The Long Dark cover art

Can I Run The Long Dark?

Released in 2017, The Long Dark is an adventure indie game built by Hinterland Studio Inc.. It offers a single player campaign. Alongside Windows it also ships for macOS and Linux. With more than 110 thousand player reviews on Steam, its behaviour on real hardware is well documented. Cloud saves are enabled. It carries 87 achievements. A gamepad works without remapping, since controller support is complete. 19 languages are covered by the store listing. Its 9 years mean the stated figures describe machines that were current then, not now.

Developer Hinterland Studio Inc.Release 2017Genre Adventure, Indie, Simulation
Can your PC run it? →

System requirements

Minimum requirements

CPUDual-Core Intel i5 CPU @ 2GHz+
GPUIntel 4xxx Series w/ 512MB VRAM or better
RAM4 GB
Storage7 GB
OSWindows 8

Recommended requirements

CPUIntel i7 CPU @ 2.6GHz or higher
GPUnVidia GTX 555 w/ 1GB VRAM or better
VRAM1 GB
RAM8 GB
Storage7 GB
OSWindows 10

Verified from Steam · 9 Jul 2026 source

Scores are deterministic, computed by fixed rules and benchmark tables, not written by an AI. How we score. Maintained by Farhad Ali. Spotted a wrong specification? Tell us.

Setting and environment

The Long Dark places its action in an open sandbox, and the player works through hostile territory. The publisher supplies 23 storefront screenshots of these environments. It is played from a first person view.

Why The Long Dark is demanding

Video memory is not the constraint here, at 1 GB. Disk footprint is light, near 7 GB. At 8 GB, system memory is undemanding.

This reading comes from the published requirements and our own benchmark tables, not from the store listing.

Can you run The Long Dark?

100%
Can run iton a typical modern PC (Ryzen 5 5600, RTX 3060, 16 GB RAM), the processor is the tightest fit.

The Long Dark targets a mainstream modern PC: Intel 4xxx Series w/ 512MB VRAM or better and 4 GB of RAM for the minimum, stepping up to nVidia GTX 555 w/ 1GB VRAM or better for the recommended experience. No single part dominates the requirements, so a balanced mid-range build clears it.

Bottleneck: CPU

Similar games you can run

See everything your PC can run →

Frequently asked questions

Can my PC run The Long Dark?

Upload your DxDiag file to Idxdiag's free checker and get a component by component compatibility verdict for The Long Dark in seconds. No install required.

What are the minimum system requirements for The Long Dark?

The minimum requirements are CPU: Dual-Core Intel i5 CPU @ 2GHz+; GPU: Intel 4xxx Series w/ 512MB VRAM or better; 4 GB RAM; OS: Windows 8.

How much storage does The Long Dark need?

The Long Dark needs about 7 GB of available storage.

What is the bottleneck for The Long Dark?

On a typical modern PC (Ryzen 5 5600, RTX 3060, 16 GB RAM), the tightest component for The Long Dark is the CPU.