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.

New! Radial Menu & Streamlined Status

To support our goals of deep immersion and informed decision-making, we have completely overhauled our user interface. The new Radial Menu replaces the previous Actions Panel and puts all the player’s major gameplay actions within one or two clicks or button-presses. The Radial has also made it possible to add a subset of basic craftables made directly from the menu, rather than requiring the use of a Workbench to make simple items like Torches, Bandages, Tinder Plugs, etc. The new Streamlined Status screen lets you quickly check on your Condition, Calories, and other important survival information without needing to refer to a separate screen that pulls you out of the game world. Overall we think this improves the player experience by keeping the gameplay flow uninterrupted.

New! Challenge Modes

We’ve added Challenge Modes to the Sandbox. These challenges add objective-based gameplay to the core Sandbox experience. To start with, we’re launching “Hunted, Part One”, where you have to escape a murderous bear stalking you from Pleasant Valley to Mystery Lake, with only the Distress Pistol for protection. And “Hopeless Rescue”, where you have to get from the Trapper’s Cabin, to the top of Timberwolf Mountain, and then over to fire a signal flare from the Lighthouse in Desolation Point, within seven days! We’re excited to see how you find these experiences.

Rest System Overhaul

We’ve turned Rest into a true resource. You can now only Rest when you are tired, or have an affliction that requires it. We’ve added a “Pass Time” mechanic to the Rest interface, which allows you to advance the clock, without gaining the calorie-reducing and healing benefits of Rest. And finally, we’ve added a Cabin Fever affliction, to keep things interesting for our Hibernators. We feel that these changes will go a long way towards keeping the game more interesting for long-term players, add another layer of strategic decision-making and resource management around where and when you Rest, and increase the challenge for those who’ve embraced long-term hibernation techniques.

Decay System Overhaul

Previously, items in the world would only start to decay once the player entered the region they existed in. This made tuning unnecessarily complicated and led to some undesirable player behaviors. As of this update, all items in the world now begin to decay as soon as a Sandbox is started. To balance this, all item decay rates have been re-balanced on a much longer time-scale -- 1000+ days, as compared to the previous tuning which was on more of a 100+ day timescale. We’ve also added some decay modifiers to account for interior/exterior storage, and more realistic decay for fish and meat items (both raw and cooked). We feel that this overhaul keeps item decay at reasonable levels while supporting both nomadic (explorers) and sedentary (hunkering down) play styles.

First-Person Presence for Wolf Struggle

We’ve added first-person hands and held weapons to Wolf struggle, to hopefully clarify for players that they are actually using the best tool in their inventory during the struggle (which has always been the case, but never been well visualized before). We hope that this will help players understand what is happening during the Wolf struggle, and also serves as a proof of concept for further work we’d like to do to improve the sense of first-person presence in the game.

Those are just some highlights from Tireless Menace. See the full changelist HERE!

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.