The Long Dark
Hinterland Studio Inc. · Survival, Indie, Open World
Overview
THE LONG DARK is a thoughtful, exploration-survival experience that challenges solo players to think for themselves as they explore an expansive frozen wilderness in the aftermath of a geomagnetic disaster. There are no zombies -- only you, the cold, and all the threats Mother Nature can muster.
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Bright lights flare across the night sky. The wind rages outside the thin walls of your wooden cabin. A wolf howls in the distance. You look at the meager supplies in your pack, and wish for the days before the power mysteriously went out. How much longer will you survive?
Welcome to THE LONG DARK, the innovative exploration-survival experience Wired magazine calls "the pinnacle of an entire genre".
In THE LONG DARK, you are getting both the genre-defining Survival Mode, honed after years of open development and frequent updates, and the award-winning episodic narrative mode, WINTERMUTE.
THE LONG DARK: SURVIVAL MODE brings you the genre-defining Survival Mode, honed after years of open development and frequent updates. Widely considered the paramount Survival game of all time, SURVIVAL MODE gives you pure focus on THE LONG DARK’s Survival Sandbox -- the experience that started it all!
Included with both THE LONG DARK: SURVIVAL MODE and THE LONG DARK, Survival Mode is the free-form, non-narrative Survival Sandbox that has defined the genre since launching on Steam in 2014. After years of open development and dozens of major updates, THE LONG DARK now stands at the pinnacle of the entire genre. Survival is your only goal, and death your only end. Make your own survival story with every game.
The game that defined death for the survival genre. When you die in Survival, your save is deleted. Every decision matters.
The game challenges players to think for themselves by providing the information but never the answers. You have to earn the right to survive.
Monitor your Hunger, Thirst, Fatigue, and Cold as you struggle to balance resources with the energy needed to obtain them. Every action costs Calories, and time is your most precious resource. Choose your path carefully.
Over 100 gear items including Tools, Light Sources, Weapons, First Aid supplies, Clothing, and more.
Explore a 50+ square kilometer Northern Canadian wilderness spanning 12 major regions and all the zones that connect them in search of life-saving supplies. Distant mountains, coastal towns, mines, farmlands, and a huge expanse of brutal winter wilderness to test your survival mettle.
Hunt, fish, trap, climb, map, search for life-saving food and gear items, and try to avoid dying from the hostile wildlife, succumbing to hypothermia, frostbite, or dysentery (amongst other uncomfortable afflictions), find and maintain your life-saving gear. Hunt and be hunted by: Wolves, Bears, Moose, Rabbits, Deers, Crows, and more to come in future updates.
Four distinct Experience Modes let you find a challenge level you are comfortable with, such as Pilgrim Mode, which is meant to be quiet and pensive, all the way to Interloper Mode, where only the most experienced survivors have a chance to last a week. If none of the four Experiences suits you, use Custom Mode settings to tailor your Survival Mode game to your specific tastes.
Features the music of Sascha Dikiciyan.
Several standalone Challenge Modes offer objective-based experiences designed to last 1-3 hours each, such as Whiteout -- the race to gather enough supplies to prepare for a monster blizzard. Or Hunted, where you need to escape a murderous Bear. Complete them to unlock Feats that provide long-term gameplay benefits in Survival Mode. Additional Challenges include: Hopeless Rescue, Nomad, Archivist, As the Dead Sleep, and Escape the Darkwalker.
Included in THE LONG DARK The episodic story-mode for THE LONG DARK, WINTERMUTE, includes four of the five episodes that form WINTERMUTE. Episode Five is in development, and is slated for release at a later date. This will bring the WINTERMUTE storyline to its conclusion.
The first four episodes of WINTERMUTE represent approximately 30 hours of gameplay. Episode Five is included in the price of the game, and will be unlocked for free when it is released.
Bush pilot Will Mackenzie (player character) and Dr. Astrid Greenwood are separated after their plane crashes deep in the Northern Canadian wilderness in the aftermath of a mysterious flash of light in the sky. Struggling to survive as he desperately searches for Astrid, Mackenzie comes across the small town of Milton, where he begins to understand the scope of this quiet apocalypse.
Mackenzie’s search for Astrid takes him deeper into the savage Winter wilderness. A mysterious trapper may be the key to finding Astrid, but can he be trusted?
In the aftermath of events in Milton, an enigmatic stranger rescues Dr. Astrid Greenwood (player character) from near death. Facing the blizzards of Pleasant Valley, Astrid must bring all her skills as a doctor to bear on the survivors she encounters. But will she find Mackenzie, and get closer to the mystery that's taking them to Perseverance Mills?
