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.

As you may know, our game has been a successful example of open, community-informed development on Steam Early Access and Xbox One Game Preview. After hundreds of updates where we’ve incorporated a wealth of community feedback, we’re on the final stretch to finalizing our 1.0 launch. On August 1st, 2017, The Long Dark officially launches!

I’m also happy to announce that on August 1st, we’re releasing the first two episodes of our five-episode story mode, which we’re calling WINTERMUTE.

We’re also really excited to announce that the 1.0 version of The Long Dark will be coming to Sony’s PlayStation 4 console! There’s been a tremendous amount of interest from PlayStation players who’ve had to watch the game from the sidelines, so we’re happy to finally be able to invite them to our growing community of Steam and Xbox One players of The Long Dark.

Our handling of Story Mode development has been entirely based on wanting to preserve the mystery for our players, and trying to show that at launch, they are essentially getting a whole new experience. As such, there is still much to discover in WINTERMUTE. There are game mechanics and parts of the world -- some hinted at in the new Teaser -- that we have yet to share. We’ll have lots more to say -- and show -- about those things in the months leading up to launch.

Players get two distinct games -- Survival Mode (formerly Sandbox Mode), which offers 100s of hours of free-form open-world survival sandbox gameplay, and WINTERMUTE (formerly Story Mode), the first two episodes of which will be available at launch.

Estimated play times for Episodes One and Two (combined) are between 6-10 hours, with some variability accounting for the open-world nature of the survival gameplay. The remaining three Episodes of WINTERMUTE will launch over the remainder of 2017 and part of 2018. We will also continue updating Survival Mode regularly over that time.

There will be one more "story foundation” Sandbox update prior to the August 1 launch, the Test Branch of which will open later this month. We're calling this update FAITHFUL CARTOGRAPHER, and it prepares various aspects of the game for launch, including modifications to the game world, environment art updates across the entire world, an entirely new UI, several new gameplay mechanics, and general refinements to existing mechanics, as well as optimizations and hundreds of bug fixes. You can read more about these updates here.

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, but will be increasing to $34.99 USD later this month.