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Alzheimer's is cruel. If you haven't watched someone go through it, it's almost impossible to really understand what it does, both to the person living with it and the people around them. As Long As You're Here, created by the small Copenhagen-based studio Autoscopia Interactive, takes you through those uneasy moments through the eyes of Annie, an Alzheimer's patient whose condition is gradually getting worse.
This isn’t a game filled with puzzles or complex gameplay mechanics. As Long As You're Here is a quiet, narrative first-person experience told through simple, everyday actions as you move through Annie's new home and her daily routine: making coffee, taking her meds, and watering the plants. But those routines that once felt safe start breaking down as reality becomes more and more unstable and disorienting, and both you and Annie start losing your bearings, which you eventually learn to anticipate.
Moving through her home, at times you're also physically moving through Annie's mental space and slipping into her memories before suddenly being pulled back. One moment you're cleaning the kitchen, the next you're in the bathroom. You're descending what seems like an endless flight of stairs, or objects end up where they shouldn't be. It's simple, and at first, you might not catch that something has changed, but it shows incredibly well just how fragile Annie's grip on reality has become.
As Long As You're Here also touches on the toll Alzheimer's disease has on the family. Annie has people who love her, people dealing with their own fears and exhaustion while just trying to get through another day. There’s a fair bit of family drama, and though it's not in your face, it always nags at the back of your mind.
The studio has said that As Long as You're Here has roots in a personal loss, starting out as a student project in 2018, when Marlène, the visual lead and CEO of the studio, proposed the idea after losing her grandmother to Alzheimer's. That personal connection runs through every detail, from the real photographs of the developers' own relatives, some of whom also lived with Alzheimer's, used in Annie's family tree, to the fading text and the cognitive tests where Annie's drawings get messier over time.
The story hits hard, but the visuals do most of the talking for me. There's a certain warmth to the world, and the gentle, melancholic colours build on that feeling of Annie’s fleeting comfort. Even the almost handwriting-looking font makes her thoughts feel personal and hesitant, like you can sense her weighing every word. And then there are these moments where you can choose to let certain things go to make things a little easier for her family. Those moments stayed with me.
What really got to me was how As Long as You’re Here made me feel. It's grounding, and yes, it’s heavy, but it doesn't want your pity. It just asks you to sit with Annie for a while, see things the way she does, and try to understand. There's this kind of intimacy that sneaks up on you - you're playing this game about someone else's life, and then suddenly you're seeing bits of your own in there.
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Our review pieces typically come with a score with all the good and the bad elements laid out. But As Long as You're Here doesn't need that - putting a number on what is a real, human experience would feel deeply insensitive. As Long as You're Here is out today, October 28, on PC, and it deserves to be seen. Give it an hour of your afternoon.
