A Long Journey to an Uncertain End Review

In A Long Journey to an Uncertain End, developer Crispy Creative allows you to take on the role of a rather unique main character. You’ll step into the shoes — or should I say wires — of a sentient spaceship. Yep, you’re literally the one flying amongst the stars, which is pretty cool. The titular journey ahead will require resource management to maintain a happy crew and keep you fueled up, and you’ll make some on-the-spot choices for your survival as you fly towards freedom in more ways than one. Not only are you outlawed in the galaxy for being a sentient AI, but you’re also being chased by your abusive ex (who’s your former therapist, yikes). The game does come with a content warning at the beginning, but I want to note here, too, that if stalking, manipulation, and abuse are sensitive topics for you, that’s something to consider before playing.

In fact, your tale begins with a gripping cutscene of your ex destroying you (the ship), an attack that only ends when your sole crewmember, Aylah, intervenes. With the help of your cute holo-pup companion, C.O.R.G.I. (ze/zem), you reboot your systems, bringing up the character customisation screen. Your holographic form is human-like, so you can design your look from various hairstyles, body types, and outfits. You’ll also choose your name, and the game offers he/him, she/her, and they/them pronouns, or you can customise them, setting the subject, object, honorific, possessive pronoun, possessive adjective, and reflexive to what reflects your character’s identity best. I always love to see developers implementing inclusive pronoun systems, as it really improves the experience for all players. Additionally, you’ll go through the same options for your ex, but I highly recommend sticking with the game’s pre-filled name: Buttface. Nothing’s more fitting, trust me.

A Long Journey to an Uncertain End plays a lot like a visual novel, as it’s heavy on reading dialogue and descriptions. But the way the story unfolds is quite confusing. It feels like opening a book from the middle instead of the beginning, and it relies a lot on “telling” you about the world versus “showing” you, more so than other VNs I’ve played. For example, all the backstory about you, your ex, and the galaxy’s hostility towards sentient AI is just dumped on you in one go right at the beginning. I brushed this off as the typical confusion I get whenever I start a new sci-fi or fantasy game, but unfortunately, the storytelling got more convoluted. I was never really able to ground myself in it, as the game kept jumping between different main storylines without fleshing them out properly. While I loved the setting, concept, and characters, the narrative execution definitely prevented it from reaching its potential.

I did find the simple gameplay loop enjoyable at first: you’ll fly from planet to planet, recruiting crew members, assigning them to jobs suitable for their skills, and gathering supplies. Since you’re the ship, you’re not embarking on these objectives yourself, but you can make decisions for your crew that determine how they proceed. You’ll have options to rig explosives, plant listening devices, and upgrade tools if you send Aylah on a mission, for instance. Or you can have your pilot, Truly, flirt their way to success with their charmer skill.

Each completed gig gives you resources, some additional customisations for your holographic character, and a Lead, allowing you to explore more planets once you take off. You’ll also have a timer that tells you how much time you have until your ex catches you, so you’ll have to balance that time limit with job lengths.

It’s easy to grasp, but it quickly got repetitive. Planets feel like reskinned versions of each other; they're each beautiful yet play the same, and there’s little challenge or punishment in terms of mechanics. You’ll quickly rack up a ton of supplies, so there’s little to do in the way of resource management, and even if you get a poor result at the end of a job, you can simply “call in a favour” to increase your success. Favours are another one of your resources that you won’t run out of (I tried), so you don’t really have to pay attention to choosing the right characters or options during jobs. The gameplay, as a result, feels more like filler than anything else.

Occasionally, my crew’s mood would drop, but it didn’t seem to have negative consequences, and it was always easy to get them smiling again by assigning them to leisure activities on the planets. The only thing I truly struggled with was the ex-timer, but mainly because it was pretty buggy; I couldn’t tell when or how quickly it was counting down. In some instances, it showed that I had at least five hours of in-game time left, but when I redeemed the rewards on a job, it sent me straight to a game-over screen that claimed I had run out of time and my ex had caught me. This happened twice, and the timer had more than enough time left. What made this more confusing was that I reloaded to a previous save and had less time than before, but I could still continue as usual with no game-over in sight.

Small bugs like this were frequent. The wrong character portraits would appear when assigning jobs, viewing characters in the menu, or during conversations. Sometimes, my own character would appear as C.O.R.G.I. or Aylah, which was definitely weird. Kamaria’s icon also got switched with the one for Matias, resulting in me choosing the wrong person for a gig, though it didn’t really matter in the end. Using the Nintendo Switch buttons was also a bit fussy, with the inputs disappearing often. The touchscreen was much more effective and consistent, though.

Where A Long Journey to an Uncertain End excels is in its music, presentation, and inclusivity. The planets are visually distinct from one another, the soundtrack is exciting when you’re zooming through the stars, and the art team nailed the sci-fi atmosphere. And I loved the detailed character designs, as well as the ability to alternate their looks with other skins. Additionally, your ragtag group of LGBTQ+ misfits band together through thick and thin, each with their own charms that make them easy to love. It feels like you’re building more than a crew. You’re building your chosen family. This makes it so much more disappointing that you can’t really spend that much time connecting or talking with them outside of the main story events. Though you can start conversations with them while flying or after landing on planets, it would’ve been great if those one-on-ones explored their individual stories even more.

After completing the game in three hours, I was honestly torn whether to call it too short — the opposite type of journey than its title would imply. The repetitive gameplay loop truthfully made me glad for it all to come to an end. If I had to boil it down to one word, I’d say A Long Journey to an Uncertain End feels unfinished. There’s a lot of potential, but it fails to feel like a full experience. And once the credits rolled, I wasn’t compelled to play it again. However, if you want a (very) light management game and adore all things sci-fi, it may be worth picking up during a sale if you go into it with the right expectations; it’s bite-sized, inclusive, and wholesome yet dark all the way through, and thoughtful in the way it approaches tough topics. But if you’re anything like me, you might find yourself bored with its mechanics.