The Long Dark

[Dark Drakan]

I was recommended a game called The Long Dark (Offical Site here) on Twitter after asking for suggestions of good survival titles for when my new rig is built. Its currently averaging 95% positive reviews on Steam.

Brief info on the game​

The Long Dark is the first project for newly formed Canadian game studio Hinterland Studio which was founded by Raphael van Lierop, who was the producer of Company of Heroes, narrative director of Far Cry 3, and director of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine. Among his team are Alan Lawrance, technical director for Saints Row and Red Faction, Hokyo Lim, art director for League of Legends, Marianne Krawczyk, writer for the God of War series, and David Chan, audio producer for Mass Effect and the Baldur's Gate series. In September 2014, Ken Rolston, former lead designer of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind joined the game's production team. The voice cast for the game includes Mark Meer, Jennifer Hale, David Hayter, and Elias Toufexis.

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Has anyone here played it at all?

More info & can purchase it here.

Steam Info

The Long Dark is a thoughtful, exploration-survival experience that challenges solo players to think for themselves as they explore an expansive frozen wilderness in the aftermath of a geomagnetic disaster. There are no zombies -- only you, the cold, and all the threats Mother Nature can muster.​

 

[Dark Drakan]

This was an account of what happened to one player (@Addequate) during a game session playing The Long Dark that I read on Twitter. Its experiences like this that intrigue me so much about survival games. Anyone can play through the same levels of games and talk about having very similar if not the same experience as someone else but its personal stories like this that I want to experience more in games and share with friends and forum members.

I find myself getting bored of linear, cinematic games that lead you from set piece to set piece with minimal actual playing area between them. They merely feel like you are playing through events of a movie someone else has directed and you are being funneled down a path to their conclusion. They have their place of course if they tell a good story in their own right but I want more titles where the experiences differ and are crafted by the players in these big well crafted worlds. I have spent more time watching streams/videos on Youtube of DayZ/Rust/The Forest and this than actually gaming myself lately.

Small sample of the story and experiences he had...

I spent an evening preparing some tins of food, bottles of water, and a couple hearty venison steaks. I slept soundly, then at sunup strolled out. Walking to the cabins was as uneventful as anyone could hope. I did find a sweater (practically new) and a knife slightly better than my own. The big coup was a lantern practically full of oil. Now I’d finally be able to see my way to bed at night.​

After a light lunch of granola and venison I packed my treasures to head for home. The sun was still high and I had few worries. So few worries I thought I’d pop up a small hill to have a look around. Nothing unexpected for a view (Yup, this sure is a frozen wasteland alright) but I misstepped on my way back down, twisting my ankle badly. ****.​

"This is okay. It’s not broken. It slows me down but it’s okay." I thought. Mostly I was right. Not a huge deal, a twisted ankle. It’d be right as rain in a day or two. With a heavy sigh (and what felt like a suddenly heavier pack) I set out back across the lake in earnest, back to my small cabin.​

I was in the middle of the lake when the sun became sincere about setting. I was three quarters of the way across when I heard the howl.

How long the wolf had been following me I didn’t know. Once I heard it I drew up my rifle, spun around and *click* *click* *click* - right, last bullet I owned had put that venison steak in my pack. Backpeddling as best I could on my bum ankle I readied to use my newly found knife.

WHOLE STORY CAN BE READ HERE​

 

[Dark Drakan]

The Long Dark sells over 250k copies on Early Access, update to "nearly double" game world​

 

[Dark Drakan]

New Sandbox Update & General Hinterland News

Direct from Raphael van Lierop

Thanks for your patience as we finalize the next update. It turns out trying to double the Sandbox (again) is a bigger challenge than we first anticipated, so our release will be delayed by about a week. We're currently tracking to get the next update out towards the end of next week. We apologize for the delay on it but I think you'll find it's worth the wait.

New Region, New Wildlife, New Features

Just to tease the next update a bit -- we'll be adding an entirely new region, accessible from the Coastal Highway. The new region will be 3x3 kms, so it'll be the largest region we've built yet, and will take the world from 10km/sq to 19 km/sq.

