The Long Dark creators Hinterlands have announced The Long Dark 2, another helping of open-ended wilderness survival. Actually titled Blackfrost: The Long Dark 2 - a travestying of naming conventions that is surely more harrowing than any post-apocalyptic winter - it's out in early access in 2026, and introduces urban environments together with a "Will to Live" sanity system and co-op multiplayer. Here's the trailer.
]]>The publishers of recent city builder sensation Manor Lords and elder survival sim juggernaut The Long Dark are having a mostly gentlepersonly skirmish about how many significant updates a game should have in early access, and the potential consequences in terms of both developer overwork and players losing interest.
]]>I've played little of legendary survival sim The Long Dark, or The Short Dark, as I guess it has proven for me. I fell off the game after succumbing to my first wolf. But I've sampled enough to know that adding a "Misery Mode" to the game is sort of like upending a bucket of water over a drowning person. More misery in The Long Dark? Oh thank god, that's just what this notoriously easygoing wilderness adventure has been missing. And what's this, developers Hinterland are introducing a new predator, the Cougar, which will move into any area you're fond of and compete over territory. Finally, a bit of friction for what has previously been a stroll in the woods.
It's not all misery. In a first for The Long Dark, which has hitherto been a permadeath game that wipes your save between runs, the devs are working on an optional Cheat Death system. It's not as cheaty as it sounds, however. You can only return from the grave four times, and each time, you'll have to make unspecified trade-offs. The idea is to stop people backing up their saves and make failure more of an adventure or if you prefer, an agonisingly slow decline, rather than letting players avoid the consequences of their actions.
]]>April is the time for foolish jokes, seasonal showers, and World Rat Day. But another month also means another batch of Game Pass leavers. This time we wave goodbye to summertime fishing escapades and cold treks through frozen wildlands - truly mirroring April’s zig-zagging weather.
]]>Hot (weeks) off the back of Sons Of The Forest and the Resident Evil 4 remake coming out, we're celebrating your bestest best, most favourite survival games this month. Your votes have been counted and tallied, and your accompanying words of praise and affection matched accordingly. But which game has survived to make it to the top of the pile? Come and find out as we count down your 25 favourite survival games of all time.
]]>The Long Dark already offered an expansive survival game, including an open survival mode and many hours of a story campaign. Still, it's getting bigger if you want it to with Tales From The Far Territory, a paid expansion pass that will deliver a year of updates beginning on December 5th. A new trailer shows a little of the new region below.
]]>Frosty survival game The Long Dark is releasing the first part of its paid expansion, Tales From The Far Territory, in December. The expansion is part of devs Hinterland Studio’s efforts to make further improvements to the game’s Survival Mode, and will be split into multiple releases over twelve months. I’m getting a Stranger Things season four vibe from what’s been shown so far. You can see for yourself by watching the short, and quite dark, teaser trailer below.
]]>Post-apocalyptic Canadian wilderness simulator The Long Dark will receive its first paid updates since the game went into early access in 2014, Hinterland Studio’s founder Raphael van Lierop has revealed in a developer diary. Expect new regions, challenges and changes to the way the game plays from later this year, although Hinterland haven’t yet specified what form these will take. Van Lierop also announced that he will step aside as project lead on The Long Dark. Katie Sorrell, lead designer on the game’s Story mode, will be taking over.
]]>Snowbound survival sandbox The Long Dark has just launched its fourth free story episode update after two years in development. The new episode "Fury, Then Silence" follows crashed bush pilot Mackenzie on his continued search for his companion Astrid in the snowy apocalypse. This time, he's found himself captured by a gang attempting a prison break. Episode Four is out now with all that new story mode to chew on before Hinterland talk about what's next for modding tools and survival mode.
]]>Splendid snowy survival sandbox The Long Dark will launch the much-anticipated fourth episode of its story campaign on the 6th of October, developers Hinterland Studio have announced. Named 'Fury, Then Silence', episode 4 of the 'Wintermute' campaign sees one of our protagonists captured by murderers sheltering from the strange superfreeze in a prison complex. Have a peek at that in the new trailer below.
