Dreamfall: The Longest Journey (Bokmål: Drømmefall: Den Lengste Reisen) is an adventure video game developed by Funcom for Microsoft Windows and Xbox platforms in April 2006.

In 2007, a sequel entitled Dreamfall Chapters was announced,[4] and Funcom reportedly considered the idea of a massively multiplayer online game set in The Longest Journey universe.

The story focuses on three characters, Zoë Castillo, April Ryan, and Kian Alvane, who live in two parallel worlds: technologically advanced Stark and magical Arcadia.

The game features returning characters from its predecessor, such as Brian Westhouse and Gordon Halloway, but playing The Longest Journey is not a prerequisite to understanding its plot.

The Collapse is never described in-game, but supplemental materials and the official website indicate that it saw a complete failure of many advanced technologies, devastating the world's infrastructure.

The Collapse coincided with the rise of the theocratic and industrial Empire of Azadi (Persian for "freedom") in Arcadia, which occupied the Arcadian Northlands and the city of Marcuria and began oppressing their non-human residents.

The story of Dreamfall is presented as a narration of Zoë Castillo, a 20-year-old resident of Casablanca in 2219, who lies in coma and recounts the events that left her in that state.

Her account concerns Project Alchera, an international conspiracy led by the Japan-based toy manufacturer WatiCorp, inventors of a lucid dream-inducing technology ("dreamer console") that can be covertly used for mass brainwashing and even murder.

After receiving a fatal overdose of Morpheus, Faith managed to transfer her consciousness to the DreamNet mainframe, from where she is able to briefly enter Stark's digital networks, disrupting the worldwide infrastructure with massive amounts of white noise, referred as "static" in the game.

After learning about April from her friends, she is captured by Wati agents and forcibly attached to a dreamer console, which has an unexpected effect: when her body falls asleep in Stark, she gains a physical presence in Arcadia and can interact with people and objects there.

In Marcuria, she locates and meets April, who refuses to get involved in her search for answers due to the loss of her Shifting powers and to her own obligations as an anti-Azadi resistance leader.

There, she discovers a vortex of dreams stolen from Stark and leaves the city to seek advice from the White Dragon and Gordon Halloway, who assures her that the current events have nothing to do with her.

Waking up in Stark, Zoë learns from her Wati contact that the static had originated from a testing facility near Saint Petersburg where she discovers a record of Faith's final months.

In the final shots before the credits, a short television broadcast announces the release of the dreamer consoles three months after the events of the game.

[8] The developers did not consider Dreamfall a direct sequel to The Longest Journey, but rather a "follow-up, set in the same universe, but telling a different story", hence the different title and a new protagonist (Zoë Castillo).

[9] In February 2003, Funcom approved the concept for Dreamfall, and members of the original team of The Longest Journey started working on the project.

[6] Kian Alvane, meanwhile, "skipped hopelessness" and goes through disillusionment, "a sort of spiritual death", and ultimately a transformation (although according to Tørnquist, parts of his story arc were cut from the game due to time constraints).

[6] For these reasons, the 28-year-old April in Dreamfall cannot "commit herself to anything" and seeks "easy answers" (e.g. from the Guardian Gordon Halloway), but not finding any causes her to descend into "complete hopelessness", spiritual death, and, finally, to allow her enemies to kill her.

Willett spent ten months writing the score, with the biggest challenge being to make it both cohesive and reflecting the multitude of settings in the game.

Other significant tracks include "Lana and Maud" (heard in the Fringe Cafe in Newport) and "Rush" (from Casablanca towards the end of the game).

"Be With You", the only track composed specifically for the game, is heard on several occasions; in the lobby of Reza's apartment building, during Zoë's journeys to Japan and St. Petersburg, and during the closing credits.

"My Darling Curse" plays when she takes a Vactrax to Newport, and "Nothing Hurts Now" is heard both when Zoë stays in Damien's apartment and in the very end, when she lies on her bed crying.

In its second-quarter report for 2006, Funcom told investors that early sales of Dreamfall's computer version were "positive", while those of the Xbox release were "low".

According to Funcom, revenues from Dreamfall totaled $2.64 million at the end of the second quarter, by which time roughly 300,000 copies of the game had been shipped to retailers.

Dreamfall is an amazing journey that propels players into a world where science, magic, art, and music combine to make a whole much greater than the sum of its parts.

For example, IGN opined: "While playing through, it's difficult to shake the impression that intelligent design was given a back seat to painfully simplistic fighting and sneaking sequences.

[4] The numerous cliffhangers and apparent plot holes in Dreamfall have caused a great commotion among the players and were addressed by Ragnar Tørnquist on his blog.

[35] Tørnquist commented that the developers also considered the idea of making a film based on The Longest Journey or Dreamfall but found it too difficult to realize at the current stage.