First-person post-disaster survival sim The Long Dark has just received an update from Canadian developer Hinterland, letting us know they’re still alive and are now coming out of hibernation with new regular updates.
They’ve been ”heads down, hard at work” over the past six months, and have made ”some incredible progress” on The Long Dark. Two new in-game screens have been released.
The first is of the ‘cosy’ safehouse, while the second is more of a tease to the unforgiving wilderness. A series of gameplay videos are scheduled for May, says Hinterland.
”A sandbox simulation game like The Long Dark is notoriously difficult to pin down. It is such a dynamic beast, and is always evolving, always changing. We build the game systems very iteratively, and as such there are very few huge “eureka” moments, but there are hundreds of small moments every week where you can feel the game taking shape, and feeling more and more alive. Hopefully by delaying our update a bit, you’ll get the benefit of seeing the build of of small moments into the bigger “wow” moments,” says the studio in their latest Kickstarter update.
”Our development work on the game has matched the season. Over Winter, we hibernated inside the game, dug deep down and implemented rich systems like the time of day and dynamic weather; wildlife AI; the Condition system that tracks overall health as well as fatigue, hunger, thirst, and temperature; the gear, and crafting and repair systems; the shelter system; firestarting and other actions, etc.”
”We’ve built entirely new technology around wind and audio occlusion, a clothing materials system that accounts for variables like material type, windblocking capabilities, and whether a clothing item still provides warmth when wet. We’ve created beautiful skies, wandering wildlife, five square kilometres of world to explore (which is only a fraction of the total game world), wind and snow effects that will chill you to the bone,” they continued.
”With every step, the world of The Long Dark takes firmer shape.”
Hinterland has issued a challenge to their own team to survive 5 days in The Long Dark - none have made it.
”…we plan to release more in-game shots this month, as well as a series of gameplay videos in early May, leading up to releasing the first Alpha builds of the Survival Sandbox which we’ll be talking about more in the coming weeks!”
The Long Dark completed its Kickstarter campaign with $256,217 CAD on October 16th from 6,966 backers. Today the project has $276,579 CAD with over 7,420 backers with German, Italian, French and Spanish languages planned.
Check out a developer diary Hinterland released back in September 2013.
