A Short Walk Through The Long Dark

Growing up, my parents used to drag my sister and I along to go cross country skiing. The whole time, I really did not enjoy it, and it instilled a life-long disdain for the outdoors within me. I think that the problem was that my folks were out of shape, and as such very, very slow. My sister and I would go blasting along, only to have to wait for a good 10-15 minutes as our parents caught up. It was very boring. So much so that I would dream up far fetched survival scenarios if I were ever stuck in the wilderness in order to pass the time.

I think this may have been what got me somewhat interested in survival games years later. How would I forage for food? Where would I sleep? How would I repel the zombies? Well, maybe not the last one, though there have been no lack of games in the genre that have been eager to throw hordes of the undead at players. That's one of the things that really appeals to me while playing The Long Dark. It's just me versus nature. A harsh winter in the mountains. The biting wind. Seldom having quite enough food or fuel to be comfortable. The need to press on in hopes of finding a new shelter because the place you've been staying is fresh out of supplies. All the while, trudging through the snow hoping to find a place you're not even sure exists while jumping at anything that moves for fear a pack of wolves is stalking you. It's compelling stuff made all the better by the corpses I discover kindly staying dead.

Exploring the dark corners of the hydro
electric plant

At the moment, only the game's sandbox mode is available as it's still in alpha, but they do have plans for a story mode in the completed game, which I'm assuming may be episodic since selecting "Story Mode" from the start screen shows "Season One - Ep. 1 - ?" in the window notifying players that the mode is not yet available.

So, with sandbox mode it's a matter of wandering the mountains in search of anything that can keep your character alive just a little bit longer. Things you'll come across range from warm clothing, to food and drink, to matches, accelerants, and tinder, to medical supplies, rifles, hatchets, lamps, or hunting knives. It's a hodgepodge of useful items that one would expect to need if they found themselves in such a situation. These will usually be found in buildings you happen upon while wandering around.

Structures scattered through the game world are quite varied, and you never know what you may find in them on each playthrough. When once there was a rifle and food in a logging camp, in a new game it might be drinks and firewood. About the only reliable educated guesses I've been able to make while playing is whether or not a building will be well supplied or not. The hydro electric plant tends to have quite a bit of stuff in it, which makes sense given the size of the installation, while the ranger's lookout has very little and is at best an overnight stop over. In between these, I've found a logging camp which tends to be a decent spot to rest at on my way to somewhere else, and it has a fair amount of supplies to ransack while there. My favorite place to operate out of, though, is the camp office. It's centrally located, walking distance to the lake, and if I manage to find a rifle, there's decent game to hunt nearby. The place even has two wood burning stoves (two!), so it's a great place to warm up.  I just need to pretend I never saw the frozen corpse upstairs.  A constant reminder of the fate that awaits my character when the supplies run out.

Do these tracks go on forever?  I hope there's something to be found if I
follow them far enough...

As nice of a place as the camp office is to stay, there's this constant underlying sense of dread. I can hear the wind howling outside, it's dark, I see my character's hunger and thirst steadily rising while the food supply seems to dwindle twice as fast. There are only three rifle bullets left, my aim still sucks, and I can't decide whether to use them for hunting dear or fending off wolves. The crafting bench has been a huge help in mending my jacket and making fishing tackles, but now there isn't enough cloth to fix my socks. Sure I've survived 10 days, but it's hard not to see the end coming soon. From a gameplay perspective it's an accomplishment to survive a little bit longer on each time through, but in the end death is patiently waiting be it from starvation, the cold, injury, or hungry wildlife. It's pretty bleak, and it would be nice to have a happy ending instead (not that happy ending, though I guess it would be a good way to warm up, but then again it would consume a lot of precious calories...oh well, swings and roundabouts!).

The camp office is pretty darn useful

It will be nice when a story mode is implemented and players have some hope of closure. While I do like making the most out of every moment of daylight, figuring out how to stretch rations just a little further, hunting without a rifle, and rummaging through corpses for cans of soda, it would be nice to actually get out of the wilderness and back to civilization. I'd like something to hope and strive for rather than stubbornly staring down death and saying, "You shan't take me just yet..." Nevertheless, even with sandbox mode I still feel compelled to play more. To see if I can survive a little longer than last time, or simply get by with less than ideal gear, while weighing my options between making a run for the train derailment for a few more supplies or going straight to the hydro plant to hunker down for the night. It's all of these decisions and making due with what the game gives you that makes it such a joy to come to again and again.  It's still early days in The Long Dark's development, but it does a lot of things right, and I'm very curious what Hinterland will add in the future.