Recommended☆Steam Game Review #3: 7-day survival experience in "The Long Dark," a game about being lost in the snowy mountains of Canada!

In this series, Mina Tsujimura, aka SteamMania, a core gamer on Steam, reviews in detail the recommended games available on Steam, a PC game platform that is currently enjoying a lot of popularity. She will introduce you to the fun of the games.

This time, we will introduce you to "The Long Dark," a very popular snowy mountain survival game that was released in 2017 after a three-year early access period. The game sounds and effects are very elaborate, and after just 30 minutes of play, you will feel minus 5 degrees Celsius!　If you play in winter, it will be even colder. When playing this game, make sure to keep your room warm!

How many days can you survive? Severe snow mountain survival with depletion in the latter half of the game!

The game introduced here is "The Long Dark. In the frozen wilderness that spreads out before you, the challenge is how many days you can survive by utilizing your limited resources. There are no zombies or other enemies, only extreme cold and harsh nature. Every action consumes a certain amount of calories and time, and if you don't rest and eat after each movement, you will gradually become immobile and eventually run out of energy. Temperature control is also important; if you stay cold, you will get frostbite. The save system is an auto-save system, so once the death flag has been raised, it is very difficult to rewind, which is another point of excitement. Furthermore, all items in the MAP are finite and will never respawn again, so if you don't keep walking across the region, your supplies will surely deplete.

Quote from Steam store page

For beginners while having fun! Story Mode

There are three game modes: Story Mode, Survival Mode, and Challenge Mode. First, let us introduce the story mode "WINTERMUTE", which allows you to train the basics of survival on The Long Dark while advancing the story.

The story begins when the main characters, pilot Mackenzie and Dr. Greenwood, are on a plane that crashes in the mountains of northern Canada. If you are playing for the first time, the story mode is most recommended. If you die, you can play again from the middle of the game. Currently, Episode 2 of a total of 5 episodes has been released, and the time required to complete Episode 1 to Episode 2 is designed to be 15 hours. The remaining episodes will be unlocked for free as soon as they are released. We are looking forward to the update!

Harrah's Pounding! Intermediate Survival Mode

Next up is the Survival Mode, which has been refined over the past three years in the Early Access version. It is a storyless sandbox where you can act freely. The only objective is survival, and death is the only ending. Unlike the story mode, once you die, your save data is deleted. In addition to being fatal if you make the wrong decisions about weather, food, etc., you must weigh the materials you need to gather against the energy required to gather them, and constantly balance hunger, thirst, temperature, and fatigue. Time, among other things, is the most precious resource. When playing in this mode, choose your path carefully.

Super Stoic! Challenge Mode for advanced players

In Challenge Mode, play time is set at 1 to 3 hours, and you can enjoy an objective-oriented game. Each challenge has its own set of rules, such as "Blizzard" to stock up on what you need before the blizzard hits, or "The Chased" to escape from a ferocious bear, etc. Some challenges require you to reach specific locations without a MAP, which you must be familiar with to complete. If you complete them, you will receive a badge. More challenge modes will be added in future updates. We can't wait to see what new modes will be released.

I actually tried playing in Survival Mode!

This time, I would like to try playing in Survival Mode!　The author's target is 7 days. When you select Survival Mode, you can first set the difficulty level. There are a total of four difficulty levels. From "Nomad" mode, which is safe for beginners, to "Intruder" mode, where even the most experienced player can barely survive a week, you can find the level of challenge that suits you. If none of the four types appeal to you, you can also use the "Custom" mode to customize the game settings in Survival Mode to your liking.

Once you have decided on the difficulty level, you can choose the region in which you will be in distress. There are 9 areas and random areas for each difficulty level. In this case, I chose"Carrier," which is about normal in difficulty, and the region is "Mystery Lake," which is rich in supplies.

Day 1. Spotted at a bad vantage point as we started!　Where, here! ...... Anyway, we have to find a hut or we will die from the cold, so we search nearby. Then we found a small hut. We ransack the hut for supplies and keep going toward the hut at the mysterious lake, where we find a railroad track. Continuing along the tracks, we turn at a place where a power line extends sideways, and there we find the cabin, our destination for the day.

