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Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 33.6 hrs on record (11.9 hrs at review time)
Posted: 30 Sep, 2024 @ 8:07am

Early Access Review
Early access review so the recommendation will be pivoting as patches come out.
The Forever Winter will not be for everyone, it will scratch a very specific itch for those wanting an extraction based game with in grim dark cyberpunk post-apocalypse future.
In it's current iteration, the AI spawn and movements are quite janky that can lead to some unfair situations and the character movement has an early iteration of momentum based movement that can cause you to come to a full stop if you clip a pebble. With those two huge caveats out of the way, there is a lot here I love:
  • Art is phenomenal, each player character, war zone, UI choice conjures up some of the very best in the art world while making its own, from Zdzisław Beksiński to Tsutomu Nihei
  • Scaving in a war zone creates an existential horror niche that I didn't know needed to exist
  • While the AI gets hung up on a lot things and can break immersion when it does work it's downright enjoyable leading one faction to another for a brawl, I can't wait to this mechanic get fleshed out more
Water mechanic opinion: I don't really care. In the span of 11 hours of play time I have procured 30 days of water, that's 30 days of real time. It doesn't take much to grind back to the spot you were at from nothing. I am only 11 hours into the game and banging out quests for faction rep is straightforward. We'll see what the dev's do, if the game ramps up the difficult for getting water, then the water timer is a silly artificial difficulty slider.
For those that don't mind some jank, this is a great early access title. It has an amazing artistic flair and a really fun gameplay loop of being a scav rat in beautifully rendered environments. I appreciate that you have choices of doing longer run time maps and smaller quick runs if you have 5 - 10 minutes to spare.
Those that can't tolerate jank in games at all but for some reason buy early access and then complain about the jank, avoid this and save yourself time of buying, playing for 30 minutes, going to steam forums to complain, refund, then go back to the steam forum to let everyone know you've refunded and say it's a "dead game", I just saved you probably $26 and 4 hours of your time.
Things I would like to see improved:
AI spawning and further their ability in decision making
AI and player locomotion is really rough at the moment, I've seen AI get stuck on the same pebble as I
Tanks should not be able to get flung into space, land upside down, and still shoot at things
For me these are items I would address first
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