The Long Dark

About The Long Dark

The Long Dark is an exploration survival game developed by the Vancouver-based studio Hinterland, set in the northern wilderness after a mysterious geomagnetic disaster, where players struggle to survive the bitter cold alone.

The game includes two modes. Survival Mode is an open sandbox survival experience with permadeath: when a player dies, the save is deleted, and each playthrough becomes an independent survival story. Players must manage four physiological needs — hunger, thirst, fatigue, and body temperature — searching more than 50 square kilometers of northern Canadian wilderness for food, gear, and shelter, while defending against wildlife such as wolves, bears, and moose, as well as threats like hypothermia, frostbite, and dysentery. The game offers four difficulty experiences — Pilgrim, Voyageur, Challenge, and Raider — and supports custom parameters. The Long Dark also includes the narrative episode mode WINTERMUTE, which tells the story of pilot Will Mackenzie and doctor Astrid Greenwood as they survive and search for each other after the disaster. The first four episodes total about 30 hours of play, and the fifth episode is still in development. Unlike Survival Mode, WINTERMUTE has no permadeath and can be saved at any time. The game originally launched on Steam Early Access in September 2014, with the full release in August 2017, and has reached over 10 million players worldwide.