A lot has happened in the world of Near Death since its launch, and we wanted to put all of the updates and improvements in one place to make it easy to see everything that’s changed. Here’s a list of everything that’s changed since the game came out:

• The game has been translated into French, German, Hungarian, Spanish, and Hungarian.
  
• Trading cards were added for your collecting enjoyment.
  
• A number of visual effects were added to the game to give it an all new feel. You can find out more about those here.
  
• Added two new difficulty levels, along with achievements for them. Try the game on Hard or Condition 1 if you want a true challenge.
  
• Added an FOV slider to help those who suffer from motion sickness.
  
• Patched in a huge number of bug fixes and performance improvements.
  

A lot has happened in the world of Near Death since its launch, and we wanted to put all of the updates and improvements in one place to make it easy to see everything thats changed. Heres a list of everything thats changed since the game came out:

• The game has been translated into French, German, Hungarian, Spanish, and Russian.
  
• Trading cards were added for your collecting enjoyment.
  
• A number of visual effects were added to the game to give it an all new feel. You can find out more about those here.
  
• Added two new difficulty levels, along with achievements for them. Try the game on Hard or Condition 1 if you want a true challenge.
  
• Added an FOV slider to help those who suffer from motion sickness.
  
• Patched in a huge number of bug fixes and performance improvements.
  

Near Death is now available in Spanish! Version 1.07 also brings a few bug fixes and enhancements:

• Near Death is now available in Spanish!
  
• Updated physics settings on the long range antenna to help prevent it tunneling and getting into bad states.
  
• Keypad buttons are now detected for equippable items, which allows players with AZERTY keyboards to equip the flashlight, portable heater, and other tools.
  

Near Death is now available in Spanish! Version 1.07 also brings a few bug fixes and enhancements:

• Near Death is now available in Spanish!
  
• Updated physics settings on the long range antenna to help prevent it tunneling and getting into bad states.
  
• Keypad buttons are now detected for equippable items, which allows players with AZERTY keyboards to equip the flashlight, portable heater, and other tools.
  

We just uploaded patch 1.06 of Near Death, which features a number of fun new visual modes for the game. Why? For no other reason than we had some free time and it looks cool!

The new effects really lend a whole different feel to the game; it's really fun to move through the base as if Sutro Station is a painting or a retro Nintendo game. Here's a quick rundown of the effects. Still images don't really do them justice, so fire up the game to check them out in motion or take a peek at the gifs we're posting over on the Near Death Twitter page.

To begin, here's a still image for reference:



The first effect is subtle, but effective: a 2.35:1 letterbox mode that matches the aspect ratio John Carpenter used in his late 70s/early 80s classics (the most relevant to Near Death being The Thing, of course). This effect can be used on its own or in combination with the effects below.



Next, we have a painting effect that almost makes the game seem peaceful. Quite a contrast to the brutal conditions at Sutro Station.



And here's the first of three retro-inspired effects, a simple pixelation overlay.



Then there's a pixelated retro effect with a unique condensed color palate. The game feels really, really cool with this mode enabled.



And there's another retro color effect that's really ... effective ... as well.



And finally, to capture the feel of an Antarctic base in the early 80s that's using technology from the 50s, 60s, and 70s, we have a black and white TV effect.



Fire up the game and give the new modes a shot; theyâ

We just uploaded patch 1.06 of Near Death, which features a number of fun new visual modes for the game. Why? For no other reason than we had some free time and it looks cool!

The new effects really lend a whole different feel to the game; it's really fun to move through the base as if Sutro Station is a painting or a retro Nintendo game. Here's a quick rundown of the effects. Still images don't really do them justice, so fire up the game to check them out in motion or take a peek at the gifs we're posting over on the Near Death Twitter page.

To begin, here's a still image for reference:



The first effect is subtle, but effective: a 2.35:1 letterbox mode that matches the aspect ratio John Carpenter used in his late 70s/early 80s classics (the most relevant to Near Death being The Thing, of course). This effect can be used on its own or in combination with the effects below.



Next, we have a painting effect that almost makes the game seem peaceful. Quite a contrast to the brutal conditions at Sutro Station.



And here's the first of three retro-inspired effects, a simple pixelation overlay.



Then there's a pixelated retro effect with a unique condensed color palate. The game feels really, really cool with this mode enabled.



And there's another retro color effect that's really ... effective ... as well.



And finally, to capture the feel of an Antarctic base in the early 80s that's using technology from the 50s, 60s, and 70s, we have a black and white TV effect.



Fire up the game and give the new modes a shot; theyre a lot of fun to tinker with, and seeing the familiar sights in a different light is super cool. And last, but not least, the new build also includes a handful of bug fixes and polish bits. Here are the full patch notes:

• Added some fun new visual effects for playing the game with a different look: Painting, Retro 1 & 2, Pixelated, and TV. To enable them, just click the Effects button on the Video options page.
  
