The Heartland has announced that various paid season passes will be released long dark later this year.
According to a rather lengthy developer diary posted on the game’s Steam page and official website, studio founder Raphael van Lierop – who also announced he was stepping down as project lead to work on new things – has “separated the team” “The addition of Story Mode and Survival Mode makes it easier to create content for one person without affecting the other.
Obviously, the mechanics of the two and the interrelationship of the content meant that some updates the team wanted to make in one area couldn’t be done because they might affect another.
Now that the team has figured out a way to separate survival and story, they’re working on a new era of survival mode content that will “bring new life and new energy to the game.” This will include a paid update path for the mode, and is the first to be added since the game was released eight years ago.
It will take a “season pass-style approach” and include 15 to 18 months of renewed activity, during which it runs on a “regular cadence”. The pass will include a combination of content and game system updates, including new areas, new challenges, new mechanics, and more, as well as general improvements and updates to the core system.
Additionally, for those who don’t like the season pass style and want to only pay for content when it’s complete, Hinterland will “repackage the season’s content into 3-4 separate paid DLC packs”.
“We’re still working on pricing, but the Season Pass will offer a discount on the combined price of the DLC, and the price of each paid DLC will be very fair,” assured van Lierop.
“We want to make sure that existing players who choose not to buy any more content (or can’t afford it) can still enjoy The Long Night and don’t feel left behind. So we’ll also continue to provide some free updates to the base survival game , so anyone who doesn’t buy a pass will get something. It seems fair that these updates are generally smaller, more modest improvements than what you’ll see added to the paid content stream.”
Hinterland will release more information about its plans, and provide some visuals to help convey the roadmap of its plans, and then we’ll roll out sometime in the second half of this year.
The game’s latest DLC, Episode 4: Rage, Then Silence, was released in October for Story Mode. Episode five is currently in production.
The Long Dark is available for PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store, as well as PS4, Switch and Xbox One.
