Horror Picks: The Long Dark

I’m no horror buff. I don’t enjoy being scared, nor am I a massive fan of the tight corridors and repetitive jump scares common to the horror genre. All the same, when Halloween rolls around everybody needs something to spook themselves with. For me, there’s no competition. I’ll whack out the scariest game I’ve ever had the misfortune to play: The Long Dark.

The Long Dark is a game about vulnerability, perhaps the site of all fear. You begin in the middle of nowhere, your only companions the wailing wind and slow crunches of your feet as you trudge through the snow.

Ducking into every door in sight, you raid fridges and cupboards, collecting all the water you can find from toilets and basins. A wardrobe offers up a change of clothes and, flashy new coat wrapped tightly around you, you’re shocked by a gruesome sight. A corpse lies slumped against the wall, frozen into the wood, darkened with its own blood.

Image Credit: Hinterland Studio Inc./ IGDB

It’s no xenomorph emerging from the walls to devour you in a blink of an eye, but the corpse is unsettling and won’t leave your head quickly. The Long Dark is a game about being alone and the corpses challenge that idea. It makes you feel like the world was teeming with people just moments ago, like you just missed everybody.

Fast forward a few hours and the wind has picked up. Your footsteps are drowned by the thick snow and even the crows flying above sound further away. You can’t shake the feeling that you’re not alone. Maybe you hear more feet, perhaps that shifting in the middle distance isn’t just the snow; it would certainly explain the deer carcasses you’re trying hard not to think on. You turn a corner and you can’t delude yourself any longer: a pack of wolves turn slowly towards you, bearing their teeth. You grab a flare from your pack and hope that the few you have left will keep the wolves off you until you can reach shelter. It seems to sputter out almost immediately and you light another, breaking out into a run. Buildings start emerging from the haze, but your pockets are empty of flares. It’s a mad dash to the doorway with the wolves on your heels every step.

Your footsteps are drowned by the thick snow and even the crows flying above sound further away. You can’t shake the feeling that you’re not alone.

In The Long Dark the stakes are always high and death is never far from breathing down your neck. The blizzards leave you blind to your surroundings, and the constant threat of bears or wolves rushing out of the gloom keeps your heartbeat in your ears. Worse, running out of supplies in a lonely shack cut off by the storm can mean a far more patient death comes to you. The Long Dark is such an effective and primal horror experience because it appeals to our most basic of caveman fears. Maybe this Halloween you should return to nature, and remember just how delicate life is.