The Long Night

The Long Night is a narrative-driven horror RPG set during the Great Frost of 1709, in a small Slavic village teetering on the edge of collapse. The player takes on the role of Petar, a young torchbearer and guide who arrives in the village of Malo Svjetlo with an imperial investigator, only to find the settlement consumed by a creeping supernatural darkness. The world, already scarred by plague and starvation, now buckles under a curse that appears to feed on fear, superstition, and human paranoia.

The Long Night is a compact, run-based RPG built for replayability. Each 2–3 hour playthrough reveals only part of the story, encouraging multiple runs to uncover new characters, choices, and outcomes. There’s no single “true” ending—only different costs and consequences shaped by the player's actions. The game builds horror through atmosphere, uncertainty, and consequence rather than gore. Its supernatural elements stem from folklore and fear, with a sentient darkness that manifests villagers’ anxieties, warping the world into something monstrous and surreal.

Gameplay alternates between daytime segments in the Village Hub and nighttime expeditions into the surrounding Outskirts. During the day, players interact with villagers, manage resources, level up, and accept quests. At night, the tone shifts. The player ventures into the dark, investigating strange occurrences while trying to stay within the safety of light. As the darkness closes in, exploration gives way to combat, transitioning to abstracted grid-based battle scenes where enemy encounters and environmental effects escalate the tension. Light and darkness play a direct mechanical role; certain tiles provide buffs or debuffs, while enemies manipulate lighting to their advantage. Combat ends either in victory or death, and failure during these encounters can permanently end a run.

The combat system is partially shared between Njords Embrace and The Long Night, since both games were developed simultaneously. Sharing the foundation of a stat- and grid-based system, typical for many western RPGs, The Long Night focuses on synergies. The player can’t access their companions’ inventories and therefore needs to adapt their equipment. Items, traits, and injuries rarely ever just change a stat, but interact with each other, allowing for powerful chain effects.

Designed using modular systems drawn from earlier projects, The Long Night combines streamlined RPG mechanics with deeply integrated narrative systems. Exploration, combat, and dialogue are all built to reinforce the game’s core themes: connection versus isolation, fear as a self-fulfilling prophecy, and the tension between rationality and belief in the face of the unknown.