TL;DR: The Long Dark is one of the best survival games you can possibly buy. It is extremely immersive, has one of the best sound designs of the survival genre, has a great artstyle, the gameplay is super fun, replayable and have great difficulty scalability, and have both an episodic story mode and survival mode. I would only advise against it if you're after a combat centric survival game, if thats the case, maybe stay away from it, this game doesn't offer that. Green Hell and The Forest would be more of your jam.


If the original Subnautica had not conquered my heart already, I think The Long Dark would be up there. The good news is, that they both make for an excellent (if not the best) pair of survival games.


To start off, TLD has two game modes, the Survival mode which I've played extensively (and didn't do everything yet) and the episodic story mode called Wintermute, which I'm playing right now and loving every aspect of it, It has an amazing soundtrack, great writing, three different choices of difficulty, and a mysterious plot featuring a bush pilot named Will Mackenzie and his ex-wife Dr. Astrid Greenwood trying to get to a remote isle north of Canada, which is interrupted by a geomagnetic storm that brings down their plane and everything that uses electricity to work. The pair will be separated and you will meet strange people on the remote, quiet and extremely cold but beautiful Canadian wilderness while trying to find her.


When talking about the player, TLD simulates cold, exhaustion, thirst and hunger using a caloric system. All of them affects your general condition (the player health), which can be recovered by having all 4 attributes in good conditions, but recovers mostly while sleeping. The exhaustion and cold are the most important ones, since they are the ones that decay the fastest and can kill you VERY quickly.

Gushes of wind, breaking thin ice and falling on water, spending a long time out in snow storms, falling from exhaustion while outside, not wearing appropriate clothing and etc will all make you loose temperature faster and can give your hypothermia (which will reduce your condition even faster). Failing to find shelter soon and managing to get your temperature back up, will make you meet your demise. Each area of the game has it's own temperature and weather patterns, and for the majority of the game you will be fighting the harsh coldness of the game.

As for exhaustion, pushing yourself for too long trying to find shelter, trying to climb a mountain while not having enough stamina, fighting wildlife multiple times and etc will all reduce your stamina, and at some point you will faint, if you managed to get to a shelter at that point you have a chance or survival, and if you didn't... well, you better start hoping you can even wake up.

The game has a plethora of adverse and beneficial conditions all based on your actions in the game, and they vary from just a nuisance to making your character completely defenseless from wildlife. Most of them have multiple ways of dealing with, either by taking medicine, making medicine or just resting it out.


The world of TLD is... cold, very cold. It makes you feel alone and a lot of times completely lost, not knowing where you should go, while you try to find somewhere to take shelter and rest. The weather that can go from a sunny day to a windy afternoon soon to be covered by a snow, foggy storm, isn't even the only danger you will face. Wildlife like moose, bears and wolves all share the same space as you too, and while they are usually pretty easy to spot, you can be surprised, and when that happens you usually don't have enough time to run, resulting in an animal attack, which is a quick time event that will let you choose what to use to defend yourself. Depending on your choice, you will either slash, puncture or deal blunt damage to the animal, each having it's advantages and disadvantages. While a puncture wound will most of the times kill a wolf short after the attack, you will take a longer time to untangle from the wolf attack than if you otherwise had gone for a blunt attack.


TLD doesn`t have real combat like The Forest or Green Hell for example, the struggles you will have with wildlife will be as close as you get to a combat, and thats ok! That game having no combat actually works out great for itself, since the stillness and loneliness nature of the game is one of the selling points of this game.

The hunting sits somewhere in the middle of being simple and complex, but levitates more towards being simple. You can shoot wildlife using a bow or rifle, animals have multiple hit zones that can kill instantly or make them bleed, you can use baits to attract animals, and you can track them using their blood or their footprints. Once dead, you can take their meat for consumption, and their skin and guts for crafting on workbenches after they cured inside for a few days.

Last but not least,


If I am going to be honest with myself, I think I keep coming back to play this game just because of the sound design. It is SO good, everything you do, everything you pick up, everything you interact with makes sound. And it all depends on where you are and what is happening outside of where you are. The houses or buildings that you can enter have different sound profiles depending on the outside weather, if you are in a wood manor and there is a snow storm going outside, the windows will start to rattle violently, the house will become more squeaky and the sound of wind will be extremely loud, otherwise it will be extremely silent and the only sound you will hear is of your own growling stomach, your footsteps and the thing you interact inside. The base sounds (which is extensive) can also be dynamically modified if you`re inside somewhere with a lot of reverb, which further increases the immersion and attention to detail.


The Long Dark is a marvelous survival game, one which had an original idea and not only made it work, but made it work with an incredible amount of detail and maturity. First releasing the survival mode, smoothing out the rough edges and working on the survival aspects of the game, and then proceeding to work on the episodic story while managing to release seasonal content and updates for the survival mode. This is another must have for survival genre lovers.