The Long Dark

gamedeveloper.com:

Last October The Long Dark hit a new mile marker on its long development journey that began almost a decade ago: Hinterland Studios released episode four of the game's story mode. The chapter, titled "Fury, Then Silence" partially shifts the game's setting from the open-world survival environment to the tight confines of a prison, putting the player in direct conflict with other apocalypse survivors in a space the game hasn't directly explored before.

When episode four released, Hinterland Games founder and creative director Raphael van Lierop called it a "bittersweet moment" because it was one step further toward the game's final concluding chapter. The Long Dark's development saga has now spanned three Presidential elections as well as a rise and fall of Kickstarter fads for video games, not to mention that its developers were doing remote work before remote work became necessary because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now Hinterland Games has summited one of the final peaks on its own treacherous journey. It seemed like a good moment to take a metaphorical helicopter up this metaphorical mountain and see how the metaphorical climbers are doing. van Lierop was game to chat--both about making "Fury, Then Silence," and about the hybrid live game/premium game development cycle his company has found itself in.

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Game Developer: Just to catch up, you’ve been working on The Long Dark in some form or another for a long time now. How’s it feel to be working on the same game for so long? How are you and the team handling the challenges of working with code and design from years and years ago?

van Lierop: One of the best things about how we designed and built The Long Dark years ago is that