The Long Dark (2017)

This game is a strange mix for me: I'm not very eager to come back to it, but each time I do play it, something interesting happens. It has a lot of mechanics to simulate cold wilderness survival, but also feels like a walking simulator at times, because your character is slow and points of interest are far from each other.

Overall, it's a cool unique experience, burdened by realistic movement speed of someone with 30-50 kg worth of gear on them.

Once a wolf charged at me, but then fled, when I aimed my rifle at him without shooting. That was interesting. The next wolf didn't buy my bluff though.

This is a game that I restarted playing twice. Each time when I started playing the game it hooked me. This game has a really interesting story that grabbed me. However, I ran into two separate and different issues while playing which caused me to never finish the game. First playthrough I moved part way through my playthrough and didn't get back to it until years later. When I started my second playthrough I ran into a lot of technical issues, I even submitted a support case to figure out why the game wasn't workings.

My second playthrough I got through probably half of the game, maybe more, and I was really enjoying the game, except for the bear (LUL). But, unfortunately, my game save corrupted and I lost a TON of progress. This just killed my desire to ever try to finish this game after trying to play it twice.

Overall thoughts the story is very engaging and I'm a big story person. The game play is fun, a tad grindy but it's a survival game you gotta expect that to some extent. Unfortunately the technical difficulties ruined my playthrough and I'll one day watch YouTube videos on the full story. If you're big into survival games I would recommend, otherwise I think you could skip this game and not miss out on anything.

~ 40 Hours played over several years, almost all on normal mode. Did not finish the Wintermute and at this point I’m probably not going to.

A long time ago, when I was younger and less experienced. I stumbled onto a game that was being played by some favorite YouTubers of mine. This game was focused on survival and a feeling of dread. Back then, The Long Dark was just a sandbox and people were seeing how far they could go. Today, The Long Dark has several episodes and various modes, but I think somewhere along the way it lost what made it so interesting in the first place.

Pros

• The survival gameplay is fun.
• This game excels in rewarding the player for exploration and it has a direct impact on the overall difficulty.
• In lieu of traditional advancement, you will find more gear and you will work to improve it, and this gameplay loop continues to reward you.
• Wildlife is an impactful threat.
• You’re teased with a good mystery.
• This game is priced anywhere from ~$15 on sale to its full price of ~$40. For the money, I think the values there. It not being priced super high is why I think this game can provide enough value to a consumer.
• I really like the sound effects.

Cons

• The survival gameplay is repetitive.
• If you understand some of the basics of the games systems, the difficulty ramps down quickly. I.E. once you realize how quickly and easy it is to get all your clothing in order and repaired, thermal management becomes less impactful.
• As much as I liked the sound effects, the absence of music (except some brief interludes) didn’t always do it for me. On the one hand the rushing wind of a blizzard was immersive and you needed to be able to hear to detect wildlife. On the other hand, there were times where you are just constantly listening to the main character grunt. Due to the importance of hearing wildlife, I couldn’t even turn on some TV or a podcast or something. Another thing, I don’t have a solution for, but it didn’t feel great.
• I totally understand the need for inventory management and weight capacities in this game. It adds an additional layer of depth which is great. Except, in the winter mute its much harder to “home base” a location, meaning you’re going to want to carry a lot on you going area to area and frankly the system becomes cumbersome. I don’t have a solution here as too much carrying capacity would trivialize survival modes, but potentially introducing story only items to increase pack weights would help the fluidity of the story mode.
• The story doesn’t seem to go anywhere. I just finished a play session where I realized that I didn’t have the will to keep playing (as I was getting bored). I googled the story and from what Reddit is telling me is Episodes 1 – 4 do little to enhance the story and all will be told in episode 5 later this year (2024). Well f*** that.
• I had a point where I was talking with an NPC and a wolf kept spawning near me and attacking me. It ran through a bonfire to get me. I reloaded until I eventually shot the damn thing, but it was a bad place to spawn in (behind me in an area I just walked that had no other entrance due to a cut scene).

