The Long Dark

The Long Dark is a survival simulation game where you find yourself in the Canadian wilderness. There's plenty of snow and wolves to gnaw off your face but little else.

The game is still in Alpha, so the Sandbox mode is all that's available at the moment. In Sandbox, your goal is to survive as long as possible. In order to survive, you have to have a handle on your fatigue, hunger, thirst, and level of warmth. These all have to be kept at acceptable levels or your body starts taking damage. In the world you'll find canned goods, beef jerky, and whatnot to stave off hunger. If you kill an animal or find a harvestable pre-dead animal, you can cook the meat and have good eatin for a while. There are bottles of water and sodas sprinkled throughout to quench your thirst, and you'll soon learn that toilet water is the nectar of life. The cold will plague you as well, requiring you to build a fire, find a warmer place out of the wind, or to find less crappy winter clothes. I played on the most punishing mode, so the amount of food, drink, and implements to build a fire were pretty sparse.

You never have all that much in the way of supplies, so you are required to constantly trek out to search abandoned homes for more. On the way, you'll come across plenty of those face-gnawing wolves that I talked about, and if you haven't found a weapon of some kind, you're probably in trouble.

This is one of those perma-death games, so if you die, you have to start over fresh. It was interesting each playthrough though because it was a different experience each time. Once I happened upon enough food to turtle for days. Another time I couldn't find any fire making materials and just traipsed around until I froze to death. And another time, I trekked forever to find water. I finally came upon a watch tower with a single bottle of water in its first aid kit, but I was so exhausted and battered by dehydration by that point that I needed to sleep to get rid of my fatigue and to heal. When I awoke, I was thirsty again, and it was pitch black in the middle of the night. So screwed... Nothing good happens at nighttime. Nighttime should be reserved for sleepin. There's nothing but surprise death out in the night.



I'm probably done with this game for now until they officially release, and I can play the story mode. Before that happens, there's a couple things I hope to see out of an update just to improve the experience (You'll notice some of these confusions/complaints come into play in the above video):

1. I really wish I could jump. Getting stuck by a 5 inch rise in terrain is maddening.

2. When I have a weapon on me, I'd like to see it...in my hand...while I attempt to beat the hell out of a wolf. (When you're being attacked, you'll use it if you have something available, but not seeing it is weird. It's probably so they didn't have to bother making an attack animation.)

3. CROWBARS SHOULD BE ABLE TO BREAK ICE!

4. Some tooltips, tutorials, or just clearer text regarding the use of some items would be nice. I ran around thinking it was a bug that I couldn't burn newspaper when starting a fire. I didn't realize you had to harvest it first to make tinder plugs, and it was those that could be used.

5. The UI for my health or strength or whatever the hell it is when I'm being attacked by a wolf is not clear. I can't tell if I'm doing well or should fear for my life.

Still, overall an enjoyable experience. I'll be looking forward to their official release.