]]>Ultrawide gaming monitors can seem excessive compared to regular 16:9 gaming screens, especially when their demanding resolutions often require powerful and expensive graphics cards to make the most of them. Once you try one, though, there's no going back. I've been a big fan of ultrawide gaming monitors for years now, as their extra screen space not only makes them great for juggling multiple desktop windows, but supported PC games also look uttery fantastic on them - and to prove it, I've put together this list of the best ultrawide games on PC.
]]>There's never been a better time to get into survival games on PC, as the recent revival of the genre means Steam is now awash in some truly great games, both in early access and in full release. There are more arriving every year, too, which is why we've done the hard work for you and ranked the very best survival games to dive into today. Fair warning - there are some early access games on this list, which mean they might be a little janky early on. Give them the time they deserve, though, and you'll find they often blossom into some truly great games over subsequent updates. We've only included the very best and most complete-feeling survival games on this list, though, so you can rest assured that every game here will leave you hungry for more. It's by no means exhaustive, but it should give you a nice selection of wolf-taming, base-building, carrot-picking action to choose from.
]]>The Long Dark has been plenty scary for years, in my opinion, but this year Hinterland Studio are upping the horror vibes for spooky season. Escape The Darkwalker is a new in-game event that will force you to stay on the run ahead of an invisible, evil entity. Because being stalked by wolves and weather sure wasn't enough. Escape The Darkwalker will run from October 29th to November 12th.
]]>It may be summer in Canada now, but The Long Dark is cooling things down in July with the Winter's Embrace update to their Canadian survival simulation. From June 29th until July 31st, Hinterland Studio are dropping the temperature in The Long Dark, meaning you'll need to work harder to survive. They're also permanently adding some new treats to celebrate Canada Day.
]]>Post-apocalyptic videogames, the ultimate escape. How wonderful to venture to a strange land, so different from our own, and see what the world may look like an entire week from now. Well, today the PlayStation clan secluded themselves behind their barricades with The Last Of Us Part 2, leaving the PC tribe to suffer in the harsh elements of reality alone. But never fear, wanderer. Here are some similar games to play if you want to leave your austere existence behind, and indulge in a grim struggle instead. Pull up a plastic bucket, break open a tin of Pedigree Chum, here are the 8 bleakest post-apocalypses in PC gaming. A post-apocalyst.
]]>It's been a rough start for GeForce Now. Since leaving beta back in February, we've watched publisher after publisher remove their games from Nvidia's fledgeling streaming service. In an attempt to bring a bit of stability back to their shelves, Nvidia are now asking developers to opt-in before adding GeForce Now support - making their catalogue a little more reliable by only offering streaming support to games that actually want it.
]]>Hinterland Studio's snowy Canadian survival 'em up has had a long journey indeed. The Long Dark started as a sandbox survival game yonks back in 2014 and has since added a story mode, given the entire story a redux, and continually added other updates. The work's far from done yet, and Hinterland have published a new developer update to assure players they're making progress on episodes four and five along with a survival mode update and modding tools.
]]>If you've not tired of winter yet, you can have it back in The Long Dark. The Canadian wilderness survival game has been added to Xbox Game Pass for PC. It's joined by ye olde mechanical adventure game Machinarium. You can now play both if you're subscribed to Microsoft's ever-evolving library of games.
]]>Seems that Nvidia have gone and put their foot in it again with their cloud streaming service GeForce Now. This time, they've failed to ask Hinterland Studio to include their game The Long Dark in the library. In return, Hinterland have asked for it to be removed from the service. This follows several other games being removed from GeForce Now, with some publishers pulling their entire catalog.
]]>Right now, there’s a room in Buffalo Grove, Illinois that's as quiet as a grave. The power is off, the robotic limbs are becalmed, and the once thumping presses are depressed. The Steam Controller assembly room is assembling no more, and with the recent Steam sale clearing out all the stock, the grand experiment is over.
It’s the final part of Valve’s great Steam Machines undertaking to be shut down. They’d hoped to convince you to have a PC in the living room, or a small box for you to stream your library from your main PC. The Steam Machines never took off, the Steam Link box was discontinued a year ago, and now the Steam Controller will no longer be made. Gone, but not forgotten.
]]>‘Tis the season / use a brolly / tra la la la / la la la la.
