Dreamfall: The Longest Journey

Dreamfall: The Longest Journey is a 2006 action-adventure from Funcom, a follow-up to the cult adventure game The Longest Journey from 1999. It follows three interconnected characters across two parallel worlds – futuristic, technological Earth and magical Arcadia – combining classic adventure-style puzzle-solving and dialogue with action combat, stealth, and simple logic tasks set in a fully 3D environment.

PC was the original and first platform Dreamfall released on, several months ahead of the later Xbox edition released the same year. Controls were designed primarily for keyboard and mouse, matching the point-and-click adventure genre heritage the game draws on, even though Dreamfall already added full 3D action, combat sections, and stealth sequences requiring faster reactions than classic adventure puzzles compared to its predecessor.

Because it was the original version, the PC edition featured the game exactly as its creators originally intended, without the need to additionally adapt the controls for a gamepad and the menus for TV screens. Graphically, on the powerful PCs of the era the game could afford higher detail settings for textures and lighting if the player had a sufficiently strong rig, which the later Xbox version, limited by the console's fixed performance, could not achieve to the same degree.

For fans of the original The Longest Journey who played the game back in 1999 specifically on a computer, the PC edition of Dreamfall represented a natural continuation on the same platform, with the same control method using a cursor and keyboard shortcuts for inventory and character abilities. The Xbox version, by contrast, had to adapt its control scheme and user interface for a gamepad and smaller fonts readable from the couch, which for the game's point-and-click heritage represented a somewhat greater compromise than the PC release, which stayed true to the creators' original intent.

Why play it: For fans of the original The Longest Journey from 1999, the PC version is a natural continuation with the same mouse-based controls, while the Xbox version had to adapt the adventure interface for a gamepad.