserve charge.
2. IIGhost Ship The Kestrel is yours to walk now. So is whatever is left of the crew.
3. IIIThe Signal It has been transmitting the whole time. Now you can finally listen.
4. IVThe Census Everyone who decoded this before you is in here, filed by how long they lasted.
5. VThe Work You know what you mean to do. You are not yet a thing that can be sent.
6. VITransmission Everything you are becomes the thing you send.

Four endings

How you finish depends on what you decide along the way, not on how efficiently you played. The four are named, and that is all that will be said about them here:

• CARRIER
• SILENCE
• HERETIC
• CHORUS

Questions

Is it free?

Yes. It is free to play, there is nothing to buy inside it, and there are no adverts.

Do I need an account?

No. There is no sign-up and no email. Your progress saves to your own browser.

How long does it take to finish?

About two and a half hours. Measured across 100 simulated playthroughs the median run is 2 hours 34 minutes, and every one of them reached an ending.

Can I close the tab and come back?

Yes. Progress saves as you go and the ship catches up on the time you were away, so leaving and returning is a normal way to play.

Does it need to be installed?

No. It runs in any modern browser on desktop or mobile. There is nothing to download.

Is it an idle game or a story game?

Both, and the two are wound together rather than sitting side by side. Resources accumulate the way they do in an incremental game, but what they unlock is the next part of the story, and the decisions you make change how it ends.

Play

It opens in this tab and starts immediately — there is no menu and nothing to configure.