Hello, it's me, the list goblin, here in this festive first week of December to deliver a big black bin bag of presents to you. And by presents, I mean a single irrevocable inventory of the most disastrous and terrible winters in the videogames of recent history. Yes, there will be cannibalism. Yes, thousands will die of exposure. But from this great compendium of coldness will come knowledge, strength, and, okay, at least one adorable puppy. Here are the 9 harshest winters in videogames. Wrap up.
]]>The time of year has arrived where I continually look out my window hoping for a permanent blanket of snow the way holiday movies always promised me there would be. As usual, it's boring and bleak out there and I look to games like The Long Dark to escape the drabness of my actual surroundings. Nothing says holiday cheer like building a fire of twigs in a survival game to avoid dying of exposure so I'm glad I've been given a reason to boot up The Long Dark again this season with the upcoming update called Errant Pilgrim.
]]>I was homeless when I discovered Minecraft -- not homeless in the street-sleeping sense, thankfully. Only in the sofa-surfing sense. I had a bed, even. The creaking cabin bed of two friends who took pity on me and let me crash for a few months in their house, while I sullied my fingertips with sambuca in a dank Yorkshire nightclub for part-time pound coins. My chin-scratching uni days had just ended, but I stubbornly refused to go back to my family house in Northern Ireland. I could do this, I reasoned, I just needed time.
Then my friend showed me how to punch a tree, and I found a new home.
]]>The third episode of icy survival sandbox The Long Dark's story mode arrived today. Crossroads Elegy switches protagonists, putting us in the hiking boots of the doctor we were searching for in the first two episodes. Handy thing to be in the icepocalypse, a doctor. More useful than a pilot without a plane. Here, see a wee bit of Astrid Greenwood's story in the launch trailer below.
]]>The Long Dark has been in early access for five years now. To celebrate all that time in the snowy wastes, developers Hinterland have announced the release date for chapter three of the game's story mode, and tinkered with just a little bit of time travel.
]]>In Vectorpark’s Sandcastles, you build fantastic towers and watch the waves erase your work every 10 seconds. It’s a very direct metaphor for the global climate crisis that threatens to flood coastal cities and exacerbate natural disasters. Sandcastles confronts us with our totally predictable watery doom, but we also find fun and expression in our totally foreseeable destruction. When the planet dies, at least we’ll be entertained.
Before you commit to starving and drowning, you should probably understand how and why it’ll happen. To imagine this nightmarish hellworld, readers can flip through climate fiction novels (“cli-fi”) and movie-goers can watch a big unprofitable climate disaster blockbuster every few years. But us mouse-clickers, we obviously don’t read books or watch movies. Instead, we play with climate. Behold, the climate crisis game.
]]>To this day, the jaunty static of the opening jingle to Harvest Moon: More Friends of Mineral Town brings me back to a simpler time. Summer evenings spent hunched over my Game Boy SP, a pane of glass between me and nature’s suburban bounty as I tilled my little squares of land, pet my happy little chickens, and bribed a town’s worth of reticent heartthrobs into falling for my little blonde avatar, Pepper, with an onslaught of ores, animal products, and various culinary delights (but never cucumbers, ya’ gummy-mouthed fish-man).
Harvest Moon was about as wholesome as wholesome gets, my first videogame love, but as the days turned to years, we grew apart. Since then, I’ve filled the hole in my heart with the usual suspects, (Stardew Valley, Rune Factory, and so on) until there was only one thing left to do: make my own Harvest Moon. And so began my ongoing personal quest to turn every game I own that is unfortunate enough to not be Harvest Moon into the farming simulation game they were always meant to be. Here, in true naturalist fashion, I present my field notes in the hope that we may go on to tame this new frontier together.
]]>Sorry to make this quick, but Christmas is coming toward me at thirty thousand miles per hour, and frankly we're running out of time. I've not managed to play through both chapters of the redux version of The Long Dark's story mode, Wintermute, but I don't want to wait until the new year to tell you that - OH HOORAY - it's sooooo much better than last year. And also, right now it's astonishingly cheap. So as fast as I can, here's why it's now great:
]]>The Long Dark's frozen apocalypse is just a little bit nicer to survive through this week, as Hinterland Studio have launched their 'Wintermute Redux' update for the game. After putting plans for a third episode of its story-driven main campaign on hold, they opted to overhaul what was already there. As detailed here, the story now plays out entirely in first-person with fully voiced and animated dialogue. There's more locations, a new intro, and Hinterland claim that they've opened up its mission structure to allow for more free-form survival between its narrative bits. Check out the trailer below.