• Added an optional letterbox setting; play the game in a classic, Carpenter-esque 2.35:1 screen ratio!
  
• The game now fades down to black when exiting.
  
• Slightly increased the drain rate of the blowtorch.
  
• Fixed a bug where the screen would sometimes not fade fully to white upon death, making it hard to read the menu.
  
• Fixed a roll of duct tape that couldnt be picked up in the Water building.
  
• Fixed an issue where UI buttons would sometimes not have the proper highlighted state
  

Hey, everyone, we're very excited to announce The Orthogonal Games Bundle! It packages Near Death with The Novelist for a $5 discount, and if you already own one of the games you still get a discount on the other one.

So spread the world and tell your friends.

Thanks!

Hey, everyone, we're very excited to announce The Orthogonal Games Bundle! It packages Near Death with The Novelist for a $5 discount, and if you already own one of the games you still get a discount on the other one.

So spread the world and tell your friends.

Thanks!

We just released Near Death 1.05, which adds support for the French, German, and Russian languages! It also includes a number of other fixes and improvements. To celebrate, the game is 25% off for the Halloween sale!

Here's the full list of changes:

• Near Death is now available in French, German, and Russian!
  
• Training messages now stay on the screen for different durations according to their length (so that players have time to fully read longer messages).
  
• The player is now locked into place when the gondola is moving, so they don't fall out accidentally.
  
• Linux graphics APIs are now manually specified to see if it helps resolve errors with the game launching & requiring a manual override for which OpenGL version is being used.
  
• The blowtorch gas gauge is not visible when it should not be visible.
  
• Minor text updates.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Map and Menu buttons would show as blank images on the controller screen when using an Xbox 360 controller.
  
• Additional polish to new-game menu flow.
  
• Minor geometry polish and fix-ups around the base.
  
• Players can now reply to teletype messages with numpad keys.
  
• If the first objective in the player’s list is optional, it will be sorted to the bottom of the list so that save game descriptions on the load game screen will reflect the player’s main objective.
  
• Fixed a bug where weather sounds would sometimes stop abruptly instead of fading out during changes in weather conditions.
  

We just released Near Death 1.05, which adds support for the French, German, and Russian languages! It also includes a number of other fixes and improvements. To celebrate, the game is 25% off for the Halloween sale!

Here's the full list of changes:

• Near Death is now available in French, German, and Russian!
  
• Training messages now stay on the screen for different durations according to their length (so that players have time to fully read longer messages).
  
• The player is now locked into place when the gondola is moving, so they don't fall out accidentally.
  
• Linux graphics APIs are now manually specified to see if it helps resolve errors with the game launching & requiring a manual override for which OpenGL version is being used.
  
• The blowtorch gas gauge is not visible when it should not be visible.
  
• Minor text updates.
  
• Fixed a bug where the Map and Menu buttons would show as blank images on the controller screen when using an Xbox 360 controller.
  
• Additional polish to new-game menu flow.
  
• Minor geometry polish and fix-ups around the base.
  
• Players can now reply to teletype messages with numpad keys.
  
• If the first objective in the players list is optional, it will be sorted to the bottom of the list so that save game descriptions on the load game screen will reflect the players main objective.
  
• Fixed a bug where weather sounds would sometimes stop abruptly instead of fading out during changes in weather conditions.
  

The Verge took a look at Near Death, and they loved it!

Near Death, a first-person survival game released this summer, is easiest to describe in terms of the things its not. Taking place in an abandoned Antarctic research base in the 1980s, Near Death shares a setting with John Carpenters The Thing but its not a sci-fi or horror game. Its main mechanic is avoiding death by crafting and scavenging, but its not a survival simulator. Its made by Orthogonal Games, creator of character-driven indie project The Novelist but its not a game about exploring other peoples lives. Its a tense, lean, and tightly paced exercise in endurance, and one of my favorite games of the year.

The Verge took a look at Near Death, and they loved it!

Near Death, a first-person survival game released this summer, is easiest to describe in terms of the things it’s not. Taking place in an abandoned Antarctic research base in the 1980s, Near Death shares a setting with John Carpenter’s The Thing — but it’s not a sci-fi or horror game. Its main mechanic is avoiding death by crafting and scavenging, but it’s not a survival simulator. It’s made by Orthogonal Games, creator of character-driven indie project The Novelist — but it’s not a game about exploring other people’s lives. It’s a tense, lean, and tightly paced exercise in endurance, and one of my favorite games of the year.

