The concept is simple enough, but The Long Dark does a lot of work to make just about every day in the game random and therefore terrifying and anxiety-inducing. It is also worth noting that the condition of these resources degrades as soon as you spawn into the map–you must move quickly if you want good gear and food. If at first you may be content to camp out in a centrally located building, the game will eventually push you to explore different regions on the game map as you search for and exhaust resources. Your character is forced to survive by looting empty buildings and corpses for supplies and food, traversing difficult terrain, dealing with hostile wildlife, and insulating against the ever-present cold. The island is cut off from the mainland, and the only person there is you…plus a random smattering of frozen corpses. The premise of survival mode is that your character wakes up on Great Bear Island after their plane is downed by an electromagnetic storm. While Pilgrim is fun for new players who want a more atmospheric experience, Voyageur is a good mix of animal-threat and atmosphere that will frequently push your character to its limits. Survival mode has varying degrees of difficulty: Pilgrim, Voyageur, Interloper, and Stalker. Later, Hinterland added a story mode, and by then it had gained a loyal following of fans. The Long Dark is by no means a new game-it was released in 2014 as a sandbox-type survival game, and it is the survival mode that this piece will focus on. The Long Dark reveals that survival is a constant confrontation with the mundane horror of homeostasis. Specifically, The Long Dark’s horror as a survival game rests on the premise of ecophobia, the ever-present threat of nature, the very real limits of the human body, and the intrusions of the past.
Perhaps survival isn’t your idea of escapism, but The Long Dark offers something much more unnerving than an idyllic tromp through the snowy woods.
With the tail-end of summer upon us, I’ve been satisfying that longing by playing Hinterland Studio’s The Long Dark, a video game set in a seemingly endless Canadian winter on an abandoned island where you are forced to fend for yourself. In the dead heat of August, I often find myself longing for the depths of winter.
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