]]>The world ended this week. We documented the whole thing. But the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, will not go quietly into the abyss of human history. It's not going to be felled by the atomic blast of Fallout 76. It’s going down screaming. Screaming about the best post-apocalyptic games out there, that is.
]]>The third episode of survive 'em up The Long Dark's story mode Wintermute will not arrive in December as planned, developers Hinterland have announced, though the revamped 'Redux' versions of the first two should hit next month. The reason for the delay is good news, really: they've picked up new team members and a 36-camera motion capture setup from recently-closed studio Capcom Vancouver and want to put them to good use on episode 3. If I got a fancy toy like that, I'd also probably put a lot of things off while I played with it.
]]>Whilst raw forms of horror work through shock and disgust, the eerie is felt more as a threat. Perhaps something seems to hover over or follow you -- there’s a rustling just behind you, or a shimmering in your peripheral vision. Usually eeriness pertains to places rather than people. Places that seem to move, shift or even act when they really should lie still. This sense is just as likely to be found in an empty room as an open moor. Sometimes, however, this sense manifests, becoming a force that can reach out and grip us.
]]>The third episode of snowy survival sandbox The Long Dark's story campaign is due to launch in December, developers Hinterland Studio announced last night, alongside revamped versions of its first two. Hinterland are making the opening chapters less linear, see, to reflect the planned structure of episode 3 - and address some criticism. Our episode 2 review in particular took issue with the linear quest structure forced on sandbox survival, which still felt needlessly like a tutorial - and often an irritating tutorial. So roll on December, bring the snow and the howl, make this whole game deep and crisp and even.
]]>The thing I thought I wanted most from The Long Dark proved to be the thing I wanted least. For the many years I've been returning to this truly brilliant and most brutal of survival sims, I so wanted them to deliver on the Story Mode the title screen would always promise. To have a narrative motivation to persist against the odds and the elements seemed perfect. Then Wintermute was released and "perfect" wasn't exactly a word being bandied around.
So I know now that what I really want from The Long Dark is just more of it. And now there is! Along with tweaks and an overhaul to cooking, a whole new region has just been added in, called Hushed Valley River, and it's absolutely savage.
]]>Frostbitten survival adventure The Long Dark is one of the best in the genre, so says our boy Adam. On top of offering its own uncompromising vision of humanity pushed to the brink (all without a single zombie, alien or robot), it now has a steadily evolving main story arc that's being released one episode at a time. While today's free Vigilant Flame update doesn't contain much in the way of new plot, it does set the scene as well as introducing some major new gameplay mechanics.
]]>As the Steam Charts slowly attempt to reassemble themselves after last week's complete collapse under the weight of Far Cry 5, think of this week's compilation as the moment the thought-destroyed terrifying monster is halfway through its grotesque reforming. Witness as its undulating viscera twists through recongealing flesh, a bleak but ghoulish moan emanating from deep within its darkest soul.
]]>The blizzards of Siberia have gone on holiday to the United Kingdom this week. But the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, doesn’t do snow days. The pod squad have trekked hard through the whiteout (from their bedrooms to their computers) to gather on their respective microphones. To what end? Well, to talk about the weather. Blizzards, thunderclouds, sandstorms and, er, night-time? In videogames, it all counts.
]]>No. Let's not be ridiculous. But there are so many examples of bad survival games that it’s important to remember the good ones. So that’s what we are doing on the latest RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show. We're breaking stones over the heads of rubbish survival games, but cooking, salting and eating the delicious ones. Adam wraps himself up in The Long Dark but reluctantly sets Project Zomboid on fire to stay warm. Matt gets sea sickness from Subnautica but wants to swim again anyway. And Brendan freedives into Subnautica too, in an attempt to escape from all the mediocre survival games set on red planets.
