Developer Hinterland has announced its much-loved snowy survival hit The Long Dark will, all being well, get the fifth instalment of its paid Tales from the Far Territory expansion in the "second half of June" - adding, among other things, a cougar to pursue players all over the map and a way to cheat death in permadeath mode.

Tales from the Far Territory launched back in December 2022, promising a bunch of Surival Mode additions that would release over the next 12 months. In classic Hinterland fashion, however, the pace of development has been glacial and it's only now close to releasing the fifth of six promised DLC instalments as the summer looms some 18 months on.

Thankfully, there's some good stuff brewing for Tales from the Far Territory's Part Five, starting with the cougar - a new apex predator that sounds a bit like Resident Evil's Mr. X in fuzzy form. The cougar is designed as a territorial beast, and is drawn to a player's location if they linger in a single region for too long. To avoid its deadly attention, players will need to keep moving.

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I've played little of legendary survival sim The Long Dark, or The Short Dark, as I guess it has proven for me. I fell off the game after succumbing to my first wolf. But I've sampled enough to know that adding a "Misery Mode" to the game is sort of like upending a bucket of water over a drowning person. More misery in The Long Dark? Oh thank god, that's just what this notoriously easygoing wilderness adventure has been missing. And what's this, developers Hinterland are introducing a new predator, the Cougar, which will move into any area you're fond of and compete over territory. Finally, a bit of friction for what has previously been a stroll in the woods.

It's not all misery. In a first for The Long Dark, which has hitherto been a permadeath game that wipes your save between runs, the devs are working on an optional Cheat Death system. It's not as cheaty as it sounds, however. You can only return from the grave four times, and each time, you'll have to make unspecified trade-offs. The idea is to stop people backing up their saves and make failure more of an adventure or if you prefer, an agonisingly slow decline, rather than letting players avoid the consequences of their actions.

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