The Forever Winter

has potential but needs a lot of work. at its current state its banking on vibes which can only take it so far.

One of the most hauntingly beautiful games I've ever played with fascinating lore. Artbook for this game is genuinely one of my most favourite artbooks out there and shows Fun Dog Studios' dedication to their artistic vision. Also completely unplayable jank with no regard for player enjoyment with downright insulting gameplay combined with baffling balance decisions which somehow keep getting worse with every update. It's still early access. Maybe it will get better eventually, maybe it won't. But for now, I'd heavily discourage from buying this game and spend your money on the artbook instead for essentially the same experience.

Might be one of the buggiest games, I've ever played. Watching Helicopters fly into the ground and back out, all while shooting something. Its hilarious to watch. It's probably because the A.I in this game is complex from a normal gamer perspective, couldn't tell you from a devs. Most of the time you aren't focused. You are a nobody. A parasite on the world that is Forever Winter, and they know that. You can sprint past hordes of enemies that are fighting one another and they MIGHT take a shot or two at you but fight the actual threat in front of them. I've never quite played a game like The Forever Winter. Edit; The more you play the worse it gets. A lot of bad choices. Timed extracts only in the later areas, that when you activate them, quite a few people spawn on you. By then your running out of ammo. Game needs an overhaul. Stop adding things and work on the current game.

[h1]Недосконалий шедевр[/h1] Сміливі розробники-ветерани залишили великі ігрові студії та створили унікальну гру — гру своєї мрії, вигаданий світ якої майже одразу став одним з моїх улюблених. Я обожнюю дизайн оточення та персонажів, атмосферу та лор — вони поєднали стільки контрастних ідей, стільки джерел натхнення, і абсолютно все влучило в ціль. Особливо відзначився Річард Дюмон — мап-дизайнер та концепт-художник серії Deus Ex, який виконав колосальну роботу. Я ніколи не бачив настільки вражаючих локацій, які в найкращих традиціях розповідають історію без жодного слова. [hr][/hr] The Forever Winter спочатку мав бути артбуком, натхненним роботами трьох видатних художників: [list] [*][b]Здзіслав Бексінський[/b] — відомий роботами, що зображають невимовний жах [*][b]Ніхей Цутому[/b] — майстер перетворення страху у зброю [*][b]Отомо Кацухіро[/b] — автор «Акіри» [/list] Але артбук переріс у гру — жорстоку та непривітну, але винагородливу, жахаючу, але прекрасну, безкомпромісну у своєму дизайні. Гру, яка не боїться йти власним шляхом, заснувавши новий жанр — [i]анти-шутер[/i], де ти не є стороною нескінченного конфлікту, а просто намагаєшся вижити та вибратись до того, як війна, що триває вже понад 40 років і, схоже, стала кінцем часів, зверне на тебе увагу. [hr][/hr] Механіки гри можна описувати довго, але я скажу коротко — гра здивує вас неодноразово. Як на полі бою, на якому безперервно відбувається щось цікаве: дух захоплює, коли бачиш, як два крокуючі роботи розміром з дев'ятиповерхівку проривають танковий стрій, а над ними пролітають стелс-бомбардувальники, що скидають загони кіборгів без парашутів, наче бомби, — і це все на тлі шедевральних краєвидів знищеної цивілізації. Так і поза полем бою — чого варта тільки місцева система модифікації зброї. До прикладу, на АК можна змінити: магазин, переднє та заднє руків'я, ствольну коробку, приклад, ствол, газовідвід, цівку, приціл та мушку, дульну насадку. Після модифікації стає можливо встановити аксесуари, що початково не підтримувались такою застарілою зброєю, як базовий АК-74, — на кшталт ліхтариків, лазерних вказівників, оптичних прицілів. Загалом у вас під сотню, якщо не більше, варіантів. До арт- та левел-дизайну найвищого рівня якості, дуже цікавого та крутого лору, а також глибоких механік я можу віднести й саундтрек! Просто послухайте на ютубі: [i]Lost Souls Pt. 2 (Desert Days)[/i] [hr][/hr] На жаль, у гри був проблемний запуск у 2024 році: гра мала надто багато багів та проблеми з балансом, тому отримала змішані відгуки. Однак, доволі символічно, розробники не здались, а продовжують бій — щомісяця виходить якесь оновлення, що справді покращує гру та додає контент. Вони обіцяють продовжувати, і якщо так, то я справді вірю, що The Forever Winter стане не просто однією з найбільш видатних ігор, а саме найбільш видатною грою — досконалим шедевром.