Conclusion

Look if you really want a game that is pure survival The Long Dark can deliver, but it can only provide so many hours before things become trivial. I will say this, it’s kind of like real life survival scenarios, you’re doing good until you get bored or overconfident and then you quickly spiral until you’re dead.

This game makes me want to be cold and go outside. The atmosphere is perfect, and I love the art style. The soundtrack is surprisingly solid as well, the theme gives me chills (no pun intended) and I love me some cello. I haven't actually played through all of the story mode, but I have played plenty of the sandbox.

The different locations are unique in spite of the universally snowy ground, and you have to pay attention to landmarks to get around as mapping areas can be difficult.

My only real issue with this game is that I wish there were more late game goals. You can craft or find better clothing and fiddle around with forges, but after that there isn't much as far as I know.

There are the scenarios which I am too scared to try to be honest, though they do provide more goal oriented gameplay.

One of my favorite aspects of the game is the fact that the inventory management system is based on weight. You can be encumbered but you'll slow down which makes you more susceptible to cold, wildlife, etc. I also like that there aren't any supernatural threats. It's literally just you against nature.

Overall, a nice, difficult but cozy game that is great to play on winter evenings.

after around 10 hours of play accumulated over six different attempts at survival mode, the time feels right to review this game. i won't be covering the story or challenge modes, as i've yet to play those (i'm waiting for story completion), and my survival experience will be based on voyageur difficulty.

the good

• the graphics look modern, stylized in an almost telltale-like, painterly way. it's nothing special, but definitely pleasing to look at for extended periods of time.
• gameplay elements are so well-designed and polished that repetitive tasks feel addictive instead of boring. this is key in survival games, since for most of your journey you'll be doing the same tasks over and over.
• the sound effects in this game are some of the best i've seen in any game period. each type of item makes a different noise when picked up, or opened, harvested, crafted, etc. if you carry liquids with you you can hear them sloshing around in their containers as you walk. walking itself gets louder the more items you carry. if you're carrying more than you can handle, your character starts to heave breaths whenever you step forward. it's incredibly immersive, and goes beyond even what i was able to mention. i'd be here all day if i were to describe the sheer complexity of the aural landscape in this game.
• while we're talking about sounds, it's important to discuss the voice acting. your character gives audio cues whenever their situation changes, pragmatically i presume so that you don't forget about a certain need when you're busy doing something else, but not only for that reason. i was vaguely annoyed by the fact that my character spoke at all at first — it didn't seem likely that they would, especially in such a cold environment where simply moving can prove to be a monumental effort. but, and i now think this is what the devs intended, with time i ended up growing fond of my character's little quips. it gave them a bit of personality, and the more i immersed myself in the game, the more realistic it seemed that they would be talking to themselves. as the loneliness and hopelessness grow, as they come to terms with existing alone in this wilderness for potentially the rest of their lives, they become their own companion. i've never been stranded in the canadian winter during the apocalypse, but it still seems incredibly realistic to me for anyone to start using their voice to fill the emptiness. it really helps that they hired jennifer hale to do the female voice. her talent alone carries the performance. (i can't speak for the male voice, though i know they hired both commander shepards for the role. i've never liked mark meer's acting, but if you've played through the mass effect series, there's likely a sense of comfort in hearing these particular characters' voices while traversing such a bleak setting. extremely big brained move on the devs' part)
• signs of life are sparse and feel truly special when you find them. you can find notes and cairns that were apparently contributed by kickstarter backers. i'm not sure whether they wrote them or simply gave the devs the cue to write them, but either way that's a pretty neat idea, especially if you want to keep your supporters engaged with the game. the notes i've found, which were only two in total, were a small poem and a simple bread recipe. although you can pick them up and take them with you, i felt compelled to leave them where they were in case someone else passed by, or the owner ever returned.
• see, there's a weird sense of hope i felt while playing this game. i mean, you're factually alone. you will never meet anyone else in survival mode, unless you count the many frozen corpses you can find on your journey. but every pack of industrialized food, every piece of clothing left on top of a bed, coffee poured in a cup and left inside a microwave — they're all signs that life did exist, and if it did exist, and now you're here, what's to say someone else won't come after? that's what i really like to see in a survival game: loneliness, but also resistance that can only be accomplished with the help of those who came before.
• that said, the game can be hard. i consider this a positive, since it is a suvival game, but ymmv. there are around 10 regions to pick from, and some of them are easier to survive in than others, with more lodgings and less unforgiving wilderness. but unless you play on the easiest diffculty, in which fauna is docile, you will be attacked on sight by wolves and bears no matter where you are, because the geomagnetic storm that started the apocalypse also riled up the wildlife. food found in houses is generally less filling than game you hunt yourself, so even if you're swimming in granola bars, at some point you'll likely want to start going out for meat. problem is, guns are extremely hard to find (ty canada) and your aim generally sucks since you're just a stranded normie. you can improve your skill in many areas with the help of survival books, but those are also a fairly rare resource. basically everything you do has risks, and even if you settle down somewhere, you'll still have to put your life in danger every time you go outside, and you will have to go outside sooner or later.

