A while back, Hinterland launched a successful Kickstarter campaign for The Long Dark , a first-person survival simulator. Earlier this week, Hinterland announced that they will release the game on Steam Early Access. The catch is that the studio is just releasing a Sandbox Mode instead of the full campaign.
In an email exchange with Eurogamer, Hinterland provided a good explanation for their decision. “Nobody wants to play the story content while it’s still in development,” a representative from Hinterland wrote. “Not only would this introduce massive spoilers, but it would also ensure your first experience of the game’s story content was not your best experience of the game’s story content, and we wouldn’t be satisfied with that. So, we’re holding the Story mode back until the first Episodes are completely finished and we’re ready to share them with you. We promise it’ll be worth the wait.”
This is a good call by Hinterland. The team can still test out the main mechanics of the game while working on the rest of the content. Let’s just hope that the Sandbox Mode also won’t turn players away from the full game.
[ Eurogamer ]