Hinterland Studio has announced BLACKFROST: The Long Dark II for PC (Steam). It will launch in Early Access in 2026.
Here is an overview of the game, via its Steam page:
About
BLACKFROST: The Long Dark II is the sequel to the hit survival game, THE LONG DARK, launched on Early Access and honed over 10 years of open development. It is the evolution of the survival sandbox, refining every aspect of the original, and introducing cooperative to the formula. Conceived of and developed by Hinterland, the same creative team that brought you the original.
Key Features
- Brave New World – Experience the Quiet Apocalypse as survivors in the northern industrial city of Harmont and its vast environs. A year has passed since the Aurora first appeared in the sky, rendering all technology inert, with survivors just starting to emerge to face their new reality in its aftermath. Surrounded by a majestic, rugged wilderness, encounter the remnants of an isolated society still coming to terms with how the world has just been forever changed. How will you choose to survive?
- Live Together. Die Alone – Survive as a lone wanderer in this frozen wasteland of city, town, forest, and farm, or huddle together as a group of survivors in whatever shelter you can make for yourselves. As solo players, decide how much you’ll learn to live with NPC survivor communities struggling to find their way in this harsh world. As cooperative players, lean on each other and combine your skills and efforts to eke out another day of existence in the hostile environment. Alone or together, choose your own path to survival.
- The Next-Generation Survival RPG – Built on the foundation of survival gameplay pioneered and perfected by THE LONG DARK over 10 years of development, BLACKFROST evolves every aspect of the survival formula to its 2.0 iteration, setting the table for the next generation of survival games. Build your own survivor, customize traits and skills, collect scars and stories, and experience a life as a survivor in this beautiful yet dangerous world. Many games have tried to bring survival mechanics to their open-world RPGs, but BLACKFROST is the first survival game built ground-up as a survival RPG.
- Urban Survival – Experience the fantasy of wilderness survival at a 19th-century level of technology due to the aurora’s effects on the world and its inhabitants, and enjoy the same deep simulation of survival in nature from THE LONG DARK but with a new twist. Cities and towns offer new opportunities, and new hazards to your survival, introducing a fresh take on the established survival formula. The wilds are dangerous, but sometimes the city is where the real threats lie.
- The Will to Live – Survival is as much about what’s in your head as what’s in your pack. With BLACKFROST, your success is no longer just about your physical Condition. BLACKFROST‘s new Will to Live system adds elements of psychological survival to the mix, introducing Resilience and its sub-stats to the well-established mechanics. Manage your doubts and fears, and find comfort in the small things if you want to survive.
- New Hazards – Urban risks. The deep freeze of an intense northern winter. Extreme weather events. Aurora Storms. And the dreaded radioactive Blackfrost, emitted by the reactor complex looming on the horizon. Layered on the dangers from wildlife and other survivors you encounter along the way, BLACKFROST introduces a whole host of new hazards to the survival sandbox.
- Permalife – The innovative Permalife system turns every death into a new adventure. Accumulate new risks and fears for your survivor as you move through the world and succumb to various hazards. Face your fears, overcome their downsides, and strengthen your Survivor’s story in the world. Make your mark. (Classic Permadeath still an option!)
Early Access
BLACKFROST is being built using Early Access to maximize the player feedback loop and the team’s ability to iterate in a cycle of constant improvement. This builds on Hinterland’s longstanding reputation as a pioneer of the Early Access model with THE LONG DARK, being the first game to exist simultaneously on multiple early access platforms and on PC and console at the same time (Xbox Game Preview launch title in 2015). Similarly, BLACKFROST will be built a piece at a time, and will launch without the game’s complete planned world or feature set. We believe this is the ideal approach to work towards strength in community-informed iteration and development, but it’s not for everyone, so please make sure you are comfortable with this approach before you jump in! More details of how the team plans to handle roadmaps, timelines, and player feedback will be released closer to the 2026 launch.
Watch the announcement trailer below.