the bad.......but still good?

• music is very atmospheric, but happens very occasionally, seemingly with no real trigger. it's cool in a sense since it can trigger fear and anxiety in what would be otherwise a mundane activity, but i do kinda wish it had been used more often (or simply more logically) or removed entirely.
• if you do manage to settle down with a good source of food, i imagine things may get boring, as the gameplay would be reduced to nothing but needs management. i think this state is very hard to accomplish in this particular game though; even if you do have a forest full of deer at your disposal, you're gonna run out of bullets sooner or later, and bullets are about as rare as guns. you can craft them, but from what i remember you need very specific ingredients that, guess what, are also hard to find. basically the game punishes you for settling down for too long and encourages a more nomadic, inevitably dangerous existence.
• i would absolutely love to be able to repair computers, fridges, and technology in general, but i can see why that might be better left out in this game (see previous point). there is also something nearly magical about having all this equipment work only during the auroras (i imagine the geomagnetic event did something to the atmosphere) — you have a limited time to look at computers for messages, for example, before daybreak comes along. when things first started powering up around my character in the middle of the night i genuinely didn't know what to expect — is there someone here with me? did i press a button somewhere? it was really cool, to say the least.

as u may be able to tell, i really enjoyed this game, and i predict i will continue to going forward. if you like survival games, it doesn't get much better than this. give it a shot! (or rather, throw a rock at it, cause that's the best and only weapon you're gonna find.)

I never got into the early access survival game craze. I tried a few because on paper they do sound neat. You start with nothing and have the ability to build up your base and craft new gear. Basically the game is your’s to make. In practice it’s usually just wandering around hitting trees for several hours to make an ax, then getting killed by overbearing survival meters or jerks with better stuff than you. The Long Dark intrigued me because, one it was a single player experience, two the scavenging seemed a lot more player friendly, and three you were surviving in the Canadian wilderness, not the typical tropical island or apocalyptic desert. I’m glad I threw my hat in the ring with this one, as it’s actually getting better.

I really like the art style they went for in the Long Dark, instead of trying to look realistic they went for a pastel painting look. The characters look more at home in a piece of artwork than a video game. The use of these varied colors in the environment really makes the Canadian wilderness pop too. Even though you are surviving on your own, the world feels like it has life to it and isn’t just a hunk of ground texture with trees placed on it randomly. This game is one of the best for getting scenic landscape screenshots to use as a desktop background. The music is not bad either. It serves as a subtle enhancer to the game. It’s not meant to be center stage. You are usually left to just the sounds of your footsteps in the snow and the birds in the trees.

