The Longest Journey Home

The Longest Journey Home is the name of a possible future direct sequel to The Longest Journey and would be the fourth game in The Longest Journey Saga, returning to the first game's 2D, point and click format. TLJH was supposed to tell the story of what happened to April Ryan between TLJ and Dreamfall, as well as her fate after that.

As Ragnar Tørnquist described it in 2016, "TLJH was supposed to take place after the end of TLJ, and before Dreamfall, but with bits and pieces taking place both before AND after that. It's complicated, since it was designed to cover a lot of events over a lot of years, tying up some of the loose threads that are still left hanging — even after the end of Chapters.".

Project History

TLJH Concept

The game was teased as a $2 million stretch goal for DFC's Kickstarter drive on the 15th of February, 2013. It was formally announced in a Gamespot exclusive on the 1st of March. Had the stretch goal been reached (including post-Kickstarter paypal money), Red Thread Games would have begun pre-production on TLJH with full production to be ramped up after DFC shipped. However, the $2 million goal was never reached.

By 2015, the future of TLJH was already rather uncertain. RTG and Ragnar Tørnquist seemed to still want to make the game. However in March 2015, Tørnquist not only cast doubt over the use of crowd funding, he also alluded to the possibility that RTG may want to focus on their own stories while FunCom may take the further saga back in their hands. TLJH, he said, "may never happen". By June 9th, 2016, doubt had turned into certainty when he tweeted: "The Longest Journey Home will probably never happen. At least not for a long, long time". A forum post two days later halfway clarified: "We dearly love this saga, and our fans, and wrapping up Chapters has been an emotional experience for all of us. It's satisfying but heartbreaking, and part of me would love to jump right into TLJH to tell a personal and soulful story about a character I care deeply about…but for many, many reasons I don't think it will happen."

On January 20 2022, Ragnar Tørnquist provided some additional details about the game's scope, story, visuals and gameplay in a Twitter thread. Visually, the goal is to "make it look and feel like a three-dimensional painting, with layers and real depth, but fixed cameras…in full 4K." The story is "about April and Crow, their relationship and journey home — literally and figuratively — with a series of vignettes taking place across an entire year." One of those vignettes was turned into a short comic for the Dreamfall Chapters Tome of the Balance Book. The game "would be a point-and-click game, modernised for game controllers and consoles, though most at home with mouse/keyboard and touch interfaces" and "it’d be April’s story, through and through. Not another ending; a coda, an afterword." He reiterated that as Red Threads does not hold the rights to the series the game may not happen but they are still tinkering with the concept.