Futuristic sci-fi survival game The Forever Winter might appear like an extraction looter shooter at first, but its terrifying, war-torn world makes it a much more tense and demanding experience than likes of Once Human or Escape From Tarkov. Attempting to eke out existence in the shadow of rival factions clashing with their titanic battle machines, even firing a single shot is a risk, and it’s all you and your friends can do to stay alive. In a new developer blog, Fun Dog Studios covers some of the community’s biggest questions as it looks to what’s coming next.
So far, the looting and extraction survival game has proven a success, with a positive reception from more than 12,000 reviews during its first month of early access. It’s still just the beginning, however, with a lot still to come. With that in mind, Fun Dog’s game design director Jeff Gregg and audio director Jason Willey sit down to answer key questions from The Forever Winter players, with the likes of rigs, weapon designs, faction differences, progression, and class design all on the table.
First up is the question of whether we could see more modular designs for rigs, the inventory storage you use to hold your loot during runs. “The short answer is yes,” Gregg says, “the long answer is I cannot promise a specific release date or upgrade for that stuff.” He explains that rigs are currently built “in a really developer-friendly way,” but that he’d like to provide a way for players to adjust their setup, providing the team is happy it can balance the feature.
“There’s also, in addition to just customizing with the pieces you’re using right now, a whole bunch of additional rig equipment and things that could go into any of those typically nine slots, for the biggest [rig],” he adds. Don’t expect this too soon, however; Gregg says it’s on the back-burner for now as the team works on “the really fundamental bugs and improvements and features.”
Despite its sci-fi setting and the presence of giant war robots, The Forever Winter’s weapon choices are currently pretty much what you’d expect from any modern-day shooter. So can we expect more futuristic weapons and gear moving forward? “Oh, absolutely,” Gregg responds.
“To me personally it makes no sense to transition from early access to release without some sort of additional kind of futuristic tech or weaponry. I don’t know if that’s going to be space lasers and laser swords, but there’s going to be some cool stuff that’s really bizarre.” He notes, however, that these weapons won’t just be for players – enemies will get their hands on them too.
Another key upgrade the team is working on is making team chatter and call-outs more distinct to each faction. Willey also says he wants to improve the players’ ability to tell what NPCs and enemy units are doing based on the way they sound. “I would like to give them much more separation so you can tell by listening, oh they’re on patrol, they don’t see me; or maybe they heard me and now they’re investigating.”
Gregg then discusses wanting to implement “a more systemic system that does a much better job of reacting to the state of the war as you play.” He stresses, however, that he doesn’t just want this hooked to simple actions like shooting a set number of medium enemy mechs. “One of the things I’ve said a lot is that the game exists despite you, not because of you. It needs to be more about if medium mechs happen to be doing this against the other factions, whether or not you’re engaging.”
“If I really was a homeless old dude living in the sewers that just wanted water, would I really be having a critical eye on, ‘Hmm, it looks like Euruska is retaking Scrapyard Nexus?’ No, it’d be like, ‘Oh, I’m hungry, where can I get food?’ My priorities would be radically different,” he remarks. “That’s another fun part of the game I always want to preserve – if you’re noticing [the changing world state], it’s awesome, but you’re not the fulcrum on which the world is turning.”
Fun Dog also turns its attention to progression and a potential character wipe. “I’ve actually been thinking about this a lot,” Gregg says, “I don’t like arbitrarily murdering progress. As long as you understand it could happen, or what the rules are, then I am actually absolutely for it, because I’m like, ‘You knew what was going to happen.’ But coming by and saying ‘it’s gone,’ I’ll never promise it won’t happen but I’d rather avoid that.”
A potential solution, he suggests, might be to reset character skills if it makes sense to, but return the experience to players so they can spend it again. He says that if a wipe is necessitated, Fun Dog will be sure to warn players ahead of time. Alternatively, he speculates a future where players might be offered the choice between keeping their current tree or ‘promoting’ to the new-look tree instead.
“I guess early access is what it is,” Willey adds, “but when games do it when they’re live, I’m not a big fan of that.” Gregg responds with, “It’s always easy to give people something – it’s always hard to take it away. That’s just a fact of life. But sometimes you have to, which is unfortunate, but we’ll be fair.”
Rounding out the session is a question asking whether we’ll see more alternate models for the various classes. Gregg says he’d like to see “as many as we can make” in the future, and might even include some variants that are distinct based on world lore. This will of course extend to new playable classes as they’re introduced, he concludes.
If you’d rather get in the mech yourself, here are the best robot games. Looking for something you can play with your friends? We’ve rounded up the best co-op games in 2024.
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