The new region is quite different from both Mystery Lake and Coastal Highway in terms of layout and overall feel, and we're using it to test out some new gameplay systems which we're really excited about. We're also adding a new type of wildlife, overhauling a major piece of UI, adding a new craftable item, and of course making a lot of tuning changes and general bug fixing. I think this will actually be our biggest update yet!

More Translations

In addition to all that, we're working on support for additional languages beyond English, German, and Russian. We hope to get those new languages out by mid-February. We're also setting up a pipeline to enable the community to do their own translations if they wish. This has been an highly requested feature and we're happy to be able to support it. There has also been some community feedback on the German and Russian translations, and we're passing that feedback on to our translation partner so they can review and make any changes that are required.

More Community & Technical Support

Perhaps most exciting is that we've been able to add some more staff to help us with community interaction and technical support. Prior to this, most of the direct community interaction and technical support has been handled by a couple of members of the dev team, which has been awesome for us, but also meant that we've taking valuable time away from making the game better.

With these new team members, we're able to provide all of you with a better level of support while also ensuring that the dev team can focus on putting new features and content into the game.

The three new members I'm talking about are Ryan and Bethany, who will support community, and Jeremy, who is our dedicated in-house tester. You'll see these three both the Steam forums and the official Hinterland forums. So, feel free to reach out to them if you have any questions or feedback, and they'll be sure to take care of you.

Wrap-Up

As for myself and the dev team, we still plan to be active in the community but it'll be in a bit of a more curated thing, where we can jump in and participate in discussions at specific times in more of a "live" way. I'm also working on some other initiatives to give back to the community in the form of original content that will be published on our new website, which will be coming soon.

We're thrilled to be able to be in a position to provide this dedicated support to you all and we hope you're as excited as we are about these new team members! I'd also like to take a moment to thank all the awesome community moderators who have stepped in to help us with responding in the forums and keeping things tidy and friendly, and we look forward to continuing to work with these great people!

So, in short:

* New update is a bit delayed, but it should be out later next week and will be worth the wait!
* We're working on support for new languages, and also a community localization pipeline for people who want to create their own
* We've added Ryan and Bethany to help us with supporting community development and helping ensure all your feedback gets to us.
* We've added Jeremy to support with any bugs and technical issues

That's pretty much it! The entire team is hard at work on the next update and we can't wait to get it into your hands.

And for those of you waiting on Story Mode news...we'll have more to share on that soon.

All the best and enjoy the game!

- Raphael​

 

[Dark Drakan]

The Long Dark Sandbox Update #35 to v.212 Now Live! (31st March)

CHANGELIST FOR THE LONG DARK SANDBOX UPDATE #35 to v.212​

MAJOR IMPROVEMENTS

* Expanded "transition zones" between Mystery Lake and Coastal Highway, and Coastal Highway and Pleasant Valley.
* Updated Wolf stalking behaviours, animation, and vocalizations to improve player's ability to gauge intentions and specific location. This should make Wolves easier to avoid.
* Modified audible "cone" to help highlight wildlife vocalizations and increase the player's ability to extract usable gameplay information from the audio environment.
* (VOYAGEUR ONLY) Hostile Wildlife now only spawns between 18-36 hours after game start.
* Expanded Cave and Radio Tower Hut interiors.
* Added 9 new Achievements.
* Updated Crafting, Firestarting, Feed Fire, Foraging, and Container UIs to match the revised style and improved functionality.
* General content optimizations in Pleasant Valley to improve performance.
* (EXPERIMENTAL) Removed precise clock; all game times now expressed in terms of hours of daylight or remaining night.
* Modified wildlife spawn times. It is now possible to temporarily depopulate an area of wildlife if they are hunted/harvested too aggressively. This also applies to Wolves.


