The weapon is a Railgun, which can only be carried into missions in parts. Players then have to work together to assemble the Railgun in the field, after which the gun can no longer be disassembled. Once placed, a player will have to man the weapon to aim and fire. It is stated to be powerful enough to take out a tank in a single hit, and can even stun some of the largest enemies in the game.

It is worth noting that the Railgun can only be used when a party of three players are heading into a mission together. A single player cannot carry all of the parts required to assemble it in the field. Check out the trailer showcasing the new weapon below.

Along with this, The Forever Winter also got a host of other improvements and bug fixes. This includes a new Weapon-part crafting terminal in the Innards, a clean up of collision data in various maps, fixes to the patrol logic of the Medium Mech, improvements to kill-quest enemies, and improvements to drones and choppers. Check out the full patch notes below.

The last major update for The Forever Winter was released back in March. Along with bug fixes, the update brought with it a complete revamp to the game’s unique water mechanics. Dubbed Water 3.0, the mechanic was changed into no longer being a constantly-draining resource. Rather, the update turned it into a currency that could be spent to get access to various entry points across different regions.

For more details about The Forever Winter, check out our review from back in December.

The Forever Winter Nosebleeds Update patch notes:

• New-skin cinema in the Innards
• Stairway Night Mode (selected when entering region in the same RNG system as other night mode region variants)
• Heavy weapons 1st (Beta) pass (Usable Railgun weapon system)
• Bunco as an unlockable quest giver (see if you can discover what he is looking for you to do!)
• Bunco quests to earn components to build Railgun parts (once he is unlocked as a quest giver)
• Weapon-part crafting terminal (in the Innards)
• 3-player cooperative Railgun weapon assembly
• Boss stunning / Boss Codex Loot
• Improved animations for Bagman and Maskman
• Map Collision Cleanup (fixing numerous issues where collision and / or geo can prevent smooth movement)
• Recruit AI improvements Mk. 1 (improved response to orders, mule recruit no longer obeys attack order as it cannot attack)
• Improved Mother Courage AI (better response to its target’s behavior)
• Fixes to Medium Mech patrol logic
• Improved 3rd person camera alignment
• Enhanced music system improvements (more awareness / stealth / tension layers)
• Specific kill-quest enemies improvements (better chance to survive against AI foes so players can find them)
• Drone and Chopper improvements (can spawn from below and rise into the combat space in height-based regions)
• Better logic for faction score increases when AI notice you damaging / killing their foes
• Loot containers now have a larger range of potential items (type and count) to drop
• Various hand-positioning and animation improvements to player character weapon poses
• Fixed sync-kill distance bug that would sometimes allow enemies such as the Grabber to sync kill foes from too far away

Dubbed Water 3.0, the mechanic now has water no longer be a resource that is constantly being drained in real-time. Rather, water is now a currency that is used to get access to regions through various entry points. Each entry point has specific water costs that are randomised from a small range.

In multiplayer, the host of the game will be responsible for paying the water costs to enter their region of choice. Co-op partners, however, can lighten this load by giving the host some of their water.

The mechanics surrounding how water is found and gathered also got rebalanced to account for Water 3.0. Water barrels, for instance, are now stored in the Innard’s water supply, and additional water that is brought back from an excursion is automatically turned into currency. Water thief attacks can still happen if players leave 0 water in their Innards.

The core gunplay of The Forever Winter also got a major overhaul, with recoil, dispersion, kick, swing, and weapon handling stats all getting retuned. Aiming down sights is also more feasible now thanks to the gun’s position in the view having been changed, and there are also new and improved reload animations for a host of weapons.

Improvements to how enemies work in the game revolve around better indication for when enemies have detected players, and adjustments to enemy sensors.

There have also been improvements to some of the game’s behind-the-scenes aspects, including network stability and game performance. There have also been rendering improvements to raise frame rates.

For a complete list of changes made to The Forever Winter in its latest update, check out the patch notes below. And in the meantime, check out our review of the title from an earlier stage of its development.

