Zombies and monsters flood the horror game market just as much as they flood the survival game market, which is what makes a game without these elements so unique. The Long Dark uses survival as its main challenge, making players survive a cold and dark winter wasteland.
Despite having a story mode, many players skip Wintermute and jump right into the game's open-world survival section, which means that many players are missing out on the tutorial (however sparse it may be). In addition to letting survival be its own challenge, The Long Dark throws their players to the wolves and lets them figure out how to survive on their own. Without giving too much away, here are some simple tips to help new players survive the night.
The game gives you a few tips when it comes to avoiding predators, especially in Wintermute. Keep an ear out for wolves, you'll hear them before you see them, but this is true for more than just wolves. Keeping an ear open could also warn the player of incoming resources. Crows are passive creatures in The Long Dark that circle over dead and frozen carcasses. Just like the wolves, they can often be heard before they're seen. Following the caws may lead the player to a frozen corpse, which may have some resources or treasures hidden on or around them. Crows also fly over frozen animals, which can be harvested for meat, hide and guts used in crafting. Be careful, though: crows aren’t the only animal attracted to dead things.
In most survival games, the first thing a player wants to find is water, then food, but this isn't the case for The Long Dark. An abundance of snow means that water is rarely a problem, just as soon as you get a fire going. Fire is the most important thing to keep track of in this game. It not only allows you to melt snow into water, but it also helps scare away predators, acts as a light source and, most importantly, keeps you warm. The player will lose their heat meter faster than their thirst meter. Keeping out of the wind and having dry and insulated clothing is one thing, but the way a roaring campfire can help with so many other tasks makes it an important commodity.
If there is one thing that is easy to forget, it is that tasks take time. It might only take a few minutes for the player to turn cloth into bandages, but that time could be much longer than it takes for them to bleed out and die. Many players will forget about their fire when completing a task, meaning that it might burn out halfway through. This could be twice as dangerous at night when the light is poor and the temperature drops, causing the player to look up from repairing a pair of pants to find out they're freezing to death. Keep in mind that the game shows how long it takes to complete a task, so sometimes it would be advantageous to overlap some of these tasks. For example, it takes two hours for two liters of snow to go from frozen to drinkable. In this time, the player could feed their fire and sit down with a skill book, or throw some meat on the fire to cook alongside the water.
Surviving in a survival game can be rewarding in its own right, but there is something particularly special about surviving a game that uses realistic elements as its challenges. The Long Dark doesn't hold the player's hand but expects them to figure things out the hard way.