Gamasutra recently posted a great analysis of Near Death, discussing the impact of isolation in indie games. Here are a few of our favorite quotes:

Games like this exemplify Antoine de Saint-Exuperys famous aphorism perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

The mechanics are spot-on, and the game ramps up its difficulty in a ladder that scales with the growing intensity of the snowstorm outside, slowly allowing you to accumulate various skills, upgrades, and tactics in the process. The only thing youre fighting is hypothermia; youre constantly at risk of freezing to death and have to leap from one warm spot to another, often of your own hasty making. The storm, then, is not just a backdrop: its the setting, its your experience, its a character who charts the entire path of the game.

Near Death succeeds at creating a taut and fulfilling experience, and the solitude actually helps with that.

Gamasutra recently posted a great analysis of Near Death, discussing the impact of isolation in indie games. Here are a few of our favorite quotes:

Games like this exemplify Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s famous aphorism “perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

The mechanics are spot-on, and the game ramps up its difficulty in a ladder that scales with the growing intensity of the snowstorm outside, slowly allowing you to accumulate various skills, upgrades, and tactics in the process. The only thing you’re fighting is hypothermia; you’re constantly at risk of freezing to death and have to leap from one warm spot to another, often of your own hasty making. The storm, then, is not just a backdrop: it’s the setting, it’s your experience, it’s a character who charts the entire path of the game.

Near Death succeeds at creating a taut and fulfilling experience, and the solitude actually helps with that.

Hello everyone! Just a quick announcement to let you know that Steam Trading Cards are now available for Near Death. There are six cards to collect, six badges to craft (including the foil badge), as well as five backgrounds and five emoticons.

And a reminder that our recent patch 1.04 introduced two new difficulty modes in addition to Easy and Normal: Hard and Condition 1. Hard is hard, and Condition 1 will test even the most seasoned players. Both modes come with achievements so that you can prove to all your friends that you survived a full-on Condition 1 blizzard in Antarctica.

Have fun playing the new difficulties, collecting the trading cards, and crafting those badges!

Hello everyone! Just a quick announcement to let you know that Steam Trading Cards are now available for Near Death. There are six cards to collect, six badges to craft (including the foil badge), as well as five backgrounds and five emoticons.

And a reminder that our recent patch 1.04 introduced two new difficulty modes in addition to Easy and Normal: Hard and Condition 1. Hard is hard, and Condition 1 will test even the most seasoned players. Both modes come with achievements so that you can prove to all your friends that you survived a full-on Condition 1 blizzard in Antarctica.

Have fun playing the new difficulties, collecting the trading cards, and crafting those badges!

We’ve just released patch 1.04, which in addition to fixing a handful of small issues also makes a big addition: harder difficulty modes!

Instead of just Normal and Easy, Near Death now includes Hard and Condition 1 difficulties. Hard is hard, and Condition 1 will test even the most seasoned players. Both modes come with achievements so that you can prove to all your friends that you survived a full-on Condition 1 blizzard in Antarctica.

As for what these modes do, they both step up the intensity of the weather right from the start of the game. They also make it so that you receive less loot from containers, freeze faster, and run out of resources faster. Especially with Condition 1, you really have to think about every move and manage your resources extremely carefully; the conditions are brutal, so you can’t waste a single drop of kerosene or even one precious battery.

Here’s the full patch list, and we’ll keep an eye out for players sporting the new difficulty achievements!

• Added two new difficulty levels: Hard and Condition 1. If you’re one of those “eh, Near Death didn’t seem that hard to me” folks, we have a new challenge for you, along with shiny new achievements if you can escape Sutro Station in utterly merciless conditions.
  
• Added version information to the bottom right corner of the Options menu.
  
• Fixed bug where players could accidentally place their heater on the other side of a door just after forcing it closed.
  
• Fixed issue where in rare instances you can get duplicate quests after placing objects on the snowcat.
  
• Miscellaneous small fixes to rare cosmetic bugs.
  

Weve just released patch 1.04, which in addition to fixing a handful of small issues also makes a big addition: harder difficulty modes!

Instead of just Normal and Easy, Near Death now includes Hard and Condition 1 difficulties. Hard is hard, and Condition 1 will test even the most seasoned players. Both modes come with achievements so that you can prove to all your friends that you survived a full-on Condition 1 blizzard in Antarctica.

As for what these modes do, they both step up the intensity of the weather right from the start of the game. They also make it so that you receive less loot from containers, freeze faster, and run out of resources faster. Especially with Condition 1, you really have to think about every move and manage your resources extremely carefully; the conditions are brutal, so you cant waste a single drop of kerosene or even one precious battery.

Heres the full patch list, and well keep an eye out for players sporting the new difficulty achievements!

• Added two new difficulty levels: Hard and Condition 1. If youre one of those eh, Near Death didnt seem that hard to me folks, we have a new challenge for you, along with shiny new achievements if you can escape Sutro Station in utterly merciless conditions.
  
