Final Winter

A fast paced rogue-like where combat is more about the amount of time lost for the xp gained. You have 10 minutes to get as deep as you can before the curse takes your life. This takes my usual approach to rouge-likes of careful, deliberate precision and tosses it out the window. The game compels you to take each floor faster than the run before to get deeper and grants you powers that help you traverse the floors with greater speed and yet the cave isn't exactly the same as the runs before. Enjoyable, challenging and leaves me feeling accomplished after a good run, and yet still feeling like if I could only run it faster than ______ wouldn't have died. Who is next and how many can I save I wonder? The game settings aren't preserved between sessions and I need to set WASD every time I start up, not sure if that's intended.

Fun game with some interesting mechanics. I don't know where my 10 minutes keeps going or how i already played for 2 hours.

Monster Fighting? Check. Puzzles? Check. Well made characters? Check. Good story? Check. This game has everything you need to keep you entertained for many hours. I have played through once (and lost) and it was very fun. I will be playing again. That being said I don't know the replayability of the game. But it is for sure worth the cost for the hours of enjoyment.

Final Winter came to me via a message reply to one of my advertisements. I never would have heard of this game if one of the developers had not reached out to me. Which is unfortunate because this game is probably the most fun I have had losing in years. Now I know what you are thinking. Probably something like. “You had fun losing a game?” Yes. Yes, I did. Some games you play to win but do not always expect to. Let’s talk more about this game. Final Winter is a described as an RPG with Speedrunning elements on its Steam page. Though I would say it is more like a roguelike but you get 30 lives. A village is cursed and most of the people have left, though the remaining villagers and strangers come to the village hoping to gain rewards, travel in to the caverns one at a time to stop the curse. Here’s the catch, you only have ten minutes to do it! To do this, you play through a dungeon crawl, learning various skills which are inherited by the next villager when you die. I suppose I should say if you die, but I died a lot, it just became a when. These skills you learn as you go allow you to find quicker ways through each dungeon level, eventually allowing you to easily traverse each level so it is entirely possible to make it in the limited time frame. They also made the combat to be quick. It uses only the space key, requiring you to simply tap it at the right time! Beyond creative gameplay and story the soundtrack to this game is amazing. I particularly enjoyed the battle themes that played on each level while fighting creatures. The music fits the already amazingly designed levels, and the well-drawn characters and monsters.  This game is well made, entertaining, and inexpensive. It is a must play for fans of roguelikes, or speedrunners, or those who just want to experience a fast-paced dungeon crawler! Final Winter can be found on Steam and guess what? You can also pick up the amazing soundtrack! I strongly suggest Final Winter for all gamers. And to keep an eye on Space Heater Games for future projects!

Mildly fun for about 20 minutes and then it gets incredibly repetitive. There are some decent ideas, and as a concept the game isn't bad. But the execution is extremely amateur in all regards and the core gameplay is just a bit too simplistic to really keep you interested. Not nearly enough variety between runs (nearly zero). Especially at 10$ absolutely not. Maybe for 1-2$ I would say give the game a shot, but even then, there are dozens of free games I would recommend over this.

A fun game with a great mechanic. Every run can only last ten minutes before your villagers perishes and you're one step closer to all of your villagers being lost. Gameplay isnt complicated and it's more about the decisions you make on the fly. A strong recommend.

This is a fun arcade-feeling speedrun game. It is rewarding and story-rich. A lot of minor things make the game feel crappy/can be improved: The voice acting in the beginning sounds awful, even like the actors are on the verge of laughing. It ruins the experience of starting a new game. The hero being cocky in the opening cutscene is really hard to connect with. With music on, going from scene to scene has the music immediately switch. Gradually fading between songs feels more organic(sometimes it should be jarring, not always). With music off, each sound cuts in from silence, which is jarring. Ambient sound effects like wind would be great. Menu options should be hover-selected as if they were rows in a grid, instead of having just the text being able to be hover-selected. Every fight is almost entirely the same, and it more-or-less doesn't make a difference when they're short battles, but boss fights are very, very boring. The sound effect after is great, but often not enough to make up for the amount of time wasted doing the same motions for a long time, thoughtlessly. The speech-text does not appear fast enough, in my opinion. It would be nice to have confirmation of a successful save.

A very neat game! The controls are honestly kinda jank. I created a custom layout for the XBox 360 controller, which I've shared with the community, and that makes the game infinitely more playable in my opinion. At the time of this review, I think some of the achievements might be glitched (i.e. unobtainable), which disappointed me greatly. I like the music, sound effects, artwork, and game mechanics! I also really appreciate the fact that it has an upper bound on how long the game will take for a complete playthrough. Overall good game.

Very cozy and chill

This game gets more intriguing, intricate, and complex the more I play it. I find myself limiting my play sessions so I don't discover too much at once. Excited to reach the end, and see what kind of replay value it has as well.