MINOR IMPROVEMENTS

* Added short progress bar to plant Harvesting.
* Rebalanced Food Poisoning to re-introduce it as a credible risk.
* Rebalanced fire heat radius and fuel type efficiency to make outdoor fires more useful.
* Rebalanced Cooked Fish to retain more of Raw Fish's Caloric value.
* Improved performance of Save system.
* Feeding wildlife will no longer attack non-aggressive targets.
* Updated sound effects for various inventory items.
* New ambient music for Pleasant Valley.
* Added new Bear "smelling" and "standing" animations.
* Improved Wolf "turning" animations, to remove sidestepping.
* Wildlife will only attack you when sleeping if wildlife is spawned and in the area.
* Properly simulate corpse decimation due to feeding when in unloaded scene.
* Rabbit Pelt is now used to repair Rabbitskin Mitts (instead of Leather).
* Wolfskin Pelt is now used to repair the Wolfskin Coat (instead of Leather).
* Wolves and Bears will stop attacking when the player falls through the ice.
* Added Truck and Tractor assets.
* Resized several items that were too large relative to game camera.


BUGS FIXED

* Fixed wildlife respawning issues that could cause permanent depopulation in an area.
* Fixed issues with corpses disappearing on steep slopes after loading a save game.
* Fixed issues with corpses sometimes standing or floating.
* Fixed issue with player health being reset to 100% if loading a save after a Bear attack.
* Fixed exploit of getting full fatigue benefit from a partial cup of coffee.
* Fixed bug that caused the rifle to sometimes unequip after loading a game.
* Fixed issue with Wolves investigating the location of dropped food after the player picked it back up.
* Fixed UI getting cut off at low aspect ratios.
* Fixed collision issue on bridge in Pleasant Valley that could cause fatal falls.
* Fixed issue where mouse cursor would centre itself after using food/drink/first aid from Inventory.
* Fixed buried stove near Trailers in Mystery Lake.
* Fixed some localization/text errors.

FOR ALL UPDATE ANNOUNCEMENTS​

 

[Dark Drakan]

The Long Dark is now available via the Xbox One preview program for free (for trial period) can download it here.

• Size: 2.09 GB
• Developer: Hinterland Studio Inc.

 

[Gikoku]

Didn't even know about this game until now, but it looks really interesting. At a glance it kinda reminded me of that other game coming out called Firewatch, but darker. Did they mention anything on a release window for the game?

 

[Dark Drakan]

Didn't even know about this game until now, but it looks really interesting. At a glance it kinda reminded me of that other game coming out called Firewatch, but darker. Did they mention anything on a release window for the game?

A story mode is coming later on in the year but it's getting constant updates with feature complete full release coming next year I believe. It's already one of the highest rated early access titles on Steam and now it's available on XB1 preview too I expect big things to come from this.

Interview with Raphael van Lierop, Founder and Creative Director of The Long Dark can be found here.

 

[Dark Drakan]

Had a quick go on this yesterday and concept is sound and I like the idea, it definitely captures that lonely feeling of being stranded in the middle of the Canadian wilderness. Do find yourself walking around a lot on your own and start to wander if you are ever going to find any loot or buildings with anything in them. I thought I was going to simply freeze to death before I found anything as you have no sense of direction when game first loads and just wander in a random direction.

I did manage to find a cabin full of some decent equipment after some searching and looting a couple of much smaller cabins elsewhere but im still learning some of the mechanics etc, made the mistake of wandering out near nighttime and as expected its REALLY dark out there and cant see ANYTHING when it becomes night. Thought stars and moon might have helped a little but still could barely see my own feet so got a little lost. Had to use flares just to find myself some cover and light a fire, in the end I had to go out and quit but hope it saved while I was in the cabin so I can take shelter over night and go hunting in the morning.

 

[Dark Drakan]

The Long Dark Sandbox Alpha - Update to v.256 "Deep Forest"

We're excited to share that we've just updated The Long Dark to v.256 -- our biggest gameplay update yet. Since we've changed some core systems in this update, we've produced a short video that outlines how the update modifies current gameplay.

THE LONG DARK SANDBOX ALPHA v.256 "Deep Forest" CHANGELIST​

 

[Dark Drakan]

The Long Dark Story Mode Trailer

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