Northern Lights update for 18 December 2021

Today is a big day for us. After one year of work, we are finally launching the Overhaul Update for Northern Lights!

Developing this major update has been a challenging experience, to say the least. During this period, within our small team, we’ve been through difficult times for each of us. The harsh times we live in, lack of funds to continue development and the tragedy of losing people we love have made us consider at some point the idea of abandoning this project.

We are glad we didn’t! After months of hard work, we are finally able to release this huge update that totally changes the gameplay in all its forms!

What is new?

For this update, we took all the ideas and feedback that we've got in the past year and re-thought the whole Northern Lights experience based on them! Here are the most important new features of the game!

• Focus on surviving - The story mode of Northern Lights has become Survival Mode! Survive for as long as you can while waiting for rescue! Game endings are currently undergoing major changes and will be released in a future update!
• New First Person Character and Animations - We replaced the character and animations with higher quality ones!
• Slot-based inventory system - With a strong emphasis on item physical size and weights!
• Better looting - The actual items now spawn in the game world and can be picked by hand!
• New journal system - The journal now plays an important role in the gameplay. From keeping track of your knowledge and discoveries to crafting, it's all there now!
• Updated Health System - New affliction and treatment system, tweaked health values, and improved overall stability of the system!
• Several new locations - We have also added a bunch of new region-specific locations for everyone to find!
• Updated existing locations - The previous locations of Northern Lights have been updated with new assets for a fresh new look!
• New and Improved items - New and redesigned tools and handhelds! Every item now has a visual representation in the game!
• Improved core mechanics - We redesigned fire-starting and cooking to be more intuitive and engaging! The other mechanics such as sleeping, fishing, harvesting, etc. have also been "refreshed" to be on par with the rest of the update!
• More buildings and crafts - All the buildings in the game have been remade from the ground up! We have also created new buildings called "Shelters", making it possible to build your own small shelter! Also, the building process is interactive now!
• Brand new mechanics - Researching books for blueprints, water gathering from water bodies, meat salting in salt buckets and more!
• More languages - With the help of community volunteers on Localizor.com, we translated the game into multiple new languages!
• And much more!

What we fixed?

A lot of development time also went into improving and fixing existing features and systems. We wanted to make sure the game is as stable as possible for this release!

• Game Core Improvements - A lot of game core features, such as saving, settings, region loading, etc. were improved. The overall stability of the game was also improved!
• Performance Improvements - The performance and memory usage of the game was improved!
• Graphics Improvements - The game should look better now!
• Lots of bug-fixing - We managed to fix a lot of issues that have been reported during the previous months by our community!

In the coming weeks we’ll be sharing more information about our plans for the future of Northern Lights, such as next-gen improvements, more FX sounds, AI overhaul, the return of the endings, and the long-awaited Cooperative Gamemode.

We hope you’ll enjoy the experience we have created for you, and we want to thank you for your support and patience, as you waited for this day. Thank you for believing in us, as we believe in you!

All the best,

MadGoat Studio