Into the light

The Long Dark aspires to make players contemplate their situation even as it tries to kill them. This is a human disaster, and the surreal aesthetic enforces the sensation of clinging to a rock adrift in the cosmos. Indomitable mountains, backlit by the Northern Lights, are as they ever were, unperturbed by geomagnetic events even as humanity gives up its hold on the planet.” One of the most incredibly rewarding moments for me,” Van Lierop says, “was when we first shared the build with some of our backers and we started to get feedback. Somebody wrote in and said, ‘I was freezing to death; I had no food; I didn’t know where to go, so I climbed to the top of highest peak that I could find and I died watching the sun rise.’”