What if The Long Dark but more photorealistic? | Short Snow (demo)

Today we're diving back into Steam Next Fest demos and checking out some The Long Dark-adjacent titles. We start with Short Snow, a solo dev project from M6riz. The game offers a story mode, survival mode, and challenges which the main menu says will arrive soon. We start with story mode (2:20) and the TLD influence is immediate as we open at a plane crash in the middle of the night. After the requisite looting and finding shelter, we discover a woman being held captive in an upstairs prison (7:00) and we take it upon ourselves to rescue her. I won't spoil the rest, but suffice to say the turn our search takes is as abrupt as the ending of the demo.
We also sample the new survival mode (29:30), which we oddly start with the inventory we had at the end of story mode. We spend the next half hour wandering around a vast, largely empty landscape dotted with the occasional house and no wildlife. It's not clear how early in the game's development this is, but given that the Steam page lists a Q4 2024 release date it's worth asking how much more the dev plans to add. Short Snow comes across as a loving homage to The Long Dark, but it needs more time in the oven before it can offer enough to make it stand on its own merits. From the October 18, 2024, stream at / trooperbari .
SHORT SNOW! Realistic open-world survival experience, you find yourself lost in a vast, snow-covered forest after a harrowing plane crash. With temperatures plummeting and hunger gnawing at you, will you succumb to the forces of nature, or will you conquer the frozen wilderness? store.steampow...

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