As Long As You’re Here may be short, but it’s poignant and sticks with you
Code provided for review from Autoscopia Interactive
Forgive me for the personal story here, but there’s a point: My interest in reviewing As Long as You’re Here stems from my love of indies, of course, but it also stems from the last seven months of medical drama in my life. In April, I had a seizure that rendered me unconscious, and I had to be taken to the ER. After three days in the hospital, they ruled out a stroke, but I had lesions on my brain. One lumbar puncture later, I had a positive clinical diagnosis of MS.
My time in the ER and the copious body scans also revealed several nodules on my thyroid, with at least five being considered suspicious. After the lumbar puncture, I had an ultrasound on those, which led to a biopsy with inconclusive results. After waiting two weeks for genetic testing on the nodules, they were found to be benign. (At least for now.)
Cue last week, when I noticed my eyes weren’t focusing well while watching soccer on TV. My neurologist doesn’t want me worrying, but just to let him know what the eye doctor says, as I have an appointment this week.
So yeah, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking these past few months about getting older, my brain potentially beginning to fail me, and what that’s going to be like for my husband and my son to see as they get older, too.
As Long as You’re Here is an emotional family drama seen through the eyes of a woman with Alzheimer’s, with you playing as Annie, an elderly woman whose life is rapidly upended by the disease.
From Autoscopia Interactive, the game started as a student project in 2018 and, after being uploaded to itch.io, gained over 13,000 downloads and millions of views via Let’s Plays on YouTube.
It’s a short one, designed to be completed in a sitting, and that’s what I did. (Aside from a minor technical issue on my end.) The team warns on Steam that it may not be for everyone, as the subject matter clearly strikes home for a lot of people, but if it’s something you believe you can handle, I can’t recommend it enough.
When the game starts, there’s a short flashback with Annie and her brother. He’s leaving for what he says is only a year or two, leaving Annie to care for their elderly father. The sequence quickly moves on, and you realize it’s present-day Annie, and she’s lost at a remote bus stop and is unable to remember how she got there.
That event sets into motion her new living situation, in a new apartment upstairs from her daughter Elisabeth. Her daily life is regimented; there’s a corkboard with reminders: Make coffee, take medicine, water plants. By the door, there are two bowls: one for keys, the other for mail.
As you walk through the apartment some days, you’ll find a note from the doctor, or her latest try at the pentagon drawing test. Her main task, though, is compiling a family tree from photographs and piecing together (again) what happened to her brother.
Navigating Annie’s daily life with a controller was also fluid, though there were moments when several items were on a surface, and I’d have to try multiple times to pick up the one I was aiming for.
You interact with your family, everyday items, and other keepsakes throughout the game, but what really made As Long As You’re Here stick out to me was that as Annie’s condition progressed, the world around her would literally shift.
It started small: I turned around in a room I just entered to no longer see a door behind me. A door would lock, and I had no way to unlock it. Furniture would suddenly be in a different spot, or I’d even wake up somewhere completely different than my bed.
Like how so many of these stories go, there’s a breaking point when Annie’s children realize they’re not equipped to handle her changing needs. Her medicine is kept in a locked box, and a home nurse gives it to her. Another person waters her beloved plants. A note is placed on the oven to remind her not to use it. A similar one is placed on the fridge, reminding her to throw out moldy food, and another on the door that says to call Elisabeth if she wants to venture outside.
As the final five minutes of As Long As You’re Here rolled out, I was already in tears. I, Amanda, knew that Annie was losing her fight against Alzheimer’s, but I was going to help her finish that family tree, come hell or high water.
As Long As You’re Here is out now on Steam. You can follow Autoscopia Interactive on Instagram and Bluesky to stay up to date on their upcoming projects.