A murderous gang of convicts has captured Mackenzie. Desperate to escape one of the darkest corners of Great Bear Island, he must somehow survive his fiercest enemy yet. Can Mackenzie recover the Hardcase, continue his search for Astrid, and also save the innocents caught up in this deadly confrontation?
NOTE: Unlike Survival Mode, WINTERMUTE does not feature permadeath. You can save your progress as you play.
Features performances by Jennifer Hale, Mark Meer, David Hayter, and Elias Toufexis (Episode Three), and the music of Cris Velasco.
In addition to releasing the remaining episode of WINTERMUTE, we intend to continue updating Survival Mode with limited free updates alongside our paid DLC Expansion Pass, TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY. This is on top of the over 100 updates we have made to the game over the past 8 years of open development. Keep in mind that your purchase of THE LONG DARK entitles you to all five episodes of WINTERMUTE without extra charge. For more information about the free updates coming to Survival Mode, please visit the Expansion Pass roadmap via our "Visit the website" link on the right of the page.
Hinterland is an independent video game developer and IP creator headquartered in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Established in 2012 by game director & writer, Raphael van Lierop, Hinterland is a multi-ethnic, international team united around a singular goal: to create thought-provoking, story-rich entertainment experiences set in compelling original worlds.
Our fictional settings -- our IP -- are conceived from the ground up to exist across multiple mediums. We believe that when people love a world, they want to experience it across as many platforms as possible.
Hinterland's first IP, THE LONG DARK, first launched on Steam Early Access on September 2014. The game's multi-platform 1.0 launched on August 2017. Today, THE LONG DARK has more than 10-million players around the world.
We aim for our games to foster a sense of social awareness, and we aspire to provide immersive, sophisticated worlds for anyone seeking a mature entertainment experience.
Join us on our journey.
From the game's Steam store page.
THE GAMEQ VERDICT9,999 reviews analyzed
What players are actually saying
1. Summary
Players treat The Long Dark as two games in one box and judge them very differently. The survival sandbox gets the warmest praise: a quiet, hand-painted Canadian wilderness where cold, hunger and wildlife are the only enemies, every trip outside is a gamble, and death is permanent. Reviewers call it the best pure survival game they have played. They praise the watercolor art and the sound of wind and snow, and say it can be a cozy comfort game one hour and frightening the next. Difficulty presets and a custom mode let players tune it from a calm walk to a brutal fight for every calorie, and some long-time players say they come back to it every winter.
Much of the criticism is about Wintermute, the story mode. For years reviewers complained that the story was unfinished while the studio sold paid DLC and announced a sequel. Episode 5 arrived at the end of March 2026, and a wave of disappointed reviews followed, aimed at the writing and the ending, long unskippable cutscenes and dialogue, linear walking with little survival, and bugs and soft locks. Newer players have their own list: the game is slow, explains almost nothing, has no jump button, and sells the story separately from the Survival Edition. Reviewers largely agree about survival mode and split over the story, and some reviews put it as plain advice: buy the game for survival and treat Wintermute as optional.
2. What keeps coming up
What players praise
Atmosphere, art style and soundHigh
17% of reviews bring up the atmosphere, the art style, the music or how immersive the game feels. Players describe the painted look of snowfields, auroras and sunsets ("it's like walking through a painting"), the crunch of snow, howling wind, crows and the opening song. Several say they feel cold while playing: "You can feel the cold of this silent apocalypse through your fingertips." Some credit the painterly style for keeping the game from looking dated. A minority finds the art cartoonish, the character models crude or the trees flat, and a few call it a game from the early 2000s.
A pure survival sandbox with real stakesHigh
15% of reviews call the game punishing, brutal, hardcore or challenging, mostly as praise, and 6.5% call it the best survival game they have played. Players like that the threats are weather, hunger, thirst and predators, with no zombies, bandits or base-building grind, and that one bad decision can end a run of hundreds of days. Reviewers trade death stories (a blizzard on the walk home, thin ice, a wolf while carrying flour) and say they learn something from each one. Two reviews sum up the appeal: "Its a winter survival game with no fat on it" and "Gently discourages the resource hoarding habits which most survival games reward." A reservation raised in 1.3% of reviews is that survival mode has no end goal, so it turns repetitive once a player has learned to survive.
Relaxing and tense at the same timeHigh
7.3% of reviews call the game relaxing, cozy, calm, meditative or a comfort game. Players describe turning on a low difficulty to wander, fish and cook, playing it every winter with a hot drink, and using it to get through illness, grief or stress. The calm can end without warning: "It's quiet, peaceful, and relaxing. Then a cougar rips you in half." Another reviewer calls it "The most stressful comfort game ever".
