The Long Dark Update Makes Game Longer, Darker

Life is just swings and roundabouts, innit? The Long Dark's early access just got an enormous update so it's playable area is twice the size it was before, but the downside is that starvation now causes you to become fatigued more quickly making it harder to cross that territory. Your carrying capacity now decreases according to your fatigue, which is bad, but the game now contains bunny rabbits, which is good. A rifle is now guaranteed to spawn at Mystery Lake, but wolves predate upon you more aggressively when you're weak.

Swings and roundabouts, see. Deadly and perilous swings and roundabouts.

The full list of changes is, as is often the case, to large to list in full. The main thrust seems to be about fixing exploits players had found and providing greater clarity to how systems function, but by and large it sounds like most of the changes will make the game harder. First aid items are more rare; severe cold conditions are even more deadly; items decay less quickly, but there are fewer items overall to compensate, and so on.

As a person from Scotland with soup for blood, I've obviously never experienced what others describe as "cold", but it sounds rubbish. And I like both swings and roundabouts! I don't understand this world at all.

If you missed it during Survival Week, Duncan Geere wrote this melancholy tale of a cartographer lost among Long Dark's snowdrifts.