]]>Toss another podcast episode upon the fire, stranger. The cold is closing in but the Electronic Wireless Show will keep us warm. Pip, Alice and Adam gather round the podfire this week to talk about the lies (Adam tells) at Gamescom, the icy reception to The Long Dark's story mode, the cleansing rain of Playerunknown's Battlegrounds, and the deadly climates of No Man's Sky.
We then turn to you, listeners, to discuss your favourite in-game weather. And somewhere in the middle there's also a long discussion about karaoke, for some reason.
]]>The coloured lights flaring across the night sky in the frozen Canadian wilderness were one of the most anticipated elements of Hinterland's survival game, The Long Dark [official site]. Since the Kickstarter we've known they would do more than brighten the night, playing a key part in the game's episodic story mode, but now they're in the game I find myself braving the uptick in danger they bring or setting aside a necessary survival task to stand outside and stare up at the skies in delight. So how did the design of the aurora develop. how did the team balance beauty and hostility and DID YOU KNOW that the Aurora Borealis makes a noise in real life that Hinterland incorporated into the game?? Here's creative director Raphael van Lierop to explain more in our latest State of the Art feature!
]]>After a save game mishap I've tagged in for the WIT of The Long Dark's [official site] second story mode episode. Don't worry – the save game thing was a review build issue, not a thing for regular game owners to fret over! But it's meant I've needed to try to marshal my frustrations and pleasures with the game into something approaching coherence. Stay with me as I pick through Wot I Think:
Right now I think a bear ate my shoes.
]]>Hello person reading this on the Steam update page for their favourite game! You can only read this paragraph introducing the Steam Charts right now, but I promise if you only click through to the full article you will read insights into this game of the sorts you could never believe! People, it's the mother-stuffing Steam Charts.
]]>You look tired, traveller. Come in, sit by the fire and listen to the RPS podcast with us, the Electronic Wireless Show. It's about comfort gaming this week - the things we play when we feel down in the dumps or ill with the flu or just a little cold and tired. Here, drink it all up with your ears, like a nourishing audio broth. Delicious. Adam likes to relax in his cabin in The Long Dark, Pip finds safety in the world of Zelda, while Brendan soothes his sick self with a bit of Final Fantasy IX.
But we're not done here. Space-walking simulator Tacoma also came out this week and both Pip and Brendan have things to say about it. But so does Karla Zimonja, one of the game's creators at Fullbright, who takes part in a round of Quickfire Questions. On top of all that, Adam has been putting ignorant cultists in charge of school lessons in The Shrouded Isle, and we also look at what our listeners consider their own go-to comfort games.
]]>Before Pip sashayed down the RPS treehouse ladder (it can be done, trust me - she's magnificent) and into the weekend, she left a series of Post-it® notes highlighting a string of patches released for The Long Dark [official site] since the singleplayer survive 'em up left early access and launched this week. Having licked the spilt jam off the notes and removed the Derek Acorah-brand tarot cards from the stack, I can share with you the highlights of this week's patches. Now that The Long Dark finally has a story mode, it's a good time to start surviving (or just watch).
]]>While playing the sandbox survival mode of The Long Dark [official site] I often feel the urge to share the beauty of the in-game sky and weather effects, or just the really lovely sense of time passing. Screenshots conveyed some of the magic, but not really the desolation or the subtle shifts so instead I've opted for videos. They're from different times of day and different weather and light conditions. It's only a fraction of what's in the game but the video has the added bonus of you not needing to wonder whether you're about to die of hypothermia or wolves or food poisoning or any number of other things!
Enjoy...
]]>The Long Dark's [official site] story mode, Wintermute, is finally with us. Well, the first two fifths are, of what developers Hinterland are calling the first season. Due to review code only showing up yesterday, I've been able to complete the first ("Do Not Go Gentle") of the two eps before launch, so below am reviewing that episode on its own. I'll be back with more details about episode two ("Luminance Fugue"), very soon.
]]>The Steam summer sale is in full blaze. For a while it even blazed so hot that the servers went on fire and all the price stickers peeled off the games. Either that or the store just got swamped with cheapskates looking for the best bargains. Cheapskates like you! Well, don’t worry. We’ve rounded up some recommendations - both general tips and some newly added staff choices.
Here are the things you should consider owning in your endless consumeristic lust for a happiness which always seems beyond reach. You're welcome.
