The Long Dark is a survival video game created and published by Hinterland in 2017. Players take on the roles of Will Mackenzie, a bush pilot, and Astrid Greenwood, a doctor, who must survive the cold Canadian wilderness after a geomagnetic storm. The game received initial funding from the Canada Media Fund and later support through a Kickstarter campaign in October 2013.

An early version of the game was released on Steam Early Access in September 2014. This version was later made available on Xbox One as one of the first two games in Microsoft's Game Preview Program in June 2015. Reviews of the early version were mostly positive, and the game sold about 750,000 copies by April 2016. It was officially released on all previously mentioned platforms on August 1, 2017, and also for PlayStation 4. In 2017, it was announced that a movie based on The Long Dark was being developed. A version for Nintendo Switch was released on September 17, 2020.

On December 12, 2024, a sequel titled Blackfrost: The Long Dark 2 was announced.

Gameplay

The Long Dark is a survival game set in the very cold Canadian wilderness. It is played from the player's point of view. The player must manage their body temperature, calorie intake, hunger, and tiredness. The game offers three modes: story, survival, and challenge.

The game's map is divided into 12 main areas: Mystery Lake, Coastal Highway, Pleasant Valley, Forlorn Muskeg, Desolation Point, Timberwolf Mountain, Mountain Town, Broken Railroad, Hushed River Valley, Bleak Inlet, Ash Canyon, and Blackrock Mountain. Smaller areas called transition regions connect these main areas. These transition regions include Crumbling Highway, Keeper's Pass North, Keeper's Pass South, Ravine, and Winding River. The Tales from the Far Territory downloadable content (DLC) added four new regions: Transfer Pass, Forsaken Airfield, Zone of Contamination, and Sundered Pass, as well as a smaller connecting area called Far Range Branch Line.

In survival mode, the player explores an open world with the goal of surviving as long as possible. The only ending is permadeath, meaning the character cannot be revived, until the Tales from the Far Territory DLC introduced a feature called Cheat Death. This feature allows players to revive their character up to three times per save, but each revival increases the game's difficulty. In misery mode, permadeath remains the only option. To survive, the player must manage body temperature, calorie intake, hunger, and tiredness. They must avoid dangerous animals, manage illnesses, and treat injuries like frostbite or broken ribs. Fire is used for warmth and cooking. The game includes a full day/night cycle, with nighttime being much colder.

Survival mode has five difficulty levels: pilgrim, voyageur, stalker, interloper, and misery. Players can also set custom difficulty levels. These settings affect how many resources are available, the types of wildlife, and the weather.

Story mode, also called Wintermute, is an episodic adventure game with survival elements. It does not include permadeath. The story follows two characters, Will Mackenzie and Dr. Astrid Greenwood, as they search for each other after crash-landing in the Canadian wilderness during a geomagnetic storm. Players face survival challenges similar to other modes but are limited to specific areas in each episode.

Story mode was originally planned for release in late 2014 but was delayed until late 2016. It was further delayed and finally released on August 1, 2017, with the first two episodes of a five-part story released together. The episodes are:

• Episode 1: Do Not Go Gentle
• Episode 2: Luminance Fugue
• Episode 3: Crossroads Elegy (released October 22, 2019)
• Episode 4: Fury, Then Silence (released October 6, 2021)
• Episode 5: The Light at the End of All Things (released March 30, 2026)

Due to player feedback, a revised version of Episodes 1 and 2 was released in December 2018, with changes to gameplay, presentation, and mission structure.

Development

After finishing his work as director on Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, Raphael van Lierop left Relic Entertainment to focus on projects he believed were "more personal" and "more representative of his values." He also moved his family from Vancouver to the Comox Valley, a region in the northern part of Vancouver Island. Inspired by his new environment, van Lierop founded Hinterland and began developing The Long Dark, a game about surviving in the Canadian wilderness. Hinterland aimed to create a post-apocalyptic world that focused on rural areas, not the urban settings or clichés like zombies that are often seen in other games. Van Lierop wanted to highlight Canadian culture in the game, as he was frustrated with video games that lacked unique character to appeal to a broad audience. He stated, "I'm Canadian. This game is Canadian. Deal with it."

In September 2013, Hinterland announced its team, which included Alan Lawrance, a former lead at Volition; Marianne Krawczyk, a writer for the God of War series; and David Chan, BioWare’s first audio designer. A year later, Ken Rolston, the lead designer of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, joined the team. Hinterland operated as a virtual team, with members working remotely. Lawrance noted that the ability to work from home was a key reason he chose to join Hinterland.