The Forever Winter March Update Patch Notes:

Water 3.0

• Water is no longer a resource that drains real-time. It is now a currency that is used to access region entry points.
• Region entry points have specific water costs that are in an RNG range. The RNG range changes daily.
• The current water cost per region is on the region map and in the ready room
• The host of the current game pays the water cost to enter the regions. BUT the other players can give water to the host (and other players in the game) to help with the cost.
• To account for water 3.0, a rebalance of water drops in regions and rewards for quests was done.
• Water barrels are now only stored in the Innard’s water supply. Any additional water brought back from regions is converted to currency.
• When you update to water 3.0, only water that is in your innards water supply will remain. Your save game will also be marked with a special tag so we can reward you for your real-time water participation at a later time (don’t delete your save if you want this TBD reward in the future!)

NOTE! You can still be invaded by water thieves if:

• You leave the game with 0 water in your innards.
• Your water bots are followed back (if you have hired them).
• Other in-battle reasons can also incur the ire of the Water Thieves, so be careful
• More Base invasion triggers will occur in the future as we introduce additional enemies and objectives in the battlefield. The reward and risk will be high.

Water Trading

• Players can now trade water with each other on the ready room screen.
• Players receive notifications if a friend has given them water
• Players cannot give water if the recipient is already full (the transaction will be aborted). Increase your innards water supply!

Gunplay 2.0

• The core gunplay system for player used weaponry has been overhauled.
• Recoil, dispersion, kick, swing (based on size / weight) and weapon handling are completely renovated and retuned
• Weapon upgrades / mods have been adjusted for the new system.
• The gun’s position in ADS has been adjusted for better sight picture
• When in ADS, there is depth of field on the periphery to help focusing on the target
• Shotgun weaponry has been retuned for cone size, # of impact decals, etc.
• This results in less damage when target is far away and more damage at danger close ranges

Reload Animations: The reload animations have been improved for the following weapons. The Old Man character has been used as the first to receive the new goodness. We will continue to expand this to all weapons and all characters as we release more updates.

• The Grenade Launcher
• The M60
• The R8 Pistol
• The M79 Sawed-off pistol
• The P90
• The TKB-0146
• The S12 Shotgun (not to be confused with the SURPLUS shotgun)

Enemy Detection Improvements

• Enemy detection icons show up more reliably with the correct information on % of awareness / detection and state (??? for investigating, !!! for aware but not targeting YOU, and eyeball-icon for aware and targeting YOU)
• Enemy detection icons now show up to 4 arrows showing which players they are detecting so you can more easily see if they are tracking you or an ally
  This info only appears for the 3 closest in-view enemies to avoid a super noisy HUD
• Enemy detection icons will not appear if the view of the enemy is blocked (if they are behind a wall or pillar, etc.). It will re-appear if they are in view.
• Enemy sensors (hearing, vision, communication / “transference”, etc.) have been adjusted to improve chances of slipping by undetected if they are occupied with combat (unless the AI is specifically tasks to hunt players aka the Hunter-Killers)

Game Performance Improvements

• Various low to mid-level gamethread and rendering improvements have been made to increase FPS.
• Additional crash detection has been added to help prevent item loss if a crash occurs.
• Help us help you, if you had a rough time, scope out the discord and leave a message with your hardware specs, we will do what we can!

Network Stability Improvements

• Finding and joining games via session browser and friend invites should be much more stable now.
• Searching for games and quick matching should be faster.
• Additional tracking has been added for unexpected disconnections to allow us to improve networking in future updates.

AI spawning Improvements

All scenarios and encounters on all regions have been audited and adjusted to mitigate and hopefully completely remove:

• Seeing enemies spawn right in front of you out of thin air
• Having enemies spawn right on top of you or out of view

New Region: Stairway to Heaven

• A new region has been added to explore and complete quests in

Night Mode for Frozen Swamp Region

• The Frozen Swamp now has a night / horror mode that you may find yourself thrown into when you visit if the conditions are right

Looting Improvements

• There are now HUD elements on screen indicating what object you will interact with / open / pick up and if you are close enough to do so.
• It is now much easier to aim at and select the specific item you wish to pick up or open on the ground when there is a clutter of items in a pile or nearby.
• There are options in the option menu to adjust this HUD feedback for more or less info depending on your tastes.

