The Long Dark News

Hello everyone,

With the Switch launch behind us, I wanted to update you on our activities around THE LONG DARK for the remainder of this year.

[h3]NEW EVENT: ESCAPE THE DARKWALKER (October 29th - November 12th)[/h3]



This year’s Halloween event, ESCAPE THE DARKWALKER, is different from what we’ve done in the past. In broad strokes:

• In an endless night, you are stalked by an invisible, malevolent entity bent on your destruction. Keep your distance from the entity for as long as you can. Once it closes in on you, you die. The only objective is to survive for as many real-time minutes as you can.
  
• You can’t hurt the Darkwalker, but you can slow it down. Using special spray paint Glyphs, you can temporarily dispel or attract the entity.
  
• You can play in any region of the world, but you can only stay in a region for 30 real-time minutes (Note: all timings are being tuned based on playtesting and may change before the event goes live) before toxic fog will appear. When the fog appears, you’ll have 5 real-time minutes to escape the region before you die. Once the fog takes hold, the region is impassible. A lot of your strategy will come down to where you travel and how far ahead you can plan your movements through the world.
  
• Since you can’t see the entity, you’ll have to count on what you can HEAR to stay alive. Listen for the entity’s cries, its footsteps, and how the spooky music builds as it approaches your location.
  

You can run but you cannot hide! Walls won’t keep the Darkwalker out. So your success depends on the route you take through the world, and how you manage your sparse GLYPH resources.

Why did we decide to switch up the traditional FOUR DAYS OF NIGHT formula? We took on your feedback about the last few iterations of our annual Four Days of Night Halloween event. One of the consistent things we heard was a sadness around missing the timed event for various reasons, or the fact that it was hard to get all the badges without playing every single day (I mean, we *want* people playing The Long Dark every day, but sometimes life gets in the way!).

We also wanted to freshen things up this year and do something different that would perhaps embrace a bit of a stronger “horror” vibe than we normally would in the game. Halloween is a fun holiday and this gives us the opportunity to play around with ideas that might not make as much sense in core gameplay, but can provide a lot of suspenseful enjoyment for our players!

ESCAPE THE DARKWALKER runs from October 29th to November 12th. Participating in the event earns you some special unlocks, including a new Custom Mode unlock: Endless Night.

[h3]DECEMBER SURVIVAL UPDATE[/h3]

We’re working on a new update to Survival mode, for a planned December release. This update will include a variety of UI improvements, some tuning changes, and two new gear items, but the highlight will be a new region: ASH CANYON. We’ll release more details as we get closer to the update, but this piece of concept art might give you some ideas.



[h3]EPISODE FOUR[/h3]

The team’s been working hard on Episode Four, and as I outlined in my last developer diary, we have delayed the episode until 2021 due to COVID. Look for an update on episode progress some time in January.

[h3]HOLIDAY SHUTDOWN[/h3]

Just an early reminder that the whole Hinterland team takes an extended holiday between Christmas and New Year. We’ll share the dates closer to the holiday. During this period, support and test resources will be limited, so we appreciate your patience as it will take a little longer to respond to any reports you send through the Support Portal.

We’re looking forward to seeing what you think about ESCAPE THE DARKWALKER. Get ready, and have fun with it.

- Raphael

After a long slow-burn development process, we’re happy to announce that The Long Dark is now available on Nintendo Switch!

For the first time ever, you can take The Long Dark with you wherever your own exploration takes you, with all of Great Bear Island in your hands and all the experiences contained in the WINTERMUTE Story Mode, as well as our award-winning Survival Mode. Whether you’re sitting at your desk, on your couch, or on the road searching for your next shelter, you’ll have the same innovative exploration-survival experience regardless of what platform you’re playing on.

For more information on The Long Dark on Nintendo Switch, including the announcement trailer, please visit www.thelongdark.com/switch

Keep in mind that your purchase of The Long Dark entitles you to all five episodes of WINTERMUTE (with Episodes One, Two, and Three currently available, and Episode Four around the corner; new episodes will be automatically unlocked as they become available), as well as regular bug fixes and updates to Survival Mode along the way.

Head over to the Nintendo eShop and venture into the Quiet Apocalypse of The Long Dark! And if you’re a journalist or a streamer and are interested in giving The Long Dark a try on Switch, please contact us here.

We hope you enjoy The Long Dark on Nintendo Switch!

– The Hinterland Team

Hello community,

Apologies that it’s been a while since you last heard from me.

2020 has been a pretty tough year so far. I have a feeling that most of you will agree. The great news is that everyone at Hinterland continues to be healthy -- no COVID! We’re thrilled about this. So that’s one really positive thing and I try to focus on that. We’re also happy that despite things being pretty upside down, we were still able to release our FEARLESS NAVIGATOR update, as well as run our WINTER’S EMBRACE event through July (which also added new content to the game).

