Imagine the lights go out, never to return. Bright aurora flare across the sky, and all humanity's technological might is laid to waste, neutralized in a kind of quiet apocalypse. Everything that has shielded humanity from the disinterested power of Mother Nature is suddenly wrenched from us, dropping us a few links down the food chain. Food and water are scarce. The roads are no longer safe. And winter approaches…

The breathtakingly picturesque Pacific Northwest frames the backdrop for the drama of The Long Dark. You take on the role of William Mackenzie, a newly stranded bush pilot crashed far from the nearest human habitation. Lost, wounded, and with wolves circling, you'll have to quickly master basic wilderness survival skills if you're to last long enough to understand how the world has changed since the aurorae appeared in the sky. And that's just the beginning.

In the first season of this episodic series, players experience this grim new reality through the eyes of bush pilot William Mackenzie, isolated with other survivors in the Northern wilderness as a result of the event. Gameplay emphasizes exploration to gather resources and knowledge about the world, while mastering a deep survival simulation to overcome the myriad natural and man-made hazards of the new frontier. Players will also face difficult moral choices that will affect the outcome of gameplay, story, and ultimately, the course of humanity’s recovery.

The newest region, Pleasant Valley, is nearly 10 square kilometres of rural mountain valley featuring abandoned fields, farms, caves, surrounded by a vast wilderness. Between Mystery Lake, Coastal Highway, and Pleasant Valley, the Sandbox is now nearly 20 square kilometres of playable space.

In addition to the new region and Mystery Wildlife (details to be updated once the first sightings are reported), this update adds Harvestable Plants (so players can produce their own first aid items), Torch Brandishing gameplay (used to scare off Wolves), improved Wildlife AI, and an entirely new Inventory interface!

Accessing Pleasant Valley & Region Unlocking

Pleasant Valley is accessed through the Coastal Highway region. Please note that for existing players, Pleasant Valley will only be unlocked in the Sandbox Menu after it has been discovered in the game. New players will first need to discover Coastal Highway before they can find Pleasant Valley.

General Note on Game Performance & Optimization

We've seen quite a few notes about people with high-end systems experiencing lower than expected performance in the game. We're continuing to work on optimizing the game world, but unfortunately some of the issues are related to how our core engine -- Unity -- was built, and how it utilizes multiple CPU cores for physics objects.

You'll notice that game performance is more dependent on CPU speed than GPU speed, which is why changing graphics settings has little effect on frame-rate (assuming you are CPU-limited).

We will continue our optimization efforts and work with Unity to find good solutions. We are hopeful that the upcoming Unity 5 will address these limitations, as the existing outdated physics engine is being replaced. We're also exploring our own ideas, the goal being to improve performance without sacrificing the size or detail of the world.

The episodic nature of the game's narrative refers to story structure, and not necessarily to the amount of content you're getting in the game, which we estimate to be 5-6 hours for single-player "story mode" and dozens of hours for sandbox "survival mode".

Features:

• Immersive first-person exploration gameplay featuring a stunning, original art style. Players take on the role of franchise protagonist, Will Mackenzie, as he navigates the savage beauty of the Northern Wilderness and faces the hazards of the new “post-digital” frontier.
• Be on the lookout for potential supply caches, all the while using survival skills to overcome hazards introduced by harsh weather, wildlife, lack of food and water, and other survivors.
• Deep survival simulation gameplay where every decision matters. Explore a large open world in search of resources, and balance Condition and Willpower against the needs of your daily survival.
• Morally challenging scenarios that challenge players to answer the question: “How far will you go to survive?” Any survivor you meet in the world can be friend or foe. Will you risk your life to discover what they know and selflessly sacrifice for the common good, or live — and potentially die — by the adage “might makes right”?
• Rich episodic fiction featuring dozens of locations, a cast of memorable characters, and a mature post-disaster storyline inspired by the creative risk-taking we see in many of today’s exciting television series. This isn’t the end of the world, but you can see it from here.
• urvival Story mode provides hours of narrative-driven exploration gameplay where you play as Will Mackenzie, struggling to understand what has happened to the world. Survival Sandbox mode provides potentially hundreds of hours of free-form survival gameplay where you push yourself and your skill to last as long as possible in a variety of survival scenarios.

The Long Dark is currently available on Steam Early Access for $19.99.