this game was an absolute bliss until I realised that the journal is not completable in the game's current state.
the issue that events, even when encountered, do not trigger their journal entry has been brought up by MANY players yet the devs seem to not care at all, and it saddens me.

Despite this, the game is a wonderful experience, I loved petting the dogs, and if the devs didn't neglect this I would have been so much happier. Now, just looking at it in my library frustrates me, because I know I cannot get all achievements.

Well, that being said, exploring the wilderness, having bonding moments with your dogs, and the random events ensure you have a unique experience.
the controls are simple enough, even though I still don't fully understand the shooting mechanics, and with each run, the game progresses further through the story, so failing is actually part of the gameplay, and I find something deeply healing in also rewarding "failure" as being just a learning experience and not a punishment.

With some spite towards the devs within me, I still give this a recommendation <3

Short, cozy, fantastic game - fairly overpriced.
Wish it had 10x the content (and it took 10x longer to actually beat the game) - what's there already is quite good, but I imagine they were concerned about spending too much money developing a niche game.
10/10 voice acting

It's a beautiful game, but very short and repetitive after awhile. I would wait for a sale, because it's too short to reasonably be worth the full price tag.
The VA for the main character did a fantastic job.
Worth it if your just looking for something different to do for an afternoon.

Just because you're a master in The Long Dark doesn't mean you're gonna have an easy time here!

Yet another quality Steam game you can get for 100% off for a limited time. This time your job is to survive in the Alaskan wilderness with 5 faithful furry friends.

Be warned though, the survival aspect is no joke, so prepare to die on your first several runs while before you get the hang of things...

Other than that the art style, animations and wealth of meaningful and brutal interactions you can have with the environment are top tier.

So, probably wondering why i'm not recommending the game even though I got it for free?

First the positives, which are that the game is quite nice looking and it was pleasant to look at everything (even the somewhat janky animations of some of the animals), the voice acting for a bit can be pretty solid and obviously doggos.

The downsides though? For starters, its a "rail-shooter visual novel" where you dont play the game besides making a choice between 1-2 options (extremely rarely 3+). The MC is amazingly dreadfully idiotic to a comical level, who in their right mind goes to *any* wilderness with like 2 pieces of meat, some bandaids, 3 bullets and tree shavings? The voice acting while great becomes extremely grating very fast, as the MC is talking alone and fills up the void by constantly making annoying comments (Although a positive is that you can turn it off)

The limited supplies and essentially being forced to restart over and over simply because "well, MC has learned from her weird dream state to bring more supplies! one additional meat, bullet and tree shavings, and whatever she found during the dream. No additional medkits though" feels more frustrating than anything, theres nothing about you as the player actually learning about the experience and just the game telling you that the MC was completely stupid, and is unbelievably slowly realising that maybe, just maybe, what she brought isn't enough to survive even in a populated town.

The game is entirely RNG on if you'll actually make it to the end as well, I got unbelievably lucky and got to the end in just 2 runs (with an injury on me and a dog), but I got like 10+ bullets and kept shooting absolutely everything for food. (Just playing for around 50 minutes? The intro was really long so I'm not entirely sure how long it took me)

The quick time event shooting thing is visually cool, but after the third time I genuinely just wanted to have a setting to make it shoot automatically, it wasn't that intuitive or fun.

There are some segments of just actually unavoidable damage apparently, like the damn Owl (Example; See owl and go chase it; Elk does a drive by and injures you. Example 2; See owl but dont chase it; Elk immediately does a drive by and injures you)

Also, I haven't encountered it yet but from reading other reviews and such, apparently some achievements are bugged and permanently unobtainable and have not been fixed since the game came out, and will most likely never be fixed.

TLDR
Get the game while its free (Or whenever it becomes free again), I wouldn't recommend buying it even with a 90% sale, it doesn't feel like a game or even a visual novel to be honest (And at its base price it is way overpriced for what you actually get)

A cozy hardcore walking simulator were choices matter, story with progession and characterization with dogs. Its unique and left me in emotional termoil killing one of me dogs. This puts survival in accessible mechanics and I can't recommend it enough. Words of advice save the bullets for when you need them. There are way more options for food than there is protection, I paid for killing the wild life, thankfully I didn't pay for this. It isn't worth 25$, good game regardless

The Red Lantern is a great narrative based game about dog sledding to a destination. The graphics and beautiful, and the atmosphere felt nice. The narrator also does a great job throughout the story, and her interactions with different events and the dogs provide a nice touch. Story wise, this isn't anything super special, and it plays out more like a visual novel with choices. The gameplay is also relatively simple, but it is more challenging than you'd expect. It is pretty hard to make it far at first, but when you reset you can usually start with a better start. I did find it started to drag on a little long by the end though as I did the same events over and over. However, it is still pretty fun to replay some events and try to optimize decisions better.

Overall, this is quite a good game to give a shot, especially right now when it is currently free.

Short, cozy, fantastic game - fairly overpriced.

Its a nice game, maybe a bit heavy on the self-reflection dialogues. Most things are decisions to make like "go left or right", "stop to look what made that ominous noise", with the occasional "hit the shot" minigame to get your dinner. Speaking of dinner, this womans hunger reminds me of a certain strawhat-wearing pirate captain.

Fun Game I Like How You Can Create Your Own Story, Choose Your Sled Dogs, But The Game Is A Little Tricky So You Have To Make Sure You Dont Run Out Of Supplies one of the better games on steam 9/10 *Bodega Is So Cute* (i got the game from a Free To Own Sale)