Northern Regiment: 1862 is bound to attract comparisons from The Long Dark. It’s a Kickstarter game based on survival in extremely realistic conditions in the Great White North. There are no zombies are monsters to kill, and no trees that require felling with your bare fists. Which game am I referring to? Both, as a matter of fact.
The basic idea is the same: gather enough resources to survive in a harsh environment. Luckily there are enough ideas to separate Northern Regiment: 1862 from the myriad of other snow based survival games. For instance, as the name suggests, the year is 1862, and you don’t have any advanced technology like camping stoves, GPS, or knowing that tomatoes are poisonous. The setting is different as well, swapping out the frozen maple tundra of Canada for the frozen desolate wasteland of North Dakota.
Surviving with friends
What sets Northern Regiment: 1862 even further apart from others in the genre the most however is the faction system. Depending on who you ally with, you’ll encounter a host of friendly, neutral, and hostile characters throughout your adventure. You won’t just need to survive against the elements, you also have to survive against other humans as well. At the same token, you can’t just worry about keeping yourself alive, but your friends.
Developer A.G.A. also promises a story mode as well. Details are vague, but the player character will be a soldier whose seen some “destructive” things in his past. It’s never mentioned on the Kickstarter page, but presumably this (and the different factions) are referencing the American Civil War, which was going on at this point in history.
Mysterious history
Unfortunately this speaks to how poorly the Kickstarter page is laid out. There are walls of text detailing everything, but nothing is given much context. There are soldiers who are hostile or friendly, but no explanation on how you’ll work with them or fight them, or why they’re even there. The American Civil War was a huge part of life in 1862, and for it to not be alluded to in a game all about realism is strange. The Dakota War of 1862 isn’t discussed either, which was another in a long line of wars fought by the United States government against Native American tribes.
Will any of this history be in the game? It’s impossible to say, because the Kickstarter never brings it up. There are no screenshots in the page, and the pitch video represents the lone bit of gameplay.
Northern Regiment: 1862 could be a good game, and there are a lot of elements that suggest it could stand out from the crowd. However, with so little on offer, the $3,433 funding goal seems too big an ask, and not enough for what the developer is trying to do.