]]>Apocalyptically icy survive 'em up The Long Dark [official site] will start its story campaign and leave early access on August 1st, developers Hinterland Studio have announced. The 'Wintermute' story will see a pilot try to find his partner and learn what's going on as the world goes to icehell, and comes in five episodes - the first two of which will be available at launch. Another big early access update is coming before then, mind. Hinterland say it will bring a new UI, cartography, and the option to do terrible things to rabbits. First, have a peek at Wintermute:
]]>Below, a thin crevice carved into the rock. Above, the stars. I wasn't quite at the roof of the world but I was definitely in some sort of grim penthouse. The cold didn't bother me anymore, frostbite having chewed the nerves out of my extremities, and the cold wouldn't claim me. Nor would the wolves that seemed determined to keep me on the mountainside. I'd decided to die on my own terms. I stepped into the void.
That morning, I'd been reflecting on how grand life can be as I cooked freshly caught whitefish on a pot-bellied stove, snug inside a lonely cabin by a frozen lake. This wasn't The Long Dark [official site], this was an escape from the rat race, and I was happily prepared for the challenge of Timberwolf Mountain, looming overhead.
]]>If I could, I'd attach their heads to spikes and mark out the perimeter of my territory with their blood. The frozen fields are already littered with carcasses, and I'm wrapped in a stinking hide, but it's not enough to keep the wolves at bay. They are wary of me, but their hunger for my flesh is stronger than their fear.
I've been living at Pleasant Valley Farmstead for two weeks but it feels like a lifetime. These are my adventures in The Long Dark [official site], a game which has singlehandedly convinced me that the survival genre has a bright future.
]]>It seems only fitting that icy survival sandbox The Long Dark [official site] should launch its biggest update of the year two days before the solstice. Days round my way are now below seven hours and mercy me, I'm so excited to reach the longest dark and pass on through. The 'Resolute Outfitter' update has added a new world area, a desolate land of ice and dead trees, and hugely overhauled the game's clothing. Every garment's art has been redesigned and rebuilt, they way clothes work is hugely overhauled, and there's a tidy paper doll to show what you're wearing. Go on you scamps, wrap up warm then slip out in the night.
]]>One of the most wonderful things about The Long Dark [official site] is that it seems to affect different people in different ways. Take John, for example. He loves it, and has written about why on more than a few occasions. Alice, on the other hand, found she'd taken its harsh survival sandbox as far as she could pretty quickly. I fall somewhere in between the two in that I do love me a bit of surviving but at times need more incentive to do so than just coz. To this end, the game's latest update v.321, named "Tireless Menace", has introduced 'Challenge Modes' - objectives that frame the time spent avoiding death within its sprawling confines.
]]>Our John is real into the sandbox mode of Early Access survive 'em up The Long Dark [official site], but while I dig its frozen setting I'm not really into surviving for survival's sake myself. So I was jazzed about December's news that The Long Dark's story mode would be coming in spring. Alas, I have to let myself down easy - breathe, Alice, and remember you have so many other games to play - as it seems the story's held up once more. It's for a good reason, mind. Developers Hinterland Studio have expanded their campaign plans once again, going bigger and fancier.
]]>One of the commonly used phrases in tech and games to describe a foolproof ease of use is ‘even your mom’. “So simple even your mom could do it”. That’s where this article starts. ‘Even your mom’ could play this game. But what do we mean by that beyond touch-based or click-only interfaces, and games produced for the often dismissed ‘casual’ market? And, actually, how hard is it to learn to play a game? I decided to run a small experiment: let’s be ambitious, let’s introduce my mother to 6 PC games – and not just ‘easy’ games – a mixed bag of different genres, control systems and approaches. Let’s actually sidestep those assumptions about a huge part of our (Western) world communities, and see what it is for a mother, my mother, to play popular independent PC games.
]]>The Long Dark [official site] is one of our favourite survival games. John has been playing it on a regular basis and enjoying his treks through the cold wilderness a great deal, despite the daft difficulty levels, which either see him starving to death within minutes of a gargantuan feast, or present no real challenge at all. That he has returned to the game so often is testament to the strength of the hunting, gathering and cowering.
