Developer Hinterland Games' superb sub-zero survival experience The Long Dark will finally receive its extremely long-awaited fourth story episode on 6th October.

Fury, Then Silence, as the Episode 4 is known, follows pilot Will Mackenzie's desperate attempts to escape a murderous gang of convicts from one of the darkest corners of Great Bear Island in order to continue his search for second protagonist Astrid.

Hinterland says Fury, Then Silence will feature between 7 and 10 hours of gameplay, 60 minutes of narrative cinematics, and over 40 minutes of new music, with its action unfolding in a brand-new region dominated by an old prison complex built in the shadow of Blackrock Mountain.

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The Long Dark is free on the Epic Games Store.

Developer Hinterland's acclaimed 2017 wilderness survival adventure is free on the platform as part of Epic's latest promotion, which dishes out a free game every day for 15 days. This promo kicked off on 17th December with Colossal Order's fantastic city-building game Cities: Skylines. 18th December's free game was Oddworld: New N Tasty.

The Long Dark is free to download now until 4pm tomorrow, 20th December, when another mystery game will be released for free.

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Holy macaroni it's the final Five of the Best of the year! This is our weekly series where we sprinkle some love on the overlooked parts of games. We've talked about potions, caves, hands, shops, hubs, maps, mountains and many more. There's a Five of the Best archive if you fancy a butcher's.

Snow! I wonder about snow. Hardly any falls where I live so whenever it does, everyone gets very excited for it. The ugly grey concrete we see every day is hidden under a fluffy white blanket, as if to say, "Don't worry about all that stuff, unless of course you walk into it, but go out and do something else instead. Be with friends! Be with family! The trains don't bloody work anyway." So the country grinds to a halt and we all rush outside to slide down hills on sledges, baking trays, dustbin lids, plastic bags - anything we can find. There's no thought for safety as people plummet down, careering into people walking up - I once saw someone perform a whole impromptu somersault - and we all return home at the end of the day with bruises and a spot of hypothermia. It's a great day out.

So when I see snow in a video game, the same butterflies of excitement flutter around inside me. But I wonder, is it the same for those of you who live where it snows a lot? You must see so much you are sick of the sight of it. Do you like snow in games or does it give you nightmares? Do let me know!

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Developer Hinterland Games has announced that the long-awaited, and very delayed, third story episode of its sub-zero survival experience The Long Dark will finally come to Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC on 22nd October.

This month, The Long Dark is celebrating five years since its enormously successful early access launch in 2014. That initial release offered a purely sandbox experience, and a wonderful one it was too - delivering a punishing but engagingly authentic winter survival adventure in a breathtakingly atmospheric, post-apocalyptic world.

Hinterland's ultimate goal was to translate that compelling survival core into an narrative-driven experience, and the initial fruits of that labour arrived in 2017, with the first two episodes of The Long Dark's story mode, known as Wintermute.

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Developer Hinterland has announced that it's delaying the release of sub-zero survival game The Long Dark's third Wintermute story episode. It will no longer be launching in December, as had originally been anticipated.

Episode Three, which follows on from the last year's duo of opening chapters, continues the adventures of Dr. Astrid Greenwood, and will include new survivors, a new region to explore, plus new details on the First Flare event that engulfed Great Bear Island in the endless winter. However, writing in a new blog post, The Long Dark director Raphael van Lierop explained that the studio has chosen to delay its release "to add more content and polish".

This, van Lierop explained, follows a number of new hires from the now-defunct Capcom Vancouver (Hinterland says it's also looking to bring on ex-Telltale staff with a narrative background), enabling the developer to significantly expand its team. The new art, animation, and programming talent - not to mention the acquisition of Capcom Vancouver's motion capture equipment - has made "a huge difference to what [the studio] can accomplish in Episode Three", and Hinterland says it intends to take full advantage of these new abilities.

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We're currently experiencing a sweltering summer heatwave in the UK, and quite frankly, most of us at Eurogamer are ready for some cooler weather. Unfortunately it looks like we're going to have to wait - both physically and digitally - as the third episode of winter survival sim The Long Dark is coming out in five months.

In a Steam dev diary post, developer Hinterland announced Episode Three is due for release sometime this December. The player will take the role of Dr. Astrid Greenwood, and the story will pick up "in the aftermath of the events of Milton". Hinterland also promised players will "meet new survivors, explore a new region, and find out more about the events prior to, and after, the First Flare event that engulfed Great Bear Island - and perhaps the rest of the world - into 'the long dark'." I guess this is the true darkest timeline. Quite literally.

Alongside Episode Three, Hinterland will also be releasing "Redux" versions of the first two episodes. These apparently come with a whole range of improvements, including a "more open quest structure," a new NPC, and even a new playable intro sequence for Episode One. The Trust system is also being completely removed, as the developer stated it contributed to the "fetch questy" feel of the original episodes.

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