Winter Survival is a challenging survival game set in the harsh and unforgiving mountains of Washington. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn’t do well, and if it’s worth your time and money.
Winter Survival Review Overview
Winter Survival Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Unique Sanity System |
Way Too Hard Performance Issues Climbing Is Wonky |
Winter Survival Overall Score - 60/100
Winter Survival succeeds in providing you with an immersive traumatizing story-driven experience up the snowy and unforgiving mountains. However, its strengths are overshadowed by the overly unforgiving gameplay design that sets you up to fail, making the game feel unplayable. It also suffers from performance issues, but that's to be expected for a game in early access. Shows promise, but overall needs a lot more work and polish to be worth anyone's time and money.
Winter Survival Story - 7/10
The game has a decent story that really makes you wonder what’s going to happen next. However, I didn’t feel attached to the characters, and the backstories could’ve been a little more fleshed out to help with that.
Winter Survival Gameplay - 4/10
Winter Survival is ridiculously tough. There’s a fine line between really challenging and unplayable, and this leans more towards the latter. Almost everything you do will grant you a debuff, and there are so many factors you have to look out for or else you’ll drop dead. It’s one of those games that will make you rage quit instead of wanting to keep trying.
Winter Survival Visuals - 7/10
Winter Survival’s sceneries look great on high graphics. However, I noticed that my frames were really low and unstable, so I turned my graphics settings to medium. The game started running smoother, but I still experienced some FPS drops and other performance issues, even with my mid-tier setup capable of running AAA games at 1080p 60FPS.
Winter Survival Audio - 8/10
Winter Survival isn’t just a survival game, it’s somewhat of a horror game as well. The voice acting is pretty good, and the soundtrack and sound effects do well in making you feel anxious and scared, but not in the supernatural sense where you hear devilish laughs and scary groans. Here, it’s the weather, wildlife, and your sanity that you’d have to worry about, which the game’s audio often likes to highlight.
Winter Survival Value for Money - 4/10
The game will be released on Early Access. It’s a very promising title. However, I do think that it has a long way to go before it’s actually worth anyone’s time and money. With some tweaks to the gameplay and fixes to its performance issues, the game can be good and well worth your money.
Winter Survival Review | Unforgiving and Unplayable
Being stranded high in the mountains with wolves and bears around you, sub-zero weather, and having to look for your own food and water is undoubtedly a very tough scenario to survive through. Winter Survival successfully puts you in that scenario. You play as Danny, an expecting dad and rookie survivalist who went on a hiking trip to the snowy slopes of Mount Washington State Park with his friends Joel and Mike. You’re then attacked by wolves and everything that could possibly go wrong just did.
You’re all separated and now you have to look for the boys. The thing is, you have to survive first, which is ridiculously difficult in this game. You have meters for fatigue, hunger, thirst, and temperature, which you’ll have to closely keep an eye on if you want to survive. You’ll need to rest, eat, hydrate, and keep yourself warm constantly. There’s always a pack of wolves to look out for as well, along with wild boars and bears, all of which will attack you on sight.
If you don’t look out for your health, it’ll take a toll on your sanity. When you rest after experiencing too much trauma, you’ll have to pick a permanent debuff for your character, which takes on the form of hallucinations of animals or inanimate objects appearing in front of you when in reality, there’s nothing there. Pretty soon you’ll be throwing rocks or snowballs at the wolf in front of you to check if it’s actually there to bite your butt off or not. While most survival games get relatively easier as you go on, Winter Survival gets harder since you constantly lose your sanity as time goes on.
There’s a progression system where doing typical survival stuff like getting resources, crafting, and building things, will grant you XP. Leveling up will grant you an adaptation, which makes your character a more capable survivor. Adaptions can include the typical buffs to your survival meters, being able to build more stuff and more.
While I believe that survival games should be tough and unforgiving, this is just way too difficult, even for seasoned survival game veterans. You’ll start out with all your meters, except for rest since you just woke up, almost depleted. You then have three objectives that you need to do—dry your clothes, retrieve your gear, and build a loom. I didn’t have the materials to build a loom, so I dried my clothes first. The thing is, I was really thirsty that my character dropped dead shortly after I finished drying my clothes. That left us with retrieving the gear and hoping that there was still some water in my jug. I made it, but there wasn’t any water left, so I had to look for a puddle or some body of water to drink from. I found one shortly after, but there were wolves around it and I was unarmed.
For the next 2 hours, I died repeatedly to either wolves, the cold, or thirst. If I managed to get past the wolves and drink the water, I’d fall to the cold since I had to skip drying my clothes in the cabin. I also noticed that drinking water got me parasites, and was surprised with how instead of being rewarded, I was punished for finally hydrating my character dying of thirst. The game sets you up for failure. You’re thrown into a wolf-infested mountain with nothing to defend yourself with, depleted resources, and so many quests, all while trying to get the hang of the game first.
The game started off strong with a pretty captivating story. However, it was quickly drowned out by its overwhelming difficulty. Instead of powering through, determined to survive, I was really annoyed with how frequently I died. Moreover, the game suffers from performance issues. My mid-tier PC setup, which can typically run most games on high settings at 60FPS, had trouble running Winter Survival on high settings. When I set it to medium, the game still experienced some FPS drops, even when I had the hardware to supposedly run it smoothly. I was also taught in the tutorial that I could climb short ledges, but whenever I did try to do it out in the open, my character just didn’t do anything.
If Winter Survival somehow fixes the performance issues, tones down the difficulty slightly to make it playable, and overall just polishes the game, then the game might be worth checking out for survival game fans. Luckily, it’s still in early access, and there’s hope that this game will improve.
Pros of Winter Survival
| Things Winter Survival Got Right |
|---|
|
Unique Sanity System |
Unique Sanity System
The sanity system truly is unique and is what sets this game apart from other games of the genre. After all, one’s mental state is just as important as one’s physical state, especially in life-or-death situations. It goes very well with the story, and because you know you’re going insane, you wonder what’s real and what isn’t both in terms of gameplay and the plot developments that occur. The problem is that everything you do will somehow cause trauma, and it’s only a matter of time until you’re totally insane. In my opinion, players should be more capable of preventing insanity with proper self-care.
Cons of Winter Survival
| Things That Winter Survival Can Improve |
|---|
|
Way Too Hard Performance Issues Climbing Is Wonky |
Way Too Hard
Winter Survival is too hard to the point where you feel it