• Added version information to the bottom right corner of the Options menu.
  
• Fixed bug where players could accidentally place their heater on the other side of a door just after forcing it closed.
  
• Fixed issue where in rare instances you can get duplicate quests after placing objects on the snowcat.
  
• Miscellaneous small fixes to rare cosmetic bugs.
  

Hey, everyone, we're still hard at work hammering out issues people have found since the game was released. Here's another batch of fixes. Stay warm out there!

• Fixed an issue where you could place the Long Range Transmitter or the Radar Scope on the snowcat if you had previously picked it up but had then dropped it. Now the game checks to make sure they're in your inventory before you can place it.
  
• Fixed a bug where games saved on Linux systems using a comma-based format for floats would not load properly.
  
• Disabled non-stereo sound options until we can work out a solution for some players having crashes with surround sound.
  
• Increased the chance of finding solder in containers.
  
• Decreased the chance that outdoor crates would provide no items when searched.
  
• Updated the motion sickness warning page to mention that the game’s FOV can be adjusted.
  

We just published patch 1.02, which includes the following fixes as well as a significant performance optimization regarding rope trails:

• Fixed a bug where you could click a disabled ‘Create’ button on the crafting tab and disable other recipes if you didn’t have the ingredients for the current item.
  
• Significant optimization to rope trail performance, which also addresses the “massive slowdown after loading a game” bug in most cases.
  
• Improved world collision in many places, including the gondola.
  
• Improvements to objective flow clarity.
  

Hello, all, we just published a quick patch to resolve a handful of issues people have discovered since launch. Please make sure to update your game if you're running into any problems!

Also, we are investigating the issue where some players are getting crashes if they set their audio to something other than stereo. If you are crashing when walking into the Comms building at the start of the game and you have a non-stereo setting, try setting your audio back to stereo as a workaround.

Here is the list of changes and fixes in patch 1.01:

• Fixed bug where crafting an item while carrying an object would cause the carried object to disappear off-screen. Players can no longer craft items while holding a large object.
  
• Added an FOV slider to the video options panel.
  
• Added a VSync toggle to the video options panel.
  
• Fixed issue where items in the video resolutions dropdown list could be cut off at the bottom/top of the dropdown when a controller was in use.
  
• Added our intrepid PR team to the game credits — sorry, Felix and Dana! We love you!
  
• Reduced the shininess of the player’s arm.
  
• Minor optimization to pool ball sound effects.
  
• Fixed issue where the controller icon for equipping items wasn’t being displayed in the help panel.
  
• A certain penguin is hiding somewhere in Sutro Station, if you’re playing on Linux.
  

The crew at Many A True Nerd did a really nice Let's Play video of the game. If you're curious what playing Near Death is like, this video does an excellent job of explaining the mechanics and the overall tension and gameplay experience.

Highly recommended for those who want to know more!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=czPLK1jIPj4

Hello, all! If you're on the fence about whether or not to try Near Death, check out Kotaku's review that went up today! They loved the game, and also explained what it's like to play it.

Hope you all love it, too!

http://kotaku.com/near-death-the-kotaku-review-1784628541

Other “lonely games” can feel like delivery mechanisms for nonlinear narrative, games in which the point of moving from place to place is to experience a new drop of story. Near Death is more consistently focused on the interactivity of doing things. In that way, it is more akin to dialogue-light survival movies like the desperate one-man high seas sailboat disaster movie All Is Lost or the one-challenge-after-another problem-solving depicted in The Martian. The story is less about what anyone says but about what happens to you and what you do about it.

The narrow focus of Near Death is appealing. Its designers succeed in presenting a refreshingly simple game about a straightforward struggle to live. They simply pit you against the cold, and they have erected an arduous and interesting interactive obstacle course you must overcome to survive.

There's been some understandable confusion about exactly what genre Near Death falls into.

The short answer is that it doesn't fall into any definable genre, but we wrote a longer blog post to explain more.

Please share and help spread the word!

http://www.neardeathgame.com/what-is-near-death/

We're very excited to announce that Near Death will be coming to Steam on August 2nd!

The game will launch on Windows, Mac, and Linux at $14.99, and our incredible soundtrack will be available as DLC for $7.99.

We can't wait for people to play the game; a lot of hard work and love has gone into it, and we're really proud of the end product. Head over to the store page and add it to your wishlist so you'll be notified when it launches!

If you want to stay in touch on a daily basis, follow @NearDeathGame on Twitter for screenshots, gifs, and other tidbits.

And if you're looking forward to the game, help us spread the word and tell your friends!

Until then ... don't forget your light poles, because it's cold and dark outside!