AI Melee Improvements

• The system for how AI performs melee has been overhauled and made much more data driven.
• The Orga has been improved using this system as well as Mother courage. Both these units will have additional surprises.

Additional Quests

• Added quests that can be accomplished in both the new and existing regions

Faction Status Adjustments

• Player damage to different factions will have a more deleterious effect on the faction relationship (i.e. it will go down quicker)
• Quest faction influence has been adjusted per quest (completing quests will adjust the faction scores more or less depending on the quest)
• Vendor faction thresholds have been adjusted so its more challenging and rewarding to gain and maintain maximum faction rating (i.e. “its more challenging to get the vendors to sell you the good stuff”)

The First Descendant

Kicking things off with free to play third-person looter shooter The First Descendant, this co-operative RPG tasks teams of up to four with saving humanity from a string of hostile invaders. It harbours everything you could ever want in a modern-day shooter: flashy gunplay, intricate visuals, and a varied cast of colourful characters each with unique skills and capabilities. However, there are problems in its frustratingly slow progression, non-existent story, and atrocious balancing. Sort these issues out and The First Descendant could achieve some longevity in what is becoming an increasingly challenging domain.

It is curious, however, that few developers have tried to capitalize on the potential of the genre to offer up fun and interesting experiences to audiences that would prefer single-player or co-operative experiences. Most extraction shooters tend to emphasize their PvP aspects, and players that might prefer to go at it solo without having to worry about someone else definitely feel like an ignored audience.

"The core gameplay loop in The Forever Winter will be familiar to players that have experience with titles like Escape From Tarkov."

The Forever Winter is a relatively new title, having come out back in September as an Early Access release by veteran developers at Fun Dog Studios that hopes to capitalize on the single-player and co-operative aspects of extraction shooters by doubling down on the tension by going for a more horror-based approach to its art direction. In The Forever Winter, players are put into the shoes of a simple scavenger with little else to their name aside from a gun and some bullets, and are tasked with setting off in a post-apocalyptic world that has been so thoroughly ravaged by war that it’s impossible to tell who won and who lost.

The core gameplay loop in The Forever Winter will be familiar to players that have experience with titles like Escape From Tarkov; scavengers take on missions from various factions and set off into one of many available maps with one simple objective: get as much loot, be it new weapons, ammo, or even crucial supplies like water, and extract out of the map. Dying on one of these excursions means you lose pretty much everything you were carrying on you, including any fancy weapons you may have decided to bring along. Bit by bit, mission by mission, players are able to build out their arsenal, unlock new passive abilities like improved performance with specific weapon types, and better gears, making future outings on missions easier.

"Dying on one of these excursions means you lose pretty much everything you were carrying on you"

With this gameplay loop, taking on regular enemies that goes from being a nightmarish ordeal where you would be better off hiding than fighting them, to instead being simple obstacles that you can take out with a couple of bullets. To keep up with a player getting more powerful, the missions also start getting more challenging, tasking you with taking on tougher enemies like tanks, and even mech suits. In The Forever Winter, despite how powerful you might actually get, death is an inevitability, and the game feels like it was designed around the idea that players might have to restart their progression from scratch, which comes with the territory with extraction shooters.

When it comes to the moment-to-moment gameplay, The Forever Winter definitely has quite a bit of room for improvement. The core combat, while serviceable, doesn’t quite feel as good as it should from a game where just about every fight you get into is going to be ranged. Unless you make enough progress to be able to buy a replacement for your ironsights, you’re not going to find much in the way of accuracy either. The hit indicators also tend to feel off, since they take aspects like bullet drop into account. This means that you often don’t know if you’ve successfully shot an enemy until it’s too late; the enemy has heard your shot, has called for backup, and is now focusing their attention on taking you down.

The progression, on the other hand, doesn’t feel too bad. You start off with incredibly weak weapons, but as you start making deeper incursions into the game’s various levels and take on more challenging quests, you’ll start getting better weapons not only as loot, but also through your home base’s vendors that are constantly updating their stocks.