The upcoming story mode might provide a more balanced experience. The first part of the first season will be available in Spring 2016, when the game leaves Early Access, and there are details and a trailer below, as well as a peek at the latest additions to the sandbox mode.
]]>I've long loved The Long Dark [official site], each time I've returned to it. It's been six months, and I've seen that a new zone has been added along with some major changes to crafting, so it seemed about time to take a look. But I don't want to go outdoors.
]]>I played The Long Dark [official site] for eighteen minutes then uninstalled it and will not return. My character skirted the shores of a frozen lake, scavenged supplies from huts, dodged wolves on the frozen ice, admired the views, then settled down in a cabin on an island to, I assumed, get smashed then top themselves. It seemed a natural conclusion in such a wonked world, and that was me done with the game.
If you get a bit more into surviving though, hey! The latest update added a new region to the open-world survive 'em up with remnants of the old whaling industry, along with new crafting in forging, updated graphics and sound, and more.
]]>Bethesda have a spectacular talent for making moth-eaten ideas feel like revolutionary concepts: Fallout 4 [official site] will let you play a property baron who constructs not just houses but connected settlements from bits of duct tape and broken globe. I was beside myself with excitement at this news – giddy, even – but not because of any particular flair on display in the five-minute crafting reveal at E3. As my New Vegas mod list and cack-handed fumbling with the Creation Kit will attest, I’m a sucker for anything that lets me inhabit the Wasteland. The idea of reshaping it by my own hand (benevolent, naturally) is intoxicating, even if the mechanics are crap.
And crafting mechanics are almost always crap.
]]>What are the best Steam Summer Sale deals? Each day for the duration of the sale, we'll be offering our picks - based on price, what we like, and what we think more people should play. Read on for the five best deals from day 5 of the sale.
]]>Hey! It's a new episode of Quinns' weekly video series in which he examines one mechanic in one game. This week: how first-person survival game The Long Dark [official site] uses item degradation as more than a nuisance, creating tension and reward among its chilly snowdrifts and ferocious wolves.
]]>Snowy survival sim, The Long Dark [official site], has recently doubled its landscape, so I thought it time to return to explore this newly fallen content. And video myself being eaten by wolves in the process.
]]>Survival games can offer thrilling anecdotes when their systems coalesce, and feel like searching for meaning in a random number generator when they don't. When developed via Early Access, that's both they're strength and their weakness: they can feel empty on some playthroughs when incomplete, but each new addition can have exciting consequences that ripple through the entire design. Today's ripple is to be found in The Long Dark [official site], which has just added a large new terrain, smartened up its animal AI, and added harvestable plants.
]]>Life is just swings and roundabouts, innit? The Long Dark's early access just got an enormous update so it's playable area is twice the size it was before, but the downside is that starvation now causes you to become fatigued more quickly making it harder to cross that territory. Your carrying capacity now decreases according to your fatigue, which is bad, but the game now contains bunny rabbits, which is good. A rifle is now guaranteed to spawn at Mystery Lake, but wolves predate upon you more aggressively when you're weak.
Swings and roundabouts, see. Deadly and perilous swings and roundabouts.
]]>It's grim up north. The northern parts of Canada portrayed in early-access survival adventure The Long Dark, that is. We sent Duncan Geere to explore its icy landscapes for Survival Week, and he came back with a tale of a single day in the life of a lost cartographer, trying to map the wilderness as it slowly kills him.
The first sensation is one of bone-chilling cold. I open my eyes, and I'm blinded by bright light from all directions. What is this place? Am I dead? If I'd known that heaven would have been this chilly, I'd have brought a thicker jumper. But no, after a few seconds the whiteness fades into shapes. Shapes of trees and mountains. Slowly, the memories come back.
I was on a plane - a plane flying into the far north of Canada to study an odd geomagnetic anomaly that had appeared close to the magnetic pole. My skills were needed to map the affected area - I've been a cartographer for fifteen years. But while in flight, the anomaly grew larger and the plane's navigation systems failed. In vain, the pilot hunted for a safe landing site, but when the fuel ran low we were forced out of the door with a few basic survival supplies and a parachute. Now I'm somewhere in the Canadian wildernerness in the worst possible state for a cartographer to be. Lost.