Difficulty settings for every kind of playerMedium
Casual players praise Pilgrim and the option to make predators passive or turn them off, while veterans chase long runs on Interloper and Misery and say the hardest levels feel like a different game. The presets and custom settings come up in 3.4% of reviews. Complaints come from both ends: some newcomers say even the easiest setting is too hard without guidance, and some experienced players say the middle settings become easy and dull once they know the maps.
Years of updates and extra contentMedium
Long-time players mention how far the game has come since its 2014 alpha: new regions, crafting, cooking, the trader, safehouse customization (1.2% of reviews), and the paid Tales from the Far Territory DLC (1.9%), which survival players who own it say is worth the money. Mods come up in 1.8% of reviews, mostly for quality-of-life changes and a community co-op mod. Some players say updates broke their mods or changed mechanics they liked, and the paid DLC itself is contested (see below).
Where players are split
Wintermute, the story mode as a wholeHigh
16.5% of reviews mention Wintermute, the story mode or the campaign. Fans praise the voice acting, the mystery of the geomagnetic collapse, the side characters and the way each episode plays differently, and a few say the finale made them cry. Some recommend playing it before survival mode as a tutorial. Critics call it a walking simulator made of fetch quests and dislike losing all their gear between episodes. They single out the Old Bear chase and bear cave in the early episodes and the prison sections in Episode 4. Reviews that compare the episodes tend to rate the first three or four highest and see a decline after that. Verdicts range from "Story mode (Wintermute) is a solid 6/10." to "I'm one of the 5-10 people who love Wintermute".
The slow pace and all the walkingHigh
"Walking simulator" is used both fondly and as an insult, and 10.4% of reviews talk about walking or the slow pace. Fans say the slowness is the point: planning a route, reading the weather and carrying only what matters. Critics describe holding W for long stretches across empty maps, a character who tires after a short sprint, and searching cupboards and waiting on progress bars. Some reviews that call it boring come from players who wanted more goals or more people in the world.
Wolves, bears, moose and the cougarMedium
6.6% of reviews mention wolves and 5.1% mention bears, often in affectionate death stories. The complaints are specific: wolves that attack on sight, animals that survive several close-range shots, aiming that misses at point blank, and the cougar (1% of reviews), which veterans say was reworked into something that "feels like a video game boss more than just an animal". A few players praise later changes to the cougar, and others turn predators off entirely.
Paid DLC: Tales from the Far TerritoryMedium
Survival players who bought Tales from the Far Territory praise its regions, cooking and the travois, and some say it is close to essential. The same DLC draws objections in 1.9% of reviews, which say paid content should not have come before the story was finished. A smaller group dislikes achievements and items that require the DLC.
What frustrates players
Episode 5 and the end of WintermuteHigh
9.5% of reviews mention Episode 5 or the final episode. In the negative ones, 62% bring up waiting, years or a decade, 47% criticize the writing, plot or characters, and 35% each mention bugs or soft locks and cutscenes, dialogue or characters narrating. Players object to the ending and the protagonist's choices, a final stretch that leads into the sequel instead of resolving the story, timed and on-rails sections, ice and mine mazes, and survival mechanics pushed aside. One player suggests it "should be renamed The Long Hike", and another notes that if you railroad the final chapter, "maybe don't put in a literal railroad". Some defend it. One player who finished it writes "I thought it was brilliant. Bleak, and brilliant", and a long-time fan grants that "Episode 5 is shorter on gameplay, longer on cutscene narratives" and still recommends the game.
Ten years for the story while paid DLC and a sequel came firstHigh
11.7% of reviews talk about the unfinished story or the wait for it, and about half of those also mention the paid DLC or the sequel, Blackfrost: The Long Dark 2. Players who backed the game or bought it in Early Access say they expected five episodes, then saw years of delays, a paid survival expansion and a sequel announced before the last episode shipped. In negative reviews written from late April 2024 to March 2026, the wait was among the complaints raised most often, alongside the slow pace. After Episode 5 shipped the complaint changed from "not finished" to "not worth the wait", and only 1.5% of reviews written from June 2026 onward call the game unfinished.
Bugs, soft locks and lost runsMedium
6.5% of reviews mention bugs, glitches, soft locks or crashes. In Wintermute, players report quest triggers that never fire, an aurora that never comes to open the dam in Episode 2, falling through floors and black screens. In survival mode the complaints center on losing long runs: the travois vanishing with its load ("HINTERLAND PLEASE FIX THE TRAVOIS BUG"), saves lost after a crash or a death screen, and runs ended by an unmarked fall. One player "Lost 50+ days of progress because of a bug the devs haven't bothered to fix."
Unskippable cutscenes and slow dialogueMedium
Story players say they cannot skip cutscenes or long conversations, even on a replay or after dying, and some new players quit during the unskippable opening credits and splash screens. Cutscenes come up in 2.5% of reviews. "For the love of god if half of the episode is going to be cutscenes at least make them skippable!"