Hinterland received seed funding from the Canada Media Fund and launched a Kickstarter campaign in September 2013 to raise C$200,000 for The Long Dark. The campaign succeeded, raising C$256,617 by October 2013. Additional donations through PayPal increased the total to over C$275,000 by March 2014. During the Kickstarter campaign, Hinterland announced the game’s voice cast, including Mark Meer, Elias Toufexis, Jennifer Hale, and David Hayter, to attract fans of these actors. An alpha version of the game was released through Steam Early Access in September 2014. Hinterland limited its Kickstarter stretch goals to improvements that added quality, not new game content, to avoid increasing risks. At the 2015 Game Developers Conference, van Lierop warned against letting players control the game’s direction, stating Hinterland would follow its original vision.

In April 2016, van Lierop shared updates about The Long Dark’s story mode, explaining the team delayed its release to ensure it included four to six hours of gameplay, not the originally planned two hours. He avoided setting a release date, saying, "You won’t get another promise from me about when it will ship, until we are close enough to being done with it that I can say with 100% certainty, and give you a definitive date that I know isn’t going to end up with us pushing out an experience we aren’t 100% satisfied with." He also noted that the popularity of the sandbox mode, which was initially a test for the story mode, led to regular updates. His post outlined short-term, medium-term, and long-term goals for the game’s development. In May 2017, Hinterland announced the full release of The Long Dark with a well-received trailer featuring Agnes Obel’s song "The Curse."

In February 2020, Hinterland asked Nvidia to remove The Long Dark from GeForce Now, a cloud streaming service, after the service left beta and went "live." The developers stated the game was placed on the platform without a licensing agreement, and Nvidia agreed to remove it. The game returned to GeForce Now in May 2020 after Nvidia changed its policy to require opt-in approval for games on its platform.

In October 2022, Hinterland announced the development of Tales from the Far Territory, their first paid content expansion. This update included redesigned gameplay systems, new regions, and new challenges called "Tales." Free content was also released with each update. On December 5, 2022, Tales from the Far Territory officially launched. The first update, "Forsaken Airfield," added three new maps: Forsaken Airfield, Far Range Branch Line, and Transfer Pass.

The second part of the expansion, "Signal Void," was released on March 31, 2023, and introduced the first "Tale" of the same name. The third expansion, "Frontier Comforts," launched on June 21, 2023, and added new cooking and crafting recipes but no new map. The fourth expansion and second "Tale," both named "Buried Echoes," were released on December 5, 2023. This update added a new region, the Zone of Contamination, and gameplay changes like toxic zones and poisoned wolves. The fifth expansion and third "Tale," both named "Last Horizon," were released on June 24, 2024. This update added a new map, Sundered Pass, and a new predator, the cougar, which was removed three days later due to poor player feedback. The sixth and final expansion, "Broken Silence," launched on December 2, 2024, and included the fourth and final "Tale," "Sutherland’s Tale," along with new gameplay mechanics, tools, and clothing recipes.

Reception

After a special early access period for supporters of the crowdfunding campaign, a version of the game with only its sandbox-style survival mode was released on Steam Early Access in September 2014 for Windows. It later became available on Linux in November 2015. Early reviews from critics were mostly positive, though they pointed out that the game was still incomplete.

Leif Johnson, writing for PC Gamer in June 2014, said the game’s small, unchanging map helped players remember paths, and the game was most interesting when it let players discover things on their own. Andy Kelly, writing for the same publication a month later, praised the game’s atmosphere, including its art style, sound design, and lighting. He noted that the game’s focus on atmosphere and survival in the environment made it stand out in a crowded genre.

At GameSpot, Shaun McInnis said the survival genre was becoming more common, but The Long Dark was one of the few games that focused on the experience of surviving alone in the wilderness. John Walker, writing for Rock, Paper, Shotgun in August 2014, enjoyed the game and said it had many activities to do, but he felt the fast passing of time made the game feel less real. In an early access review for GameSpot, Nick Capozzoli criticized parts of the game that felt unrealistic, such as needing many energy bars and food to survive daily, or a crowbar losing strength after being used only a few times. He said the game made him feel like a force that takes everything rather than a survivalist who conserves resources. Like Johnson, he also criticized the limited area to explore. In an update in October 2014, Hinterland doubled the size of the playable area and expanded it again in February 2015, making the game world 25 kilometers in size.

Wired writer Matt Peckham called The Long Dark a "troubling yet beautiful gem," and IGN columnist Lucy O'Brien praised the game’s artistic vision, noting that Hinterland worked hard to create a beautiful world to explore.

By January 2015, the game had sold 250,000 copies. By August 2015, sales reached 500,000 copies. In April 2016, Hinterland announced that over 750,000 copies had been sold across all platforms and thanked players for the game’s 99.78% approval rating from Steam users. As of September 2019, 3.3 million copies had been sold. Sales reached 5 million copies by 2021.

At the 2018 Webby Awards, the game was nominated for "Best Art Direction," "Best Game Design," and "Best Music/Sound Design," and won awards for "Best Writing" and "Strategy/Simulation."