Survival game The Long Dark was supposed to be over when its final story episode was released earlier this year. Developer Hinterland announced its sequel, Blackfrost, two years ago and planned to go the early access route with it just like the first game.
According to a new update from the studio, however, those plans have changed a little bit. While it continues to work on Blackfrost in the background, a small team of developers have been moved back onto The Long Dark to make new DLC for its survival mode. Hinterland hopes going back to the 9-year-old game will help it endure an “uncertain” industry.
“When we first announced Blackfrost, the sequel to The Long Dark, the game industry was in a very different place,” it said. “In the short time since, entire business models have been thrown into chaos, the geopolitical situation has become extremely complicated, the picture of what the next generation of console hardware will be has become a lot less clear, and the amount of time and money players spend on new games has declined as everyone turns to the comfort and security of games they already know.”
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Over the next two years, the studio plans to continue updating the survival sandbox mode in the game with bug fixes, quality-of-life improvements, new features, and new regions from the final story episode. It’s also going to release new DLC, one of which will come out piecemeal like its previous Tales From The Far Territory expansion pass. The second DLC “will be… different from that,” it said, withholding info because it’s still early in development.
Hinterland assured everyone Blackfrost is still in the works but said that its early access launch has been pushed to next year. The studio remains independent despite having publishers reach out to help with the sequel. “We’ve not yet encountered a partner who we feel is truly motivated by what’s best for Hinterland or for our players, so we’ll continue to self-fund and self-publish the game.”
Hinterland said it’s considering raising the price of the standalone Survival Mode as well as the new DLCs to help offset the loss from people buying them on sale. “We’re also mindful that the economic reality faced by a ton of folks today is that prices are increasing everywhere and you probably can’t really afford for games to get more expensive as well,” it said. “We’re really trying to find a good balance here.”
Given the flood of layoffs across the games industry in the last few years and the cost of hardware skyrocketing, I can see why an indie studio like Hinterland would go back to what works as people are forced to be more picky than ever about what they spend money on. It’s already hard enough making a splash on the crowded pages of Steam when you release a new game. I just hope it works out and it can continue to make the sort of things it wants to without feeling anchored to its breakout release.
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