]]>In early 2012, a mod for Arma II called DayZ was released. Two-and-a-half years later, its odd mixture of multiplayer, horror, and a need for players to keep themselves fed and watered, has given rise to the survival genre.
Let's celebrate that genre.
]]>The Long Dark has arrived on Early Access, with a bunch of new features since we first looked at it, including a choice between a male or female protagonist, a lot more variation in loot - clothes, food, equipment - as well as some new locations to discover. One thing they haven't done is made it any easier to play. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's gotten a whole lot more difficult. Here's my diary entries for my return to the game.
]]>The Long Dark is not a friendly game. I have starved to death. Frozen to death. Died of thirst. And been eaten by two wolves. And I have trudged. A great deal. It's approaching early access next month, and while already proving impressive, certainly could do with some balancing. My impressions so far are below.
]]>I'd somehow entirely forgotten the startlingly beautiful The Long Dark in the glut of survival games that have made the rounds recently. It's rarely my genre, offering too much freedom with too little to do, never mind the endless promises their development cycles present. The Long Dark looks to have a precise mix though, an exquisite cocktail of post-apocalyptic backstory, incredible art style, and actual plot that make it tempting. If you missed the Kickstarter, you'll now have an opportunity to grab it on Early Access come September.
Skipping joyfully through the endless snow in tandem with the news is a trailer, showing some more ever so brief glimpses of in-game environments. Mr. Plow your way through to it below.
]]>It's not often you'll get a phwoar out of me, but: phwoar. As if the oncoming no-technology apocalypse wasn't enough to get my juices flowing, The Long Dark devs Hinterland Games have only gone and posted the most incredible looking series of screenshots. While there had been mock-ups, renders and concept art before these are the first taken from inside the engine to be released. The survival game is shaping up rather sexy after the successful++ Kickstarter campaign. If the gallery of prettiness below isn't enough for you, take a look at it in motion here or read an interview from October here.
]]>Kickstarter can rattle your faith in humanity a little sometimes. The Long Dark, for instance, seemingly had everything. An intriguing premise, wild ambition, and the legacy triple-A chops to pull it off. And yet, despite all that, potential backers passed it by for weeks, leaving it cold, starving, and alone. It just wanted a hug, you guys. Well, that and $200,000. Fortunately, with only a few days left on the clock, Long Dark hobbled past its goal, and now its crowdfunding drive has closed out with a grand total of $$256,217 in Canadian monetary units. What happens now? Er, in a rather Star-Citizen-esque move, more funding apparently.
]]>We know that Hinterland's bone-chilling survivor The Long Dark sounds great, and we even know that it looks quite nice in concept art form, but there is still uncertainty. We have yet to see it move. What if, for instance, the final game is just still images with developers mouthing "woooosh" sounds as a camera pans across them? Or maybe there aren't any graphics at all. Perhaps the art we've seen so far is merely meant to fuel the fires of our imaginations. The game, meanwhile, will be a series of black-and-white choices with random, insta-death QTEs interspersed throughout for maximum frustration. Or maybe none of those things and The Long Dark is already looking like a stylized winter wonderland (of constant, creeping terror and peril). Take your pick.
The Kickstarter is still not there. For some reason.
]]>There’s a lot that can be said for the life of a successful triple-A developer. Job security, financial stability, and having your name in the credits of a game that sells millions of copies are all nice to have. So why would someone in the enviable position of being one of those big-name developers decide to quit their job and make an indie game with a few friends instead?
It turns out there’s quite a few reasons, actually. Mitch Bowman spoke to three gentlemen from Hinterland Games, a new indie studio put together by a handful of long-time industry veterans, to find out what they are, and how they're affecting the development of The Long Dark.
]]>Hinterland Studio send word of their forthcoming game, The Long Dark, which is an episodic survival series set in a post-apocalyptic future. They explain: "The Long Dark is a first-person post-disaster survival simulation, set in the aftermath of a geomagnetic super storm that has destroyed North America’s technology infrastructure." Sounds fancy! There's more: "Gameplay emphasizes exploration to gather resources and knowledge about the world, while mastering a deep survival simulation to overcome the myriad natural and man-made hazards of the new frontier. Players will also face difficult moral choices that will affect the outcome of gameplay, story, and ultimately, the course of humanity’s recovery."
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