As it currently stands, the enemy AI in the game is a mixed bag. While it can often be quite impressive, with enemy soldiers using complex tactics to try and flush you out of cover you might be hiding behind, at other times, those same soldiers will end up running up to you in a straight line, letting you kill them one after another with well-placed headshots.

"To keep up with a player getting more powerful, the missions also start getting more challenging, tasking you with taking on tougher enemies like tanks, and even mech suits."

In fact, a lot of the game’s difficulty can be brought down by a considerable degree by simply teaming up with another player. There are obvious benefits to playing The Forever Winter in co-op, since all players get loot, you multiply your carrying capacity by the number of players in a mission, not to mention the fact that you can take on enemies with coordinated tactics.

The Forever Winter also takes a curious decision with one of the core resources that players set off to find: water. The game starts out with water being the singularly most important resource you can get for your base, with many base upgrades needing you to have a certain threshold of water to even become available to purchase. Interestingly, water is an ever-dwindling resource, to the extent where your base even has a giant screen to track how many days’ worth of water you have left. In fact, this resource also dwindles even if you’re not playing the game. Whether you decide to take a break from the game or keep playing every day, your water levels will go down, and once it hits zero, the concept of Water Death is kicked off.

In the game’s original incarnation from a couple of months ago, Water Death meant that you have basically failed, and would have to restart from scratch. This means losing essentially every form of progression you might have made in your playthrough, be it character levels, loot, or equipment for a base. At the time, while the concept of Water Death was a novel one, enough of the player base complained about being punished for simply taking a break from the game for a few weeks or a month, and the studio eventually changed up how the mechanic works.

"In fact, a lot of the game’s difficulty can be brought down by a considerable degree by simply teaming up with another player."

Outside of the water mechanics, progression as a whole in The Forever Winter feels quite solid. While it starts off as an incredibly challenging game, your character also improves with each successful extraction. This allows you to go into their skill trees and get improvements like the ability to have better aim and more damage with SMGs, for example. These improvements can also lean more on the utility side of things, such as the ability to carry more weight with you, allowing you to grab more stuff during a mission.

At the time of writing this review, Water Death means that a player who has run out of all water will find their base invaded the next time they play the game. This allows players the ability to fend off Water Death if they can successfully defend their base from this invasion. Failing to defend your base will still mean that you have to start over. However, the current version of Water Death is definitely an improvement over what it was earlier, since players now at least have the chance of hanging on to what they might have worked hard to procure.

This change in how Water Death works as a mechanic does highlight one key aspect of The Forever Winter: the studio does seem to have an ear on the pulse of what its players want. While the concept of a resource that dwindles even when the game is not being played is an idea the studio seems quite attached to, the fact that it took player complaints about losing all progress through no fault of their own to heart means that the studio is also likely looking to make other improvements to the game.

"The studio does seem to have an ear on the pulse of what its players want."

While most of the gameplay is filled with interesting ideas like various characters with unique abilities and an enthralling world with cool lore behind it, the game still wears its status as an Early Access title on its sleeves. The minute-to-minute gameplay, while fun and tense, still feels quite stiff. While this matches up with the idea that the player character is far from the concept of a super soldier that can easily use any weapon they pick up, the gunplay feels like it has just enough jankiness to it to make it feel rougher than it should be.

The Forever Winter absolutely nails one of its key aspects: art design. The post-apocalyptic world of the game is downright gorgeous in how horrifying things can look at times. While it doesn’t really abuse blood and gore as set dressing aside from a couple of rooms in the base, the game is still able to instill a sense of dread in players thanks to other aspects, including enemy designs and the world around them. The strange way some enemies move, the insane scale of the war that still happens to be going around for some reason, and some of the larger things out there, like massive AI automatons, all tend to make for an experience that is as cool to look at as it is terrifying to imagine.

