Allison Weiss
Game Designer & Artist
The Long Dark
By Hinterland Games
Epic on the surface, calming in practice, with the ability to create a real feeling of suspense and helplessness.
I have been playing The Long Dark for a while now, ever since its release five years ago. Back then, I saw it as a hidden jewel on Steam’s Greenlight, but now it has become much more. Since 2015, the developers have been growing and evolving the game into its true form and, if you are looking for a post-apocalypse-lonely-winter-in-canada-survival game, this is the game for you. Unfortunately for me, I got stuck looking for firewood in chapter one of the game’s story mode not long after it was incorporated into the game, so I can’t speak at length about the content or quality of the narrative. But as a player that has seen this game grow and change, and as one who uses this game for relaxation, I feel I have a perspective worth expressing, at least.
Two Modes: Story or Survival
There are two main game modes in which to play The Long Dark, Wintermute, the game’s episodic story mode, and Survival, a free-roam version where you try to survive for as long as you can. Since I haven’t gotten very far in Wintermute, this post will focus on my experience with Survival mode, which has been part of the game longer than Wintermute (if that scores me any gamer cred, lemme know).
First, however, I feel that it needs saying that the game’s story mode isn’t bad. I just haven’t played it enough to see if I love it or just like it. It doesn’t help motivate me that the first person I meet sends me on a fetch quest, though. The cutscenes have a beautiful painterly style to them, and the voice acting, present in Wintermute and Survival (to a lesser degree), is outstanding. As of now, there are three episodes of Wintermute that I look forward to picking up again.
The Crystal Lake area. Very pretty. I like going here. Winter can be very nice, you guys.
Survival, unlike Wintermute, has no mission objectives and opts to throw you right in the middle of the wilderness. Upon starting, you can choose your desired difficulty, the level you wish to be dropped in, and whether you play as a male or a female, which has no great effect on gameplay outside of changing the sound of your character’s voice lines. You are left entirely to your own devices to find food, water, and safety from the cold for as long as you can manage. Personally, I suck at survival games I rarely ever last more than a few days in-game before I get pissed at my own failures and quit. But the quiet atmosphere and the ability to use the everyday objects around me for resources in particular, grabbed my attention and kept me coming back for more. The sound of the howling winter winds, and the fact that I couldn’t just go and chop down the nearest tree right away made sense, and were things I hadn’t seen anywhere else, and I really liked it.
The Gameplay
When I started playing The Long Dark, there were just two levels/areas, the Coastal Highway and Mystery Lake. Then they added Pleasant Valley, Desolation Point, and Timberwolf Mountain, and then I lost track of the game’s progress when college started up. But the game just kept growing, and now has twice as many levels!
The general gameplay loop of The Long Dark is standard for most survival games: explore the area, cultivate resources, craft tools, use those tools to get resources that were previously unavailable. You need to have food, water, heat and sleep as well, like in real-life.
The interactions with wildlife are the greatest source of suspense. You could be walking along, salvaging scraps, when you suddenly hear the howl of a wolf or the roars of a bear. You immediately have to decide to stay and fight or run for your life because they WILL eventually find you and pick a fight. I still remember the first time I ran into a wolf, nothing was more terrifying than getting caught, and nothing felt better than fighting it off. But, oh boy, I would lose all hope when I ran into a bear without the Hunting Rifle.
Ah, the classic conundrum: Who will win? Angry bear or gamer with gun?
The UI
Streamlined Camera UI
The camera UI has changed a lot since I started, and I’d say for the better. In a world that is so visually appealing, as well as a game that relies on the player utilizing their senses and visuals, having a clear view, as well as a constant view of key information is paramount. You can always see how cold, tired, thirsty and hungry you are, as well as your overall health and stamina, but it has been put off to the corners of your view. Readily available without obstruction. I also really like the execution of the tiny cursor that says what interact-able item it is looking at. Others might’ve opted for creating a highlighted outline around the interact-able object, but this method does what it has to without overstaying its welcome in the player’s viewport.
The majestic Stick, in its natural habitat.
Detailed Menus and Inventory UI
Sorry for the glitchy gif, had to really bulldoze to get the game to capture.
A staple of a great survival game is having relevant information made available to you at will. You should always know what you have, what you need, and what you can make. The Long Dark lays that all out before you and ,with the crafting menu in particular, leads you in the direction of progress. You can see all the possible crafts you can make, like bearskin bedrolls, and the apparent lack of bearskin in your inventory leads you to try and hunt a bear. But to do that you’d soon find you need the proper weaponry, which you must search for or make yourself. And so right away, you are brought into the gameplay loop.
The Atmosphere
The only sounds you’ll hear in The Long Dark (survival mode) are helpful or flavorful lines of voice acting, the sounds of wildlife, and the howling wind. This along with the ruins of small towns, farms, and lighthouses cultivates the atmosphere of the “quiet apocalypse” as the game calls it. The world as we know it has ended in this game, not with a bang, but with a whisper. The eerie calm felt when you come across a corpse frozen in the snow is something I haven’t felt anywhere else. Despite the game’s grim reality, it maintains the beauty of the winter wilderness. I mean, the apocalypse may have frozen everything around, but the sun rising over an icy lake is still a sight to behold.
The broken swing set is sobering, but man, look at that sunset!
Final Notes
Thanks for reading, or scrolling, to the bottom! This is probably my shortest post yet, mostly because I was 90% sure I wasn’t going to write one this week. As finals creep up on me, I am going to set the weekly blog aside for a few weeks. Thank you for reading, feel free to check out the rest of my posts if you haven’t already, and I hope you enjoy or have enjoyed them! I’ll be back soon, probably with a new format or approach, as I have been wanting to get more technical with breaking down games.
On that note, I highly recommend The Long Dark because it’s a great game! It is out on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC! And now, a picture of a moose for all you good people!
Also, apologies for the lack of gifs and captures, for some reason my screen capture software doesn’t work well with The Long Dark on PC. I think it is because of the cursor-lock function the game utilizes. So, it’s a feature, not a bug!
Ally Weiss 