We shut down our physical studio back in March and everyone has been in lockdown since then. I remember at the beginning of this quarantine I found myself thinking, “Wow, think of how much I’ll be able to get done!”. Looking back at that time, I realize how naive that thought was. We’ve been spending a lot more time on Zoom calls, have been doing as many small things as we can to help make the team more comfortable and to keep morale high, and have adapted as well as possible to exclusively working from home. But I’m sure you can all appreciate that this is not a normal way of working. We typically depend a lot on in-person communication for relationship-building, planning, content reviews, and making clear progress towards common goals. Apart from being generally healthy and safe, which we’re grateful for, I think the team also feels a sense of malaise from being in lockdown for months on end. And while I believe the future is positive, I’d be lying if I said that this year has been “business as usual” for Hinterland as a team, or for our work on The Long Dark.

Pretty recently we came to the conclusion that we don’t feel good about releasing Episode Four this year. We had originally hoped to have it ready for launch in December, but with everything that’s been going on, it’s just been tough to work very optimally. We’ve lost some momentum and some parts of our production have been slower than usual just because of not being able to work on things face-to-face, nevermind everyone is also juggling their personal situation at home whether it’s being alone all the time, or balancing parenting duties with work, or whatever new personal dynamic we find ourselves in. Everyone is still focused on the game, and we’re making progress every day, but I just don’t feel good about keeping the team locked to a December release because we don’t crunch at Hinterland and the only way to hit December is if we compromise on quality or scope. We don’t want that, and you don’t want that. So we aren’t going to do that.

So we’re not shipping Episode Four this year. I’m really sorry about that. We wanted to let you know as soon as we decided to delay, rather than wait another few months.

I hope you and your loved ones have all been healthy throughout this COVID pandemic. I hope that The Long Dark has been able to bring you some solace during these difficult times. We’re still here for you. Just fighting through “the long dark”, in our own way.

I’ll send a more uplifting update within the next couple of months, with some more info on our planned activities throughout the rest of 2020, and into 2021.

Thanks for reading, and stay safe out there.

- Raphael

PS A lot of you have been asking for news about the progress of the Nintendo Switch port of The Long Dark; we created a mailing list you can sign up to to be informed of news about it.

We’ve released our v1.83 (64569) Hotfix for WINTER'S EMBRACE. If you encounter any issues while playing The Long Dark please visit our Support Portal.

Thank you to everyone who took part in our first ever Summer Seasonal Event. We hope that you enjoyed struggling to survive in the frosty cold of WINTER’S EMBRACE. 
 
A big part of any of these events is player participation and we would love to hear about your experience playing WINTER’S EMBRACE in the comments below. What would you like to see us do next time and what would you change about the event?

To stay up-to-date with news and information about The Long Dark and Hinterland, sign up for our newsletter and follow us on Twitter (Game | Studio).



*****


THE LONG DARK v1.83 (64569) CHANGELIST
 
GENERAL 

• [General] Disable the WINTER’S EMBRACE event.
  

 
### END OF CHANGELIST ###

We’ve released our v1.82 (64400) Hotfix for WINTER'S EMBRACE. If you encounter any issues while playing The Long Dark please visit our Support Portal.

To stay up-to-date with news and information about The Long Dark and Hinterland, sign up for our newsletter and follow us on Twitter (Game | Studio).



*****



THE LONG DARK v1.82 (64400) CHANGELIST



GENERAL FIXES

• [General] Fixed an issue that caused the Disclaimer at launch to appear in the incorrect language.
  
• [General] Fixed an issue that could block the Winter in July badge from triggering. If you’ve met the days survived criteria, but the badge has not triggered yet, it will trigger after the next full day survived.
  
• [General] Fixed an issue that could prevent Players from loading or renaming a save file.
  
• [General] Fixed an issue that could cause players to crash when transitioning between an interiors and exteriors.
  

GENERAL ART FIXES

• [Enviro] Fixed the missing textures on several logs found throughout the game.
  
• [Enviro] Fixed texture visible seams found in the Echo One Control Tower.
  
• [UI] Fixed issue that would cause the Hunger/Thirst indicators to be hidden if subtitles triggered at the same time.
  
• [UI] Map Filter Labels will now only appear when selected.
  

GAMEPLAY FIXES

• [Gameplay] Items left in a cooking slot will now properly cool when the fire has burnt out.
  
• [Gameplay] Fixed issue that would cause Players to become stuck if they entered placement on Inedible Burned Stuff.
  

### END OF CHANGELIST ###