The Long Dark Tells Us About Its Development And Announces Preparing DLCs

We had missed the information, but the developers of Hinterland Studio returned to the recent development of the very nice survival game The Long Dark and addressed the issue of DLCs, in a long post published last Friday. In this last, Raphael Van Lieropthe creator of the game, first retraces the course of his project, from the launch of his Kickstarter in 2013, until the release of the title’s fourth story mode chapter last year.

Then Mr Van Lierop also returns to the fact that the ambitions of the studio have evolved since 2013. At the time, the backers of the title paid for a survival game of about ten hours, focused on the narration. Today, those who have faced the Canadian polar cold in The Long Dark know that the game contains a survival mode ” sand box » very complete, and a story mode which contains four chapters, out of five planned, for an estimated playing time between 20 and 50h. We are therefore far from the promises of the Kickstarter, but everything has been added completely free of charge for all these years.

The difficulties related to the development of the game are also mentioned. Until now, survival mode and story mode were inextricably linked. With each new update, the developers had to completely retest the game to avoid breaking either one. Testing times have gone in a few years from one week per update, more than a month away. This situation was beginning to no longer be tenable for the studio, and did not favor the addition of new content. The developers have therefore recently resolved to decouple the two parts of the game. And after a few months of hard work, the survival mode now works completely independently. This will allow the studio to more easily update the game, but also to add content specific to this mode in the form of DLCs, which was requested by a majority of players in the community.

Of course, the initial plan does not change: all owners of the game will have access to the last chapter of the story mode without having to pay anything, normally in 2023. New updates will add content to the title’s survival mode for free. But this year, this mode of The Long Dark will also start receiving paid content: new regions, new challenges, new mechanics, etc. Players will have two choices to obtain it: opt for a season pass containing all the DLCs planned for a period between 15 and 18 months, or buy them independently.

At last, in this postRaphael Van Lierop also announces that he will cede the post of project leader on the game to Katie Sorrell (previously lead designer in story mode), after nearly ten years of loyal service. The latter is still working on the title as creative director.