Alone. Cold. Your plane has gone down in the middle of the northern wilderness. You’ve survived the crash with only the clothes on your back, a flare, and a few precious bandages from the plane’s first aid kit. The wind is howling down from the jagged mountains, blowing mercilessly through the lower valley, and there’s nothing to see but trees and snow. You have no compass, no map, and no idea where you are. You only know that you’re beginning to freeze to death, and that you’d better move. Now.
The Long Dark provides the closest thing to being stranded in a freezing wilderness since… well, being stranded in a freezing wilderness. There is no multiplayer. There is no crafting. There are no zombies. There’s just you, harsh environmental conditions, a fantastically gorgeous art style.
There is fear, however. The Long Dark is able to tap into the primal fear of being alone and on the brink of death, whether through starvation, dehydration, hypothermia, blood loss, or any combination thereof. Through a beautifully stylized landscape, a haunting soundtrack, and the ever-present threat of being on the brink of death, Hinterland Studios Inc. has delivered the most enthralling and terrifying survival strategy game I’ve ever played.
As it’s still currently in development, only one sandbox scenario is available. The single-player campaign will eventually follow the story of Will Mackenzie, a bush pilot whose plane has crashed after an unexplained “geomagentic disaster.” You’ll be testing your own wits and quick-thinking against the brutality of an unforgiving Mother Nature as she bears down with driving snow storms and freezing temperatures. I’m particularly interested to see how Hinterland will work other survivors and your interactions with them into the story, as the only human presence I found during my sandbox playthrough were frozen corpses.
Currently, The Long Dark is a simple game to play during sandbox mode. I can’t attest to the story yet, but I’ll keep you posted as it becomes available. In the sandbox, the idea is to survive as long as possible in this freezing, post-digital wilderness. There’s no tutorial, no gameplay information, no lengthy voiceover to listen to.
Upon starting, the screen faded up from black to reveal a snowscape of trees. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howled.
I set off in a random direction - because one looks just the same as any other - and came upon a frozen lake. Here, a short music clip faded in and out, and I was left with only the screaming wind and my own shivering for company. Across the lake I saw a cabin, and as I crunched through the snow toward it, a warning flashed onto my HUD that said I was now slowly freezing to death.
Charming.
Entering the cabin gave me shelter from the wind and respite from the cold. Still, the hazy blue light streaming in from the ice covered windows made me uneasy, and being in an empty building hearing nothing but the wind rattling the window panes caused the hairs on my neck to stand up. I was on edge, expecting something to jump out of the shadows screaming, “OOGA-BOOGA-BOOGA!” But it never happened.
It’s often said that the expectation of confrontation is more frightening than the confrontation itself, and Hinterlands has mastered the art of ensuring that you never feel safe. The constant stress of expecting to be frightened gradually eroded my courage - not to mention the stress of knowing I needed to find food, water, and warmth.
Sheltered inside, with my body temperature slowly returning to normal, I raided everything I could find, scoffed some god-only-knows-how-old beef jerky, and packed away a tinder bundle and lighter fluid. I headed upstairs to see what else I could find, and stopped dead in my tracks. At the top of the stairs was a person, huddled in the corner, frozen to death. Even as I reluctantly searched through their possessions, it struck me that I wasn’t truly safe here. I could easily have ended up just like they were, a frozen corpse in the middle of the nowhere. The thought was as chilling as the weather outside.
With the sun setting and nowhere else to go, I lit a fire with enough wood to last four hours. I crawled into the cabin’s bed to sleep until sunrise, with the ever-present awareness of the dead body just a few feet away from me chewing at my thoughts.
Eventually, the fire burned out and my calories dipped into negative values, and upon waking I’m near death. Leaving the corpse cabin in search of better things, I see across the lake a different cabin, this time with a coat, some boots, and food. A candy bar is just enough to satisfy my hunger, but soon I’d have to leave. I had no firewood, not enough energy to venture outside to gather more, no food, and no water. So I wandered back out into the snow and cold until the sun began to set and I’d used my last flare for light and warmth. Darkness descended, and though the aurora in the night sky was beautiful, I was finally claimed by the elements, dying of exposure as the sun began to climb in the east.
I lasted a mere 36 hours after my plane crashed.
Though there’s no tutorial, it’s relatively easy to work out the game’s controls - though I found myself frustrated when I was caught on a ledge and realized the player character couldn’t jump. In fact, there are very few controls, and even fewer actions that can be taken. You can walk, run, and click, with most actions initiated by the mouse. When you’re not traveling or searching through belongings for items, you’re clicking through the menu, which at this time feels cumbersome. Unlike some games where the menu is a much-needed pause feature, in The Long Dark your calories and temperature continue to tick down, and your hunger, thirst, and fatigue continue to rise.
Besides scrounging for clothes and food, you can also manage your worn clothing, salvage old clothes for repair materials, boil water, and forage for wood. To forage, you designate a certain amount of time to look for resources, compare how many calories that will burn versus how many you will spend on the activity, then click go. The screen fades and a clock ticks, and at the end of the designated time you’ll find out if you were successful or not. It’s a rather reductionist method of approaching resource gathering and it does the job, but currently the chances of success feel stacked against you. Even with two hours of foraging and 800 calories burned, I came back with one fire log. One. Admittedly, I didn’t have a tool; but considering I was surrounded by trees, I should have been able to find a bit more than that.
Sleeping is the same as foraging as far as the fade-out, fade-in technique is concerned, though if you try to sleep in an unprotected area and without a fire you might die from exposure. Or, if you go to bed and don’t have the calories to make it through the night, you’ll die from starvation or dehydration. I understand the fade during sleep, but it doesn’t make sense to have it occur during other activities, and I’d prefer being able to take a more hands-on approach to my resource-gathering. Hopefully Hinterland takes note.
Once you have a fire going on a stove (found in most of the buildings you come across) you can melt snow for drinking water, then boil it to make it safe to drink. This takes a long time. If I have a fire going for 4 hours, it will take just about that long to melt and then boil approximately 2 liters of drinkable water. It seems like there’s some balance issues there.
Speaking of balance, whatever the geomagnetic event which caused your plane crash was, it not only destroyed the human infrastructure - it also decimated the animal population. The only animals around are crows, wolves, and elk. The crows are only a sound effect, and I’m not sure I ever actually saw any birds during my playthrough. Encountering other creatures feels fairly common. What I’d like to see is an explanation for the lack of a wolf pack or elk herd dynamics. It drew me out of my experience just a little bit when I saw a single wolf on the horizon, when I knew that there should be at least five of them in a pack.
Hinterland is definitely listening to feedback, however. A recent update included balance changes to calorie burn and water boiling to make for a slightly more forgiving experience, but it still feels like there are further adjustments needed. What I haven’t seen are any hints about the planned story mode, but it seems the developer is currently concerned with nailing down the core mechanics first - which is how it should be.
There’s clearly a long way to go, but what’s already there is a beautiful game with plenty going for it. You can pick up The Long Dark on Steam right now, and I 100% recommend doing so.
Just be sure to dress in layers.
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