Helldivers 2 has really given me a taste for relentless wars and hordes of killer machines, and it looks like Fun Dog Studios’ The Forever Winter is going to help me keep scratching that itch—albeit in a very different way.
Instead of being a badass supersoldier, this survival horror looter shooter puts you in a squad of bedraggled survivors just trying to make it to the next day while an apocalyptic war consumes the planet. Fun times! “You’re a small fish in a big apocalypse,” the Steam page warns us.
For 40 years, two superpowers have been duking it out in a world where ecological collapse and relentless technological advancement have messed everything up. Now, skyscraper-sized war machines batter each other while hordes of cyborgs prowl the ruined battlefields with murderous intent. Your job? Loot the dead and get out alive.
Because you’re a nobody, the colliding armies won’t pay much attention to you at first, but as you start to make a nuisance of yourself you’ll become a target. The cinematic trailer, above, gives us a wee taste of this, where the squad tries to stand firm against waves of Terminator-like enemies, while massive vehicles and machines launch devastating attacks against each other. In the end, a towering robot (or possibly a mech) effectively swallows one of the unfortunate scavengers. I’m sure he’s delicious.
The Forever Winter promises a dynamic encounter system where enemies will work together and “undertake full-scale battles”, following their own agendas. So it sounds like they’ll have their own war goals as they try to kick the shit out of each other, but then they might start giving you all of their attention.
Fun Dog Studios CEO and creative director Branford Miles Williams calls it a “love letter” to a “bygone era” when “teams were pushing boundaries, building new worlds, and experimenting with new mechanics that were both satisfying and worthwhile.” To be honest, though, this looks like a game that is absolutely of this era of gaming, where looter shooters, dynamic enemies and cool twists on multiplayer modes are pretty dang trendy.
There’s no release date yet, and aside from some screenshots we’ve not seen what it looks like in action, but The Forever Winter definitely seems worth keeping an eye on.