Impact Winter – Review
Follow Genre: Adventure, Survival, Simulation
Developer: Mojo Bones
Publisher: BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC

Impact Winter – Review

Site Score
7.2
Good: Atmosphere, Cute graphics
Bad: Hardly any pointers on how to play the game
User Score
7.5
(2 votes)
Click to vote
VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 7.5/10 (2 votes cast)

Survival games have been a thing for quite some time, and often they revolve around the same thing: survive in a horror setting, or survive and scavenge in a post-apocalyptic world. Impact Winter seems to be aiming for the latter, but tries to spice things up by throwing you, and a handful of survivors in a church, while the world is covered in thick layers of snow, covering nearly all what was once human under a thick pack of white fluff. What makes this game different from a seemingly endless supply of other titles is that there’s help on the way, at least if you can survive for another thirty days.

Impact Winter Banner

Story

Impact Winter pretty much throws you inside the game from the start, without that much context. You’ll learn that the world was hit by an asteroid, which caused the world to be constantly covered in thick layers of snow. Other than that, there’s only the small broadcast that tells you help is on the way, albeit in thirty days. You’ll have to make do with a simple storyline, which isn’t a bad thing for a game such as this, as it’s all about the game’s mechanics.

Graphics

Graphically Impact Winter will not be the most beautiful game you’ve ever seen, but the many details it has will give you something to look at during every encounter, every new location you unveil, or simply when strolling through the thick snow, hoping to find those extra supplies that can keep you going for yet another day. The trail that forms in the snow wherever you walk is done in a very realistic fashion, by your otherwise comical looking character. Every environment is filled to the brim with clutter, making it seem as if it used to be ‘alive’ when our race still freely roamed the surface of the planet. Animals and other characters have a comic-book like appearance, which in the long run suits the game, making it a bit lighter than it actually is.

Impact Winter

Sound

During your attempt of surviving the barren conditions that have taken hold of our world, you’ll be accompanied by atmospheric music, which makes the otherwise silent world a lot more bearable, albeit heavier. The tunes behind the simple sound effects carry a certain heavy mood, which makes it clear which dire situation you find yourself in. Sadly the game comes without voice acting, which could have been nice to heighten the experience when you encounter someone, or to make your outpost more alive, in the otherwise mute world.

Gameplay

Impact Winter is a survival/exploration game, in which you’ll have to keep yourself and your fellow survivors alive for a period of thirty days. After said amount of time, help will come barging through the door, but still, thirty days is a rather long time to survive in a world which is seemingly covered in permafrost, which means that you’ll have to keep warm, as well as have enough supplies when it comes to food, water and medicine. You’ll occupy yourself mainly with venturing outside of the church, exploring the map, finding new locations and scavenge whatever you can get your hands on. All of this has to be done while you make sure your ‘base’ is properly warmed and everyone performs their tasks, crafts new items and/or remains happy throughout the entire ordeal.

Impact Winter 1

Even though the concept may be simple, its execution is rather hard, as even the beginning items you can craft, are not done by scavenging items nearby, but you’ll actually have to wade through thick layers of snow for quite some time to actually find some of the necessary items to properly progress. While the latter isn’t necessarily a bad thing, your first playthrough attempt will be rather hard due to the lack of any proper and lengthy tutorials on how everything works, and what you need in order to properly manage said thirty days.

Only your character is able to go outside and hunt for supplies with a very limited inventory space. Of course, the game doesn’t even really tell you how to fend off wild animals and such, so it’s truly a ‘survival’ experience. The rest of the ‘crew’ will remain inside of the church, and you’ll be able to give them orders, concerning their health or simply to craft items. The latter isn’t always that clear either, but practice makes perfect. You can think of the extra characters as a part of a massive crafting skill-tree, with each of the characters having their own list of items they can create.

Impact Winter 2

While pretty much everything in Impact Winter is rather fun, albeit stressful at times, you’ll notice that the game plays best with a controller. Even then, some controls mentioned on the screen don’t properly correspond with the actual buttons on your controller. More than once, we found ourselves having to use other buttons than those which were mentioned in the game itself. Due to this, some controls feel a bit awkward, and it can get frustrating at the beginning of the game when controls simply don’t match up with the instructions you’re getting. While it only takes a short while to get used to the controls, it steel feels like these weren’t properly tested by the developers.

Conclusion

If you can look behind the lack of proper tutorials and the somewhat dodgy controls, you’ll find that Impact Winter is a great addition to the survival genre. You’ll be able to experience a survival title in a very original setting, with interesting mechanics and an overall attractive setting. Those who are fond of discovering how a game works with a minimum of information, will have more than enough hours to spend on Impact Winter. The game might be a bit hard on those new to the genre however.

Impact Winter 3

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Rating: 7.5/10 (2 votes cast)
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Impact Winter - Review, 7.5 out of 10 based on 2 ratings

2 Comments

  1. 3rd-strike.com | IMPACT WINTER is coming!
    March 22, 2018, 21:05

    […] BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Europe and Mojo Bones announced the coming of IMPACT WINTER to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on April 5th 2018. The game was already available on Steam. IMPACT WINTER is a post-apocalyptic survival adventure game without zombies. The game focuses on Jacob and his robot Ako-Light, who tries to lead four other survivors so safety after an asteroid collided with our planet. A mysterious voice on the radio announced the arrival of help in thirty days, but can you survive that long in this cold and dark environment? Would cannibalism be an option in the game? You can find our review of the game right here. […]

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  2. […] around a year ago we had a go on the PC version of this survival game that puts you in hell’s freezer. Once this was only meant for Steam users, […]

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