The Long Way Home · Free browser demo · All 13 chapters

The Long Way Home

A roguelike about bringing everyone home. 108 souls in your hold. You can't replace a single one. How many make it back is on you.

Loading the Odyssey
First load ~30-60 seconds. Cached after that.

All 13 chapters free in the browser during final polish · Best on desktop · What it is · Roadmap to launch · FAQ

Best Homecomings

Souls brought home alive, out of 108. The only score that matters.

  1. No homecomings recorded yet. The first name on this wall could be yours.
⚔Launch is close - join the list 👁The Witness premise 📖Read the books ✉Devlog (Substack)

The one strategy game that's about something.

You command a ship carrying 108 frozen souls home through a war the gods are still fighting. You didn't recruit them. You can't replace them. Every fight you pick and every shortcut you take costs lives you'll have to account for at the end. Bring them home - all of them, dead or alive. How many wake at Ithaca is the only score that matters.

The roster is sacred
108 named souls in your hold, plus your bridge family. No recruitment screen. No replacements. When one is gone, they're gone. Most roguelikes ask "can I survive?" This one asks "who do I sacrifice to save the rest?"
The Long Watch
Every soul you lose joins a Memorial that follows you across every run - their name, their job, how they died. You don't grind for gear. You grind for a better number: 41 of 108, then 60, then the grail almost no one reaches - all 108 home alive.
Win without fighting
Combat costs the crew and the supplies your pods need to survive. The best runs fire the fewest shots and bring home the most souls. Sun Tzu's whole thesis - winning without the fight - made into the score. Thirteen chapters, thirteen tests of it.
Canon-tight to the books
Every soul and every event ties to the Ulysses trilogy. Read the books and the game gets richer. Play the game and the books get richer. Neither requires the other.

What ships when

Honest dates. No marketing fog.

Now · Demo live
Chapters 1-3 in your browser. Free. Save state on this device.
Q3 2026 · Soft launch
itch.io alpha. All thirteen chapters. Pay-what-you-want.
Late 2026 - early 2027 · Steam launch
Steam · iOS · Android. Single £9.99-14.99 price. No microtransactions. Ever.
Then · The Witness begins shipping
The Long Way Home funds The Witness. The Witness is the AAA action RPG (UE5, third-person, ~40-60h). See the The Witness page.
⚔
This is The Long Way Home. The big game is The Witness.

The Long Way Home is a tight, premium indie strategy game in production now. The Witness is the third-person action RPG that comes after - Witcher / Cyberpunk scope, UE5, third-person, Greek mythology cyberpunk. Vertical slice in concept-bible phase. Read the Witness premise →

The Witness →

FAQ

Why ship The Long Way Home first? Why not just make The Witness?
Two reasons. One: The Witness takes 4-5 years and £8-25M. The Long Way Home ships in 12-18 months at indie cost and validates the IP commercially. Investor/publisher pitches go better when slide 2 says "shipped product with X reviews and Y revenue" instead of "concept bible". Two: indie strategy is a real audience (FTL, Slay the Spire, Into the Breach combined = 10M+ units sold) and we have a natural angle into it. The Long Way Home is the warm-up. The Witness is the headline..
How long is the demo?
Ch 1-3 is roughly 30-50 minutes for a first run. Repeat runs go faster as you learn the principles.
What's comparable?
Closest comp: FTL: Faster Than Light. Also Slay the Spire, Into the Breach, Hades. The combination is FTL's ship-crew-jumps loop with Slay the Spire's run-to-run meta-progression and a tightly authored thirteen-chapter narrative spine.
Do I need to read the books first?
No. The game stands alone. The books make the world deeper. Either order works.
Where does the save go?
Browser localStorage on this device. Clearing browser data wipes it. The Steam / mobile release will use Steam Cloud / iCloud / Play Saves.
What's the difference between this demo and the full release?
The demo is all 13 chapters and the meta-progression scaffold. The full Steam release adds a polished audio score, platform cloud saves, Steam achievements, and the localisation pack. Same engine, same code path, same save format.
How is it monetised?
Single one-time purchase at launch (£9.99-14.99 expected). No microtransactions, no battle pass, no DLC paywall. The free browser demo stays free forever.
Is the game running in my browser actually the real game?
Yes. Same Godot 4.6 binary, exported to WebAssembly. The Steam build is the same code path with platform integrations bolted on (cloud saves, achievements, Steam overlay).
Mobile?
Works on tablet. Phone is cramped but functional. The mobile release adds proper touch UI.
If the game won't load?
Try Chrome / Edge / Firefox / Safari (recent versions). First load is ~30-60s for the 36MB WebAssembly engine; after that it's cached. Hard reload (Cmd-Shift-R on Mac, Ctrl-Shift-R on Windows) if you hit a stale cache.