The Long Dark Is Far From Finished

There's a lot to loathe in our current timeline.

The state of the political landscape in the US. Climate Change.
The enshittification of basically the majority of the social platforms, forcing sane people like myself - and maybe you! - back to blogs and newsletters.
The rise of AI, the meteoric rise in the cost of gaming consoles and PC parts... I could go on and on and on. (While sobbing.)

Is there a good thing? Yes, yes there is! One GOOD thing I've seen lately is studios and dev teams doubling down on popular IPs. Sure, they're doing it because budgets are tight and the economy is fucked up, but hey, if the result is more time and resources going into games people (I) already love, I'm not gonna complain!

Read: I'm not talking EA and how they treat The Sims. (Billion overpriced DLC packs.)

Absofuckinglutely nowhere am I more thankful to see this in evidence than with The Long Dark.

Despite the fact that I've taken a bit of a long break from it - adulthood sucks 0/10 stars would not recommend- TLD has always been the game closest to my heart. It was the first survival game to really embody the survival spirit and details I'd been (apparently) longing for throughout a childhood obsession with titles like My Side of the Mountain, Clan of the Cave Bear, Julie of the Wolves, and more.

What I particularly love about TLD is that it kinda flies in the face of the popular tropes against survival games. As the community manager and moderator of many a title, you tend to hear some of the same shit a fair amount:

• Single-player games suck and will die. (I hear this a lot in this thread.)
• No one wants an open sandbox with no real reason beyond survival.
• No one wants things to be hard, punishing, or friction-filled.

TLD basically laughs in the face of all of this.

It's been single-player from the moment it launched. A choice that really was perfect for the game because of the finely crafted feeling of solitude and the weight of choices/consequences. It turns out that tons of people want an open sandbox survival experience where the only purpose is to survive: we just need meaningful consequences and friction tempered with balance and logic. (NOT METER HUMPING.) Hell, the different difficulty levels of the game were so popular that they literally introduced a HARDER mode, Misery, for folks that wanted even more of a challenge.

In their August dev log, Hinterland explained that now that Episode Five of WINTERMUTE has been delivered, fulfilling their original Kickstarter promise, and since the Story and Survival sides of the game had long ago been "decoupled," they were now free to make Survival the foundation of the game and the path moving forward.

If you haven't read the dev log, I HIGHLY recommend you do so. (Really. I always love their dev logs.) There's a shit ton to unpack: plans moving forward, a reminder about Blackfrost being pushed back to 2027, plans for old consoles, plans for two new DLCs for Survival Mode, free updates, and more.

SPEAKING OF DLC.
That shit arrives on October 27th.
(I know it's weird that it says coming soon but I'm just quoting the date off of the TLD website.)

Go right now and watch the trailer, then examine the store page for all of that juicy TLD and Hinterland goodness. (Yes, I am purposefully NOT telling you what it is about so you can either go in blind OR watch and find out for yourself!)

I'm stoked about this. I'm planning to do an entire playthrough of the WINTERMUTE story, because I never have!, and then dive into the new stuff coming with the DLC.

I really encourage folks, if you're a fan of the game, to support them however you can. Buy the DLC if you can, and if you can't, participate in the conversations around the path of the game and future DLC. And if you hate talking to strangers (who doesn't), then talk up TLD to your friends and encourage them to buy it!

(And if you don't have friends, watch and support TLD streamers with your pet!)

So, who's still out there freezing their ass off in Great Bear? What keeps you coming back, and what do you want to see from TLD next?

Personally, I'd love to see more (more as in additional, not more as in they're not already doing a good job with the realistic-ish stuff) realistic food preservation and resource use, along with a more complex and mechanically dense endgame. (They can probably move some of the shit from Misery over to default sandbox, as an example.)

Which, BTW, is often where survival games stumble a bit. Once you're "set," you're kinda set. TLD less so than most, ish. (Fishing is kinda strong...)

I'd love to see things like a broader system of unpredictable, developing health problems, weather events that can cause structural damage, storms that actually change the environment around you, or...

I'll shut up now.