Fun Dog’s post-apocalyptic survival horror looter shooter is shaping up to be a brilliant nightmare.
As I walk across what I initially assume are some rocks, but are in fact countless petrified cadavers, I use the scavenged head of a cyborg to scan my surroundings. Amid the sea of neutral green are two red silhouettes lying still on the ground—not corpses, but cyborgs with their legs blown off, yet still active and deadly. They can’t see us, as we’re hidden behind towers of gore and bone. We sensibly head in the opposite direction.
In The Forever Winter, letting rip with the game’s myriad firearms is often the very last thing you’ll do before an army of machines and soldiers descends upon you. « One important rule is: don’t shoot unless you have to », design director Jeff Gregg warns me as we sneak through rows of tombstones. It’s like « ringing the dinner bell ». But my AK-47 will still see some use very soon.
Ahead of me, Miles Williams, Fun Dog Studios CEO and the game’s creative director, leads the way, with Gregg covering the rear. They have set themselves the task of protecting me as we try to scavenge for loot in a devastated but still very active battlefield occupied by two warring armies and countless robotic horrors. We are nobodies. Desperate survivors hoping to fly under the radar. We move cautiously. The battlefield can quickly change—from almost peaceful to catastrophically messy—and, copying my protectors, I quickly learn to call out everything I see. Awareness is even more critical than a loaded gun.
We get to some destroyed fortifications and, out of a cloud of dust and sparks, some more cyborgs appear, crawling in our direction. Williams plans to take them out using a suppressor, but they clock us. Symbols above them denote if they’re investigating or fully hostile, as well as if they’re losing interest. These ones are not losing interest. Williams opens fire and I follow suit. They’re not too tough, but we’ve made a racket. A much larger machine, Mother Courage, has taken notice. And reinforcements are coming from behind us.
There’s swearing, a bit of panic, and a lot of running. Williams thinks we’re safe, but then a bomber appears overhead and we’re separated from Gregg. « Don’t wait for me », he says. « Don’t wait for me », he repeats. We continue running. Another moment of safety, and room to breathe. Gregg manages to catch up, but we quickly encounter more crawlers. Williams fires at a cyborg—one still in possession of its legs—in the other direction, the screen lights up with alerts and all hell breaks loose. Machine bait
I run for my life as Gregg creates as much noise as possible to draw the cyborgs away from me, but there are so many of them now. A group of them starts sprinting, easily overtaking me to chase down Williams who’s out in front. I’m surrounded now, being pummelled by synthetic warriors who look like mechanical zombies. Only a few metres from the extraction point, we die an inglorious death.
By the usual co-op shooter standards, The Forever Winter is brutal. Vastly outnumbered and outgunned, every run is a huge risk for the survivors. I end up back in the Innards—the hub area where the scavengers, or scavs, can trade, prepare and team up—with an empty inventory. The guns I brought with me are gone, as is the precious scanner. To stop things from getting too hopeless, you’ll always have access to some basic guns and some free ammo, but you can lose absolutely everything else. You do, at least, get one opportunity to reclaim everything dropped upon death, by returning to the map and trying to reach the site of your demise.
I’ve got other things to worry about, though. Getting new equipment—a wide range of guns, attachments, ammo and consumables, as well as more exotic fare like mechanical pack mules and turrets—relies not only on the wealth I earn from trading loot, but also my reputation with the factions. Their stock and how much I can make from our transactions, as well as how much I have to pay, is determined by how much they like me. This relationship is affected by missions, and the actions I take during those missions, and favouring one faction will cost me the favour of the other.