Speaking of the game world, you actually have about 7-8 different maps to choose from. These work as an added layer of difficulty. Some maps serve more as throughways than places to make camp at. Like the Highway and the Muskeg are just stretches of vast wilderness with no shelter and little scavenging loot, unless you’re a late game frontiersman living solely off of animals and plants. The more hospitable locations like the Town of Milton or Mystery Lake have a few buildings you can hold up in for the night and be safe from wildlife. And the buildings in town feel placed with care, none of that random generated geography here. I do know you should have your sleeping spot picked out before night sets in, because interior spaces become pitch black and I had to bump around a house to find a bed because I didn’t want to waste a match or flare for light. There is also blizzards the can roll in and drain your warmth and heavy fog that makes it hard to see pass the end of your nose.

The game has a regular difficulty system as well. Each level effects how plentiful resources are, how many wolves there are and how aggressive they act, and how fast your survival meters drain. For the story mode, I played on the super easy difficulty because I wanted to go through the narrative more than worry about survival. I tried it on easy mode first but got lost in the dark and froze to death. I wouldn’t consider this an overly punishing game, just as long as you’re methodical in your approach. While I never had to “baby” my survival meters, you can’t just go trudging out on a 2-day venture in a snowstorm and expect to do okay. Pro tip, the developers love to hide food and small gear under furniture. It always pays to crouch down and peek under beds. You are likely to find candy bars, lighter fuel, socks, etc.

Once you have yourself geared up you have to deal with the wildlife. As you explore you can find weapons for hunting and defense, like bows or guns. At first you find some rocks you can use to throw at rabbits to stun them, but I had a terrible time trying to figure out how to aim them. The main antagonist of this game is the wolves. If you keep your distance you should be fine, but occasionally you will get rushed by a wolf. If you have a gun they aren’t a huge deal, but if all you have to your name is a knife they become an issue. They don’t go down easily and if they get ahold of you, you’ll need a lot of medical attention if you survive.

Again, I have a lot of respect for Hinterland Games. This could’ve been another abandoned early access survival game that just rakes up a little money, but they actually put the effort into making this a real game. There is a relatively well fleshed out story mode, a rarity in these parts. It’s kinda neat seeing this game go on its development journey. When I first got this game all it offered was the standard survival mode, which was still a good experience at the time. Now, they’ve polished everything up a bit and there’s 3 episodes of the 5-episode story mode released. The story is you play as a bush pilot in the Canadian wilderness, Mackenzie, who is voiced by Commander Shepard, couldn’t unhear it. You’re hired by your doctor ex-wife, Astrid, to deliver a locked case to the remote and seemingly abandoned Great Bear Island. She doesn’t really explain why though and you two didn’t leave on the best of terms. You fly through a Northern Lights looking EMP field that shorts out your plane causing you to crash. When you wake up, Astrid is gone with her locked case being left behind. Your main goal is to find her. I haven’t gotten to episode 3 yet, but I believe in that one you play through Astrid’s viewpoint of events.

I saw it somewhere that this game takes place during a “quiet apocalypse” and I like that term. The world went through a financial crisis in the mid-2010s that left Great Bear near deserted and there’s a weird issue happening with EMPs disabling all electronics and enraging the wildlife that seems to have a natural origin. It’s a unique take on the end of days; no nuclear war, deadly virus, or mass riots, just the world slowly dying. Granted this apocalypse could be relegated to just the Great Bear Island area. During your travels you do meet a few islanders who didn’t abandon their home when things went south. These are your mission givers and while the overarching story is interesting, the missions are usually very simple fetch quests. This being an indie game, I won’t hate on it too much for having fetch quests as the bulk of the story mode, but it does make the story drag at times & my interest did wane occasionally.

All in all, if you want a survival game with some real thought put behind it, Long Dark is the game to choose. Surviving against the cold, lonely Canadian wilderness is actually fun and there’s enough depth to the gameplay and interesting places to explore to make it worth your time.