Greetings Arctic Survivors! Today, we are proud to announce that the long-awaited Story Mode update is now LIVE on STEAM!

Along with the Story Mode, this version aims to address and improve a lot of the issues and feedback reported by the community over the past weeks. The overall feel of the game and user experience was also polished in this update!

With the occasion of being part of the famous Summer Sale, Northern Lights will be on a record price: 40% OFF! If you're looking to play a survival game, or you wish to make a memorable gift to your friends, now is the time to grab the game!

What is new?

Story Mode

The long awaited Story Mode is here! Explore the island, look for clues, and find a way to escape before it's too late. Story mode does not affect existing saves, which will automatically be converted to “Survival Mode” saves.



Note: Due to changes in how the quests work, we highly recommend starting fresh with Survival Mode saves in order to avoid save game issues.

Snow Mobile

Starting with this version, you can navigate the island with the means of a snowmobile! Find the keys, look for fuel, and get the snowmobile running!



For this update we have also added fuel gathering and transportation mechanics which can and will be extended into other systems in the future.

Hunting & Hitbox Improvements

A big annoyance with the previous versions of the game were the hitboxes of animals. With this update, we have tweaked the hitboxes so that hunting is less frustrating and more satisfying!



We have also tweaked the spawn rates of animals to make more sense regarding their spawn region, and we have tweaked the way fishing works in terms of fish yields.

And much more!

Along with the changes above, we also improved a lot of the existing things in the game! Full changelog below:

• Added story mode
  
• Added snowmobile
  
• Added fuel and fuel carrying mechanics (currently only for snowmobile)
  
• Added new corpse models for Researchers
  
• Added Mysterious Woods to map graphics
  
• Added missing animation and sound support to collectibles and throwables
  
• Added missing animation and sound support to quest pickups
  
• Added feature parity between trap fishing and line/rod fishing in terms of fish yields
  
• Improvements to Survival Mode new game initialization
  
• Improvements to performance
  
• Improved animal hitboxes
  
• Improved animal spawn rates
  
• Improved throwable and arrow hitbox detection
  
• Improved melee animation-hit sync
  
• Improved melee hit range
  
• Improved mushroom hunger and energy values
  
• Improved difficulty warmth depletion values
  
• Improved UX of comparison bars in clothing highlight HUD
  
• Fixed issue causing whole cutscene manager to crash if a cutscene is already playing while another is requested
  
• Fixed issue causing tracked quest button to not work correctly in journal
  
• Fixed issue causing animations to get stuck while aiming and switching items
  
• Fixed issue causing fires to sometimes burn player while interacting with them
  
• Fixed issue causing arrows to not be takeable from carcasses
  
• Fixed issue causing arrows to never get destroyed/decayed
  
• Fixed issue causing throwing melees to not apply decay to items
  
• Fixed issue causing animals to spawn near player on new game
  
• Fixed issue causing items to highlight below cupboard shelves
  
• Fixed issue causing loot/crafts requirement to show in HUD even if set as hidden in quest
  
• Fixed issue causing quest requirements to show in journal even when flagged as hidden
  
• Fixed a graphics issue with impact particles
  
• Fixed a graphics issue with intro cave lighting
  
• Fixed various issues with localization
  
• Fixed various issues with level design
  
• Fixed various issues with broken loot in locations
  

What's next?

We want to remind everyone that Northern Lights is in an Early Access state, so there might still be a lot of bugs to be ironed out and a lot of balancing to be done.

We will continue fixing reported bugs and issues for 0.8.x while working on the next feature update v0.9 as per our Development Roadmap Available HERE

Because of this, we encourage everyone to use the Report A Bug button found in the Game Menus in order to reach out to us about possible issues! Also, don't forget to join our Community and Discord Server, where we have chats dedicated to feedback and new ideas!

Thank you for reading and for all your support and understanding!