I saw people were joking about this being the first survival game to ever come out of Early Access on Steam. I thought that was pretty funny, and not far from the truth it would seem. I think the only notable exception that I saw was Don't Starve.

I played ~30-40 hours of The Long Dark during the Early Access period and really enjoyed it. I've always been interested in wilderness survival and I do a lot of solo backpacking and stuff like that, and the mechanics of this game felt very plausible to me. It's also a beautifully handcrafted world they have made, with a very unique art style.

Is anyone else going to try The Long Dark and the new story mode, now that it's out?

I would love to see a Breaking Brad series or similar feature on the site, I think that could be a lot of fun.

I love The Long Dark, it's a really fun survival game that balances realism with abstracted "gamey" mechanics for playability. I've played 60 hours of the sandbox mode and I'm looking forward to digging into the story episodes tonight... gotta pace myself though, don't want to burn through the content and then have to wait like a year for the next eps.

If you like survival games but are more interested in atmosphere than crafting, check this thing out.

I bought it some time after seeing the GBeast video, but never got around to play it though. Did download and start playing it once I saw that it was finally out and first impressions are pretty positive. Have only played the story mode so far, but love the art style, the snowy world is intriguing. The mechanics seem cool as well. The wolves were a bit frustrating to handle at first, when I didn't know how to survive properly.

The story, specifically the character interactions seem rough. Now that I'm farther in I don't mind the cutscene animation too much, but they seemed too stilted at first...

More of a personal problem of mine is actually trying to horde too much stuff and save scumming my way through some wolf encounters... After 4-5 hours I only just got to the first town area. I do hope to change my way of playing and try taking more risks. It would be a better way of preparing myself for the survival mode anyway.

I do hope that someone will revisit, maybe a Vinny and Alex reunion would be cool as well.

played about 12 hours or so in two sittings, it's very neat, had a lot of fun, immersive as hell. Brutal though, and the easiest mode is too easy. Too big a jump between the second easiest and easiest difficulty in my opinion.

Crazy to me how this game used to be sold for just 5 bucks a couple years back, and now it's releasing for full price at 35. I guess with the addition of a lot more content it makes sense, but with Early Access being the gamble that it is nowadays, it's neat to see an investment pay off like that.

I haven't touched the game since its release but I remember having a great and intense time with the survival mode even in the early stages of its development.

Send this shit back to early access, crashes way too often on PS4. Especially when playing the story mode. It has so far crashed about 10 times for me when exiting/entering buildings, and it only auto-saves when you enter a building (no manual saves). When it crashes on the loading screen right before that, it is fucking infuriating. I am done.

When I first played it I enjoyed it but it seemed a bit empty. Yeah, it's a survival game in a wilderness so emptiness is what it's probably all about, but it's nice to have something supplementing the survival. I went back to it a few months ago and they'd added a decent amount since I first played it seemed but I wanted to wait for it to get closer to completion.

@reputatsioon: Ah, what a shame. I really wanted to pick this up, but held off because of the price. Sounds like I'll wait a bit longer.

So far the story mode kinda sucks. I've had fun with the survival mode, but like all survival games, it gets tedious if you have no real goal other than survive as long as you can. I thought the Story Mode would help with that but it's managed to become more tedious as it's purely fetch quests so far. To make things worse, i've had items disappear out of my inventory on occasion which is really frustrating as now the side quests are unavailable to me.

Pretty disappointing.

I agree that the story mode is not where it's at, but I'm really enjoying the Survival and Challenge modes. I've definitely got my fair share of stories, and the game presents enough of a challenge that I'm actually using consumable resources like lighter fluid, something (in many games I find myself holding onto extra resources until I hit a rainy day that never arrives).

I've played a lot of The Long Dark in early access and its absolutely one of my favorite games to date.

I live and work in the Canadian Arctic and this game captures the desolate beauty of surviving in a cold landscape. Its hard to enunciate properly but survival is about having an honest and realistic expectation of your bodies currency and applying it efficiently. Like all games that try to deal with survival they try to mirror this with bars and numbers representing simplified versions of this currency. The Long Dark is the closest I've come to in a video game to replicating the feelings I get when I'm out working or enduring a survival challenge.

5/5 for me on the Sandbox alone. I'm very eager to see what they do with the story content.