The Long Dark
Moderate overall intensityWhat's in it
Realistic survival violence: wolf and bear attacks trigger bloody struggle sequences, and the story mode depicts human conflict with an armed villain; no gore or dismemberment.
A bleak survival premise of isolation, starvation, freezing, and death, with a story mode involving cruelty, a schoolhouse of innocents burned, and moral desperation.
Tense, atmospheric dread from stalking predators, harsh weather, and eerie aurora-lit nights, without graphic scares.
The story's antagonist and his gang commit arson, murder, and seize a penitentiary; the player witnesses these crimes rather than committing them.
Wolves, bears, moose, deer, and rabbits are hunted and killed for meat and hides as a core survival mechanic.
Dialogue and story beats reference captives being tortured and killed by the antagonist's gang.
Occasional mild profanity in story-mode dialogue between characters.
Who can reach your kid
What it is
The Long Dark is a first-person survival game set in the frozen Canadian wilderness after a geomagnetic disaster has knocked out technology. The player manages body temperature, hunger, fatigue, and injury while scavenging, crafting, and hunting to stay alive against the cold and predators. Combat is limited mostly to fending off or hunting wildlife such as wolves and bears, which produces blood during struggle sequences but no gore. A separate story mode follows two crash survivors and, in its later episodes, introduces a violent antagonist whose crimes include imprisoning, torturing, and burning innocents; these events are shown through cutscenes and dialogue. There are no microtransactions and the game is entirely single-player with no online chat.
How it's framed
The game frames survival as a lonely, morally quiet struggle against nature, where hunting and self-defense are matters of necessity rather than cruelty. Its story mode presents the villain's atrocities as tragic and horrific, and some players have criticized the finale for forcing the protagonist to side with those criminals; the violence against innocents is portrayed as evil, not celebrated.
Details
- Developer
- Hinterland Studio Inc.
- Publisher
- Hinterland Studio Inc.
- Released
- Aug 1, 2017
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