"Lost" savegame - anything I can do?

[past caring]

Survival mode - custom settings.
I wanted to check whether a dead wolf I came across was one I had fought the day before - so entered the journal and the stats tab. Scrolled down to the "wolves killed" data - and at that point got called away from the PC. I knew I'd be an hour so exited to the in-game menu (Back to game, Badges, Options, Quit) to pause time. When I returned I  went 'back to game' but found myself stuck in the stats tab - I could scroll up and down but not navigate to other parts of the journal or get back to the game.

If I pressed the B button (I'm using an XBox 360 controller) I got a message along the lines - "Are you sure you want to quit? Any unsaved progress will be lost". In the end I opted for that as I couldn't get back to the game.

But now that whole game has vanished. Any of the available saves have me in Milton House with only a few days survived - I was in Quonset Gas Station with about 150 days under my belt before this happened. And I certainly did not hit any option to delete a save.

Any ideas? I don't even know where to locate the save game files on my PC....

[ajb1978]

Saved games are located in C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Local\Hinterland\TheLongDark

Do you see anything in that folder that looks like it could be your game, based on the modified date?

[past caring]

2 hours ago, ajb1978 said:

Saved games are located in C:\Users\(username)\AppData\Local\Hinterland\TheLongDark

Do you see anything in that folder that looks like it could be your game, based on the modified date?

Thanks. Yes - there is a sandbox 11 with yesterday's date (which is also the largest file in the folder - which probably makes sense as it was my longest/most successful run). But no idea what to do with it though?

ETA: It doesn't show up as a 'load' option in the game menu.

Edited May 13, 2020 by past caring
Update

[ajb1978]

Well if it's not showing up as an option at all it might be a corrupted save.  But if it were me I'd try to trick the system before calling it a loss.  Try creating a new sandbox game, then immediately exit.  Delete it, rename your old save to match the new one, then restart the game and see if you can load it.

[past caring]

@ajb1978 - belated thanks for this, though it didn't actually work. I've just decided to crack on with a new game....oh well.

[past caring]

@ajb1978 - oddly, it has now 'worked' in dome wierd way. So thanks.

After setting up a few 'test' games yesterday and then choosing to load one of them, rather than simply resume, I noticed there were suddenly two 'Sandbox 2' games - and one of them was the lost save. And it worked fine.

I learned something else though, I think - save points (i.e. after sleeping or entering a building) don't actually register or save unless the game exits normally? I renamed the above 'Sandbox 2' and played about another 5 or 6 days of that game yesterday (so plenty of save points) but left the game paused last night whilst forgetting I had scheduled a Windows update. The renamed game had gone this morning, 'resume, took me to my last 'test' game mentioned above and I was back with two 'Sandbox 2' games to choose from in the load options - and yesterday's progress had gone. All now OK though as I exited normally after renaming the save this morning and it does now appear both as a 'resume' or 'load' game option.