Developer: Other Ocean Interactive
Publisher: Other Ocean Group
Platforms: PC
Tested on: PC
Project Winter – Review
Project Winter is an off-season release and is like taking a shotgun to the woods in the off hunting season, minus the helicopter at the end, being paranoid at anyone approaching and the eventual death at the hands of people you are supposed to trust. Wait, that’s exactly like Project Winter. Never mind, carry on. The only thing that’s different is the cosmetics you get in Project Winter that hunting in the off-season doesn’t get you. Like armor to show off your progress in the game unlike the tombstone in real life.
Story
You are stranded in a desolate yet pristine snow-covered landscape. It’s up to you to get out there alive. Well, not only you, there’s a ragtag bunch of three people that will join you on this journey. Though trust is a fickle thing, hard to earn but easily lost. That’s the moral of the game, be careful who you trust if their actions aren’t aligning with what they are preaching.
Now the backstory of the characters is non-existent, but that doesn’t mean it detracts from the experience if anything it helps you get in the survivalist mode that the game is all about. You can be anyone, or overcome the hurdles of your make-believe past as you imagine how your character got in this frosty ass environment in the first place.
Graphics
The graphics are rather interesting as there’s a cartoony vibe going on in Project Winter, but that doesn’t mean the game is a ‘kids’ game. When the murder ‘gets on’, blood will be visible and though it might look innocent, the game has quite an ominous vibe emanating from it with its harsh climate and the constant changing of the weather, making visibility lower than any YouTubers self-esteem.
When it comes to the objectives and what materials you have to get to complete them, Project Winter is quite a clear cut, the game won’t tolerate unclear objectives so you’ll always know what items you’ll need to progress to the next step. With a traitor among your ranks, there’s always the need to check up on everyone but that’ll be hard with the other three people being capable of running all over the place, so you’ll just have to be confident that either you’ll spot the traitor doing shady stuff or the others don’t spot you going for the traitor’s cache with all the murdery loot inside.
Sound
This is where the game gets interesting. Sound is a big and small thing in Project Winter. The sound-play with the environmental sounds is well done, but the gameplay element that comes with the sound is fun to manipulate but can create some really tense moments. What happens is that you can hear anyone that’s close by, but you can’t hear them if they are too far away, so you can’t message or signal anyone if they are too far away. So say you run into the traitor and he’s doing his or her murdering, and you want to get back to the rest to inform them, you can only hope they are close by because if you die before they are within earshot, then you are out of luck and the ‘potential’ traitor can go on a killing spree. ‘Potential’ is put in the last sentence because anyone can kill anyone, so killing doesn’t necessarily make the person the actual traitor, what can be said? Some people just want to watch the world burn.
The only clear cut way to be sure someone is a traitor is when you hear them opening a traitor’s cache, which makes an awful lot of noise and the traitor is the only person that can open it. So keep your ears peeled.
Gameplay
Project Winter is an action/adventure game, that dumps you and three other players in a desolate landscape and gives you objectives to complete, that when all completed, will summon a way out of the frozen hellscape. Teamwork is the best way forward, but there’s a twist, there’s a traitor among you and it’s up to you to make sure he or she doesn’t manage to murder his or her way to the end. Traitors don’t always have to kill, they can just try and sabotage the mission by slacking off and trying to derail the mission by sidetracking other players. But murder is always the most efficient way to deal with a problem. Not the nicest, but the most efficient by far. There’s no one complaining about frostbite if they are dead.
What looks like a really interesting premise for a game, makes for a very messy game. Trust is something you earn over a very long period of time and can’t be replicated when you are dumped with a pack of strangers. So what most games devolve into is people just starting to kill everyone as the mistrust grows. Even when you make your intentions clear as the traitor, going so far to even tell the other players of your role, will just result in everyone either ganging up on you and then on each other as their distrust hasn’t been satiated, making it so clearing objectives and even completing a game is very, very hard. So a good game on paper, a messy one at best when behind the actual game.
Conclusion
Project Winter seems like a great idea in theory, but nearly every game played with strangers boils down to killing each other when the panic sets in. Anyone could be a traitor and be out to kill, so best to jump the gun and be the first one to kill, just in case. The gameplay mechanic with the sound is a very interesting one and sets the tone for the isolation that the game emanates. A fun game but don’t expect to finish many games by actually making it out alive.
Project Winter - Review,
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[…] Project Winter, the eight person social deception survival game from developer Other Ocean just received a brand new update reworking the Traitor role, adding two new sub-roles, and promising holiday-themed breakables for future community challenges. The biggest change takes the form of spending quality time with unsuspecting Survivors, with the more time spent alongside them awarding more information and additional buffs. An extra sabotaging method has also been introduced, allowing Traitors to alter the cabin map board to show fake locations. […]