Hot cougars will be in your area in The Long Dark

Hinterland Studios’ first-person survival game, The Long Dark, is getting its fifth DLC — Tales from the Far Territory — complete with cougars chasing the player around the map.

Among other things, this apex predator is a “territorial beast” drawn to the player’s location if they stay in a region for too long. In the Steam announcement, it’s described as a way to keep players “on edge,” though, it isn’t like it’s impervious to damage, you can fight back and even kill it. You can even find its den and burn it to the ground, buying you time to relax before getting assaulted by the ferocious feline. Additionally, you can choose to opt out of the feature itself if it’s too much, meanwhile they’re automatically opted out of old saves.

The first part of the DLC launched back in December 2022 with the promise of new modes and features to the survival elements within 12 months. Naturally, it’s been longer than that, but it’s onto its fifth promised DLC out of the six confirmed from Hinterland.

Other things heading our way in this new DLC includes the final Tale as part of it, taking place in the yet-named Mountain Pass region included in the same DLC. A new mode is also arriving known as Misery Mode, which is meant to be an ultra-hard mode for seasoned The Long Dark players.

Part Five also introduces the Cheat Death system, an optional feature that lets players keep going even after dying in the permadeath-focused survival game. You need to make “trade-offs” every time you die, with a max — seemingly — of three times. The game will get harder with each death, as well. This marks the studio’s first change to its permadeath mechanic and hopes this will bring a “new dimension to gameplay” for the players who aren’t as keen on permadeath. Frankly, the system sounds fairly unique and befitting a survival game.

While we don’t have a concrete date, it’s supposed to drop sometime in the second half of June.