A steep start with no tutorialMedium
New players describe dying in their first minutes to cold or a failed fire, not knowing the controls, and turning to wikis and videos; 2.5% of reviews mention the missing tutorial, the learning curve or a game that explains nothing. "When your game has a survival mode, the said mode should provide at least the bare minimum of the information required to survive." Fans of the game agree the start is steep and suggest playing the first Wintermute episode first, which is sold separately (see below).
Survival rules that feel arbitraryMedium
3.3% of reviews complain about specific survival rules: sprains from small drops or gentle slopes, a low carry limit, hunger and fatigue that build fast, fire starting that fails at a stated high chance, no melee defense with a knife or hatchet, and houses that are dark inside in daylight ("It is pitch black inside every house despite all the windows"). Fans call this realism; critics say it is difficulty without logic.
The story sold separately from the Survival EditionLow
1.9% of reviews deal with the split between the Survival Edition and Wintermute. New buyers who picked the cheaper edition found no story and no tutorial: "I have to pay for a tutorial? Seriously?!" Another writes, in capitals, "YOU DO NOT GET WINTERMUTE STORY FREE IF YOU BUY THE SURVIVAL MODE". Players who bought the game when everything was included say the split confuses new players.
No jump buttonLow
1.8% of reviews mention jumping. Some players got stuck between rocks or ice with no way out ("The game needs a jump button im stuck between ice and the dam"), and some positive reviews name it as the one thing they wish the game had.
No co-opLow
1.4% of reviews ask for co-op or multiplayer, and some of them want to play it with a friend or partner. A handful bought the game expecting co-op because of a store tag. Others point to a community co-op mod or wait for the sequel.
Performance, controllers and platformsLow
1% of reviews raise technical issues: no frame-rate cap ("let me set my own fps my gpu is going to explode"), stutter on Steam Deck, controller input problems and some Mac and Linux trouble. Others praise how well it runs on old laptops and Macs.
3. The player conversation
Much of the conversation is affectionate. A third of the reviews are one-liners ("cold", "I hate wolves") or short death stories ending in 10/10, and many of the long reviews come from people who have played for years, often across several platforms. The split runs between the two modes more than between players: positive reviews often criticize the story, and some negative ones still praise survival mode.
Who raises what differs. Negative reviews written in the first couple of hours bring up slowness, boredom, the missing tutorial, the jump button and finding out the story is a separate purchase. Negative reviews from players with hundreds of hours bring up Episode 5, the years of waiting, bugs that ended long runs, the cougar and the travois.
Reviews written between 30 March and 3 May 2026, the weeks after Episode 5, were 63% positive, and 28% of them mention it. Older reviews were reopened too: 28% of the negative edited older reviews mention Episode 5. By early June 2026 the weekly share was back in the 80s (88.7% in the week of 1 June), and reviews written from June 2026 onward are 81.8% positive, with Episode 5 in 8.7% of them. Smaller dips came earlier. In the week of 24 June 2024 (63% of 103 reviews) reviewers protested paid DLC arriving before the story's last episode, and the week of 9 December 2024 (73% of 192) is when reviewers reacted to the sequel announcement. In the week of 21 April 2025 (66% of 154 reviews), reviewers mention a Steam sale, and some negative reviews from new players called the game slow or boring. Late-November weeks spike with positive reviews; the week of 24 November 2025 had 234 reviews, 95% positive. Players who want more look ahead to Blackfrost, with anticipation (1.4% of reviews) slightly outnumbering anger that it was announced first (1.1%).
4. What the developers could do
- Fix Episode 5's soft locks, broken triggers and falling-through-floor bugs. 35% of the negative reviews that mention Episode 5 bring up bugs, and several players could not finish the story at all.
- Make every cutscene and conversation skippable, including the opening credits. Story players ask to skip scenes on replays and after dying, and some new players quit before the game even started.
- Fix the travois and save bugs that wipe out long survival runs. Players describe losing 50 or more days of progress to a vanished travois or a crash.
- Add an optional tutorial to survival mode. Newcomers say the game explains nothing, and the story mode that teaches the basics is not in the Survival Edition.
- Make the store page say plainly what each edition includes and that there is no co-op. New buyers who bought the Survival Edition or expected multiplayer felt misled.
- Revisit the survival rules players call arbitrary. Sprains from small drops, dark interiors in daylight and fire starts that fail at a stated high chance are among the rules that 3.3% of reviews complain about.
- Tone down the cougar and fix predator aim and damage issues. Veterans say the reworked cougar and point-blank misses end long runs in ways that feel unfair.
- Give later story and DLC releases firm, kept dates. Before Episode 5, the wait for the story was among the complaints negative reviews raised most, and players say they will judge the sequel on it.