The Forever Winter isn’t a game that’s shy about the fact that it’s in Early Access right now; in fact, the game seems to revel in it, constantly introducing refinements and new features through updates. While the game hasn’t been out for too long yet, the fact it has already seen a major revision to one of its key mechanics owing to player feedback, and the very fact that the studio is keeping an eye on what its players want bodes quite well for the future of the game. It offers a tense solo or co-op experience, with plenty of stakes since you can lose all the fancy loot you found by messing up just once. Coupled with gorgeous art direction and a terrifying setting, The Forever Winter is definitely something fans of co-op shooters want to keep their eye on.

This game was reviewed on PC.

"We were tired of playing games that didn’t respect our skills – games that dumbed themselves down because they thought we couldn’t handle it. We want The Forever Winter to bring us back to that time when games were pushing boundaries, building new worlds, and trying out new mechanics that felt satisfying and worth your time and money."

Fun Dog Studios counts a number of industry veterans among its ranks, but with The Forever Winter, you’re taking the sort of experimentational approach that we see less and less in the AAA space. What was it that drove the team to developing something that feels unique and different, in spite of the risks it might potentially pose?

We were tired of playing games that didn’t respect our skills – games that dumbed themselves down because they thought we couldn’t handle it. We want The Forever Winter to bring us back to that time when games were pushing boundaries, building new worlds, and trying out new mechanics that felt satisfying and worth your time and money. In short? We wanted to say goodbye to the kid gloves.

The Forever Winter’s post-apocalyptic setting is looking like a fascinating one, especially thanks to the narrative depth and striking imagery it seems to be promising, but as a co-op experience, how much emphasis will the game place on story and storytelling?

While there’s not a large emphasis on any overarching narrative, there’s definitely a story here. We’ll use cinematics like the Europa EXO Lifecycle video to flesh out more of the storytelling that may not be immediately apparent within the game itself. And every nook and cranny of the world fleshes out the hellscape you find yourself in. There’s always a story if you look hard enough.

What we’ve seen of The Forever Winter so far suggests that the game will lean heavily on enemy variety being one of its key strengths. Is that something that players should expect? How significantly will the challenges players will face vary based on what enemies they’re coming up against?

The Forever Winter’s enemies are heavily inspired by the RTS genre: each has their own persona that makes encounters unique. The active AI only enhances this: no two encounters are quite alike. Some may take one bullet, some may take a dozen… some may not care about bullets at all.

"The Forever Winter’s enemies are heavily inspired by the RTS genre: each has their own persona that makes encounters unique."

This is clearly a game where strategizing and working together will be key to survival. Exactly what kind of a balance will it strike between, say, combat and stealth, for instance? For players looking to approach things with a more aggressive approach, will The Forever Winter provide the tools to be able to do that?

While we never want to lock players out of a certain playstyle, The Forever Winter is not a “guns blazing” game. If you go in hot, you’ll leave dead. But it’s up to you and your squad to decide if you have the loot and strategy to make that happen.

What can you tell us about how significantly rigs and their customization mechanics will impact a player’s play style? Also, where loot and weapon customization mechanics are concerned, how heavily is The Forever Winter emphasizing build diversity and allowing players to tweak their character to suit their preferred style of play?

Build diversity and customization are major focuses of The Forever Winter. Using one “strongest build” and brute forcing your way through hordes of enemies may work in other shooters, but not this one. The game is constantly evolving and changing, and you’ll need to match it to stay alive. Enemies have their own agendas and will adapt to stop yours.

The trailer offers a deep lock at the gameplay of the PvPvE Scenario System in The Forever Winter. Through the system, the game is able to direct NPC factions into doing their own thing, focusing on their own objectives, while also pitting players against them in the process.

Along with regular gameplay, the trailer also showcases the progression systems in The Forever Winter, while also offering a look at the level of customisation available to players in order to tailor their playing style.

The Forever Winter puts players in the shoes of a scavenging survivor trying help their community survive against constantly warring factions like Europa and Eurasia. Players will have to take to these battlefields themselves in order to get their hands on more supplies and new equipment.

The game is being developed by industry veterans that have previously worked on titles like DOOM Eternal, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Killzone. The Forever Winter is currently only slated for release on PC, with console releases depending on the success of the game.