"The Longest Journey" was developed by a small internal team at Funcom led by Ragnar Tørnquist. It was their first original project. Funcom put few restrictions on the developers except the budget (approx. $2–3 million) and the deadline. Since the team had to develop the game engine and most of the required tools from scratch, they struggled to release the game on time. For most of 1999, the team had to work overtime and during weekends to ultimately meet the deadline. In the original Norwegian release, April Ryan was voiced by the journalist Synnøve Svabø.