We managed to arrive there despite almost getting frostbite, and we finally felt at ease! There is a definite fishing line and hooks here, so we have no need to worry about food. Today, we eat the food we picked up here, read the hunting book we picked up (apparently reading it has the effect of increasing hunting skills), and go to sleep.

On the second day, we go to ransack the fishing shack on the lake in front of the house. At the fishing shack, you can break the ice and catch fish. There are also some useful items down there, such as knives (which can be used to dismember dead animals, or ice) and hatchets (a fairly important item that can be used to make firewood, not to mention ice)!　This time it was a knife.

Continuing on the lake, we found a small cabin along the lake. We sleep here today.

Day 3. When we wake up in the morning, our throats are parched. Sensing danger, we immediately drank up the water-based supplies we had collected on the first day. If we don't make water at this point, we will die, so we hurry back to the lodge. The weather was bad that day, so we melted snow and boiled water to make drinking water while reading through a fishing book we picked up at the fishing hut (apparently reading the book has the effect of increasing fishing skill), and finished.

Day 4. We are starting to run out of food. With a sense of urgency, "If I don't go fishing soon, I will die in the field. ......" I tried to go fishing, but there was a blizzard outside. Fishing in these conditions would put me at risk of hypothermia and frostbite in about an hour, so I spent a few hours fixing my clothes and trying to pass the time. Ah, yes. We were running out of fuel. So we gather branches near the lodge. We silently collected 45 branches. Around that time, the weather started to improve slightly, so we decided to go fishing. Today's fishing lasted one hour. We caught a tasty looking Cockscomb Bass!　Tonight, we will go to sleep while roasting the coccolithic bass with the branches we picked up.

Day 5. When I woke up, I heard an unpleasant pew-pew sound. When I went outside, I found that it was snowing again today. It is too cold to fish, so I gather branches from the neighborhood.

After collecting 21 branches, the weather recovered and we decided to go fishing!　We returned home, feeling relieved. While grilling the fish we caught, we also made 5 liters of drinking water. By the way, we don't have a refrigerator, so we throw the cooked fish outside for storage.

Day 6. The weather is fine today, so we go to get some meat from the dead deer we secretly saw on the first day. From the deer carcass, we got meat, two guts, and a piece of skin. This is nature's bounty!　When animal entrails are left in a room, they dry and become dried entrails. This is very valuable as it can be used for fishing line or for rabbit traps.

There was still time to go fishing while collecting branches. On this day, I caught only two fish in four hours. Well, there are days like this. We still have some fish we caught yesterday and some deer meat, so we still have plenty of time to spare. We are prepared for anything!

Day 7. Finally, the last day of this survival trip!　Although it was a short goal of 7 days, it was a tough life there, with no weather, no hatchets, and no firewood to make. Today is the day to find the hatchet, so we set out on a search. We left the cabin and looked at a small logging camp just outside, but no hatchets. We continued along the railroad tracks and found a crowbar, but no hatchet.

As we continued walking through the tunnel, thin ice broke and we fell into the lake. I find what looks like a radio tower while almost getting frostbite, but it is not here either. ...... It was getting dark and I was looking around when I took a spectacular fall. The final act ended easily with a severe internal rupture caused by the fall.

Dramatic atmospheric game depicting extreme situations

In the survival mode we played this time, when you reach the end (death), instead of deleting your save data, various actions such as the number of animals you have caught and the number of areas you have found are quantified and saved as a diary. This record is like a story, and it is interesting to look back on it as you remember. This mode allowed me to create my own survival story for each game. There are many types of items: tools, light sources, weapons, first aid, supplies, clothing, etc. The number of items in the game is over 100. Because of the rich variation, one of the pleasures of this game is to fish for items each time, just like messing around.

Over the past three years, "The Long Dark" has been updated and modified more than 100 times, and the company has announced plans to continue updating all modes in the future now that it is in production. If you are interested in playing, why not give it a try?

Title Information

The Long Dark " (Hinterland Studio Inc.)
Released on August 1, 2017
Price: $3,090 (as of February 1, 2019)
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Author：Suchimu Mana (Mina Tsujimura)

Writer and gamer at Office Mica. Her favorite game genres include sandbox survival games and horror games. Her style of game playing is a text-chatting game player who is afraid of VC players.

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