The devs want you to engage with the world. However, when you do that all the game breaking bugs/glitches like to come out of the wood work and ruin your day. This means, basically you have to sneak around all the bugs/glitches in the game. It's more like a you can look at everything, but do not touch anything or it falls apart. It supposedly released EA in September of 2024. Which means you should more than likely wait another 2 years before trying it out. Because I can not imagine how much worse the games state was then. If this is what it's like now. I like the concept. But I experience so many issue that grate on my nerves. Example, loaded in geared up and blue ska doo through the world to your immediate death. Not oop's I fell off the edge of the world. No, I phased through the ground. Lose all your gear. Though in other areas, the game just teleports you back up top to your last location. Which is cool. Its hit or miss as to which one you are going to get. Zero consistency. Other then it consistently ****'s you. You are also suppose to get a grave and if you make it back to it you can retrieve it. However, the game never seems to remember the weapons I had and seems to just give me randomly generated weapons. Say you are using the heavy weapon class and had a gm6 and a grenade launcher. The game is like oh here take these two smg's. The weapon your class can not use. The game even tells you flat out you can not use this weapon. Or how about giant mech dog or blind mothers reaching through concrete walls and snatching you up Instantly dead. Not chasing you down and getting you. But magical ****. Just out of thin air. It doesn't matter when enemies are inside the walls! Being crouched is not activating sneak mode. The thing I like most is the active war zone the map areas feel like. The enemies aren't like oh I hate you my enemy, but the player showed up. Let's work together and attack them. No if they were engaged in fighting another faction they don't stop till that faction is dead or you attack them. Reminds me a lot of Tabula Rasa game logic. 9:11pm 7/15/2026 Just ran into another bug/glitch. You can enter two menus at the same time and not be able to back out of either. You have to force quit the game and restart in order to play again.

I respect that this was the Dev's first game ever made. I expected a dystopian atmosphere and gameplay similar to Arc Raiders. But it's not very fleshed out. The movement feels cheap and clunky. The enemies don't feel very real, almost like an on-rails pathing AI when fighting them. And the graphics don't feel good enough for the Process/Performance consumption it has on my system (not optimized). But, for their first game, they did a pretty decent job. And did a GREAT job on SAND: Raiders of Sophie. If you don't know what it is, I would recommend checking it out. But sadly, over all I would not recommend Forever Winter.

Not ready at all. save your money.

Game crashes before you even load in the level. You lose your gear. want to recover it? sorry, not happening, no place for a recovery drone to grab your swag. get stuck in weird geometry in the tunnels or other parts of the maps? same deal. no recovery possible. This game feels like it should be fun, but some of it is such an excessive grind, with such a high risk to losing your stuff to things out of your control, that it just sucks the fun and desire to play it out the window. Some custom gameplay settings or tweaks to personalize the experience might make this more manageable, seeing as it's more or less a single player game. why this isn't implemented already is well beyond me.

The water mechanic is too much for me. In order to progress your base, you have to bring water back to encourage more NPCs to join your settlement, you must leave the base, go get water, and bring it back. However, you are only allowed to bring 1 water back during a mission, and the missions can take anywhere between 5-20 minutes. It takes a little less than 20 waters before you get the first upgrade, and that all is assuming as well that you make it back alive. So right away, the game is softlocking progress and forcing you to be efficient to get anything done, even tho you dont really know what youre doing yet. Hard pass

Pros: -Has great art style -Engaging core mechanics -Amazing atmosphere -Gritty lore -Decent gameplay loop Cons: -Par/Subpar UI -Near endless jankiness to all enemies and animations for AI -Zero stealth mechanics -Zero Ally/Semi-friendly mechanics (outside of shopping) -Horrific AI director forcing enemies to 360 No-scope you without ever seeing you (if they are fighting) -AI Director forces enemy units to unpredictably walk directly around cover into you -Some of the worst weapon balance in any game I've played last 27 years -Unavoidable teleporting enemy spawns -Unkillable, unavoidable 15' Robot dog you can't outrun or stealth around (search Forever Winter Underground Cemetery). Genuinely a near unplayable map with many Main Questlines forcing you through it over and over.. DO NOT PLAY THIS MAP -Unguided loot spawns (can be forced to dice roll a 0.02% spawn chance item when you need 5 of them for a single base upgrade-potentially dozens of hours for single items) Outside of all this, if you can get the game for $15 or less and want a horror-survival looter shooter I would suggest it. Highly unlikely with the incredibly slow dev time they will achieve any true balance to the game/maps, so you would play to only enjoy a unique game with great vibes that has no end goal, or viable way to get there. I see support continuing for some time (1-2 years) with quality of life updates until it is ultimately abandoned