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“The high-level story and world outline hasn’t changed that much since back in 2013, but the details have changed quite a bit,” said Lierop. One of the biggest changes came after he realized that he was having a hard time finding games with strong female role models for his daughter to play. He decided to transform the story so that players would take on the roles of not one but two survivors: a man and a woman. “Certainly, the scope and detail of the world is much deeper than we had originally conceived, and the tone of the story and world-building has changed over time.”

But it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Van Lierop always wanted the narrative portion of the game to be as similar to survival as possible, and most mechanics are shared between modes. However, survival and story are designed for distinct audiences and suited for substantially different play styles; one is completely freeform, the other highly curated. And that hasn’t pleased everyone who invested themselves in the alpha.

“Separating story from survival was a gamble, and allowed us to develop the experiences independently; one in public, one in private,” said van Lierop. “But this separation is at odds with how conventional open-world games typically work. And while a lot of our players are happy with the game to be presented as different experiences, some were looking for the story to be more integrated into the survival sandbox.”

When Hinterland began working on The Long Dark the concepts of crowdfunding through sites like Kickstarter and paid alpha development via platforms like Steam Early Access were relatively untested. The team managed to wade through these unknown waters and avoid major catastrophes, achieving notable success along the way. But there have been a few stormy days. Would Hinterland do it again?