The Long Dark

This game has been a great distraction since I lost my ability to walk. Sustained a work injury in the oil field that left me permanently disabled. It's so calming to walk around the frozen tundra and looting old houses. I love the animation and detail in this game. All sorts of locations to explore, wish my wife could've played this game with me :)

As a fellow game developer, this game gives me such conflicting emotions. I love it and hate it and wants more of it but also understands the current situation and the previous decisions.
The difficulty in the beginning feels unforgiving, but it's where I find myself liking the most. Shivering in a snow storm not knowing where to go. You can feel the chill and despair in your bones, but just when you thought you are dead for sure, you find a small cabin. You go in, start a fire, boil some water, and your mind finally relaxes. You thought to yourself, maybe I can just make it through another day. That's one of the best feeling I've felt in a video game.
But when you start to learn the map and mechanics, you find yourself acting purely with the goal of progression. Better gear, better clothes, the survival instinct is gone. Everything is predictable, you have the route and loot in mind, you go there, you get it, that's it. There is simply not enough variables or late game challenges that can put your knowledge to the test. Your hard earned lessons serve you only the dread of emptiness. You know not why to go on, where to go, everything just becomes a chore.
It's such a shame. This game builds such a beautiful world and atmosphere, but it lacks some actual characters, story, mechanics and challenges. The wintermute story mode has a lackluster story and doesn't involve enough survival mechanics or player immersion. Tales from far territory is promising but requires you to go through much of the early stages that by the time you reach the new content, you are too burnt out to care.
The slow pace of development and communication paints a picture of burnt out devs with low interest of improving this game. I'm a game dev myself and I totally get their frustration. This game had been through some rocky periods and significant goal shifts, probably due to financial and staff change problems. So I will not judge them too harshly, it's just unfortunate that it has come to this.
So here are my suggestions to the development team.
1. If you have abundant resources but got lost in the tunnel vision: Have a serious discussion about a total revamp of the current map, AI and loot system. Add more variables to the map to make shelters unpredictable, but utilize clues like roads and power lines to guide players to potential shelters. Add move-sets and behaviors to make the AI more unpredictable, maybe even give them the ability to break shelters so you can't just cabin cheese a bear with no risk or realism. Nerf the bottle necks like rifles and prolong each battle, make the hunts more difficult but rewarding. Decrease and vary the punishment for a failed hunt. Give players more tools to approach a hunt like traps or melee options, not just QTEs. Make the crafting system more accessible and in-depth to increase the incentive to craft rather than looting for the better alternatives. There are many more ways to make this game more fun, especially for the late game.
2. If you have few resources to continue development: Finish what you've started. It's too late to revamp the structure of the core mechanics. So at least just give the players what they've paid for, then move on to the next project with the knowledge and lessons you've learned from this game.
3. if you don't have the resources to continue development at all: Try everything to gather resources. Communicate thoroughly and routinely with the players. Let us know where you are and what your obstacles are. Ask for help either in donation or just to spread the word for the game. Lay out new plans for monetization, new dlcs, new game modes, whatever to give us and investors hope. Give it a last ditch effort to turn it around.

My first dozen attempts at this game were confusing and infuriating to say the least, it takes a while to learn what actions are valuable and which are thumb-twiddling invitations to death.
I got somewhere like halfway through the second chapter of Wintermute before having my WTF moment with the survival mode (taking breaks from story mode and cluelessly dropping into freezing hell DOZENS of times before finally catching a break) and never went back.
There really is nothing like trudging against the wind in a blizzard with only the snowbank beside you to indicate where you might be, your body and vision swaying madly due to being at the end of your life, only a tiny etch left on your health bar, all your stims, food, water, and heat items used up, and you think "this is normally where I would just quit and try again" but somehow you made it to the porch of the PV homestead, you're inside, there's a fireplace and enough to get you back on your toes in a day or so - heck - you even managed to keep all those toes (and fingers, too).
The next evening you're caught outside around dusk, looking around for twigs and hopefully a sewing kit to fix everything damaged by yesterday's icy winds and you're stopped dead by the stunning sunset as it plays across the sky, the mountain, and off the snow in the valley. Then an ominous string section and the growl of a wolf nearby startles you and you rush off back towards the house, knowing that a wolf is not going to help the state of your clothing (at least not today, not with your current tools) and that fresh toilet water is calling your name.
Staying humble and cautious will eventually lead to a dull tedium but any time you decide to push outside of sensible pragmatism there's a hard lesson waiting for you, and sometimes that hard lesson really is your only move.
There were many times I wished for jumping or at least vaulting mechanics to be introduced, but I don't think the effect on gameplay would be worth the Dev's resources and effort.
There were times when the hit boxes for gathering and shooting seemed really janky, like you'd expect with network lag, but those times were the exception, and you really can't expect every homemade arrow or bullet to fly the same as the last, plus you're lucky your shivering, low-calorie, unwashed ass can even tie a string as it is, so chalk it up to video game reification.
There are still times I wish you could get some sort of strength or health or endurance perk for, y'know, 500 days of walking with a full kit, but hey I suppose I should be thankful only the frostbite has a permanent effect on your health and performance and leave it at that.
The current perks are half-decent, though over half seem like throw-aways to players who aren't willing to commit much time to the game, so basically useless to those playing on stalker and interloper.
The game play loop is rewarding, I could easily lose an entire day to this game, then switch to one of the challenges and feel like it's an entirely new thing.
I will always come back to this one - it's like a breeze wafting in shade of a tall tree when the sun is scorching overhead. The core gameplay loop, sound design and visual aesthetic just get under the skin and call you back over and over. I don't know the current state of the modding community but this game is prime fodder for great mod fun, though I suppose you could always play DayZ Winter Chernarus if you can live without the Group of Seven aesthetic and want the ability to jump over things.
There are a LOT of complaints about how the devs are slow in the story chapters, or some rambling on and on and on, whingeing about how they didn't get what they paid for, etc etc etc - just ignore them - their chirping has nothing to do with whether the game is worthwhile or not and both the Wintermute and the Survival mode are worth full price standalone (but I would get both as they do compliment eachother, treat story mode as a tutorial of sorts), even at ~40 maplebucks. If you get this on sale man it's a steal. Whiners, I just don't get you - it's not your game, move on! Internet archives have a record of the Dev's roadmap and he was pretty clear there were no promises right from the start, so either go file a civil suit for fraud or go outside for air, your input has no bearing on the quality of the game or it's value to others.
PS: I hate wolves now

I'm not very good at it. I don't play it very often, but this game has a special place in my heart.
The atmosphere is amazing, the graphics are beautiful and the soundscape is fantastic. The gameplay is slow, so it leaves you with a lot of time to just enjoy the bleakness of the quiet apocalypse. It serves as an occasional break from all the fast-paced action-oriented games.
The story mode has been coming out in episodes rather slowly over the years, but this fits my "playstyle" pretty well. So I can’t really complain.
I keep up to date with the game and when new story content is release I reinstall the game and spend another ~30 hours in it.

This is as close to genuine survival as you can get in a video game. The world and tone are unmatched, the game play is rewarding and addictive, and the portrayal is similar to what you would see in an episode of Survivor Man with Les Stroud. Green Hell and Subnautica are both great, but when it comes to the true experience (within the confines of making a fun game) this takes first place by miles. Plus the art style is timeless and really unique. One of my favorites games of all time. I own it on all my devices.

Spent 435+ hours with this game, totally worth every second. 10/10 recommend it.
The story mode is still ongoing and not finished, but you can play the survival mode. I get palpitations when wildlife stalks or attacks me, so I stick with the easiest difficulty Pilgrim to enjoy exploring maps and set up bases without any threats. Recipes and Travois are my favorite additions so far.

Let me start by saying I am a casual gamer and always look for games with enough challenge to keep it interesting, but I am never looking for extreme challenge as that is not how I relax. Having said that, I absolutely love the Long Dark for being very versatile and adjustable to your preferred challenge levels.

Ihave played both Wintermute and Survival mode.

Wintermute I absolutely loved, from the art, the imperfect and thus realistic characters, the music. I am a bit of a completionist and don't rush through games so I got a decent amount of play time from the Wintermute episodes and the side quests. I forgot the fifth episode wasn't released yet, and I was genuinely sad that I had to leave that world for now, but am looking forward to joining it again later this year.

After finishing Wintermute (for now) I've been playing through survival mode, which I enjoy a lot more with the Tales from the Far Territories DLC, as I enjoy the recipe feature a lot. It took a bit of a learning curve at my desired difficulty level, but I am now consistently surviving, and am enjoying exploring the regions that weren't part of the Wintermute story line. I also know that I can easily find more challenge by moving through the different difficulty/gameplay modes.

At this time I've played this game more hours than I would have imagined myself spending on gaming, and I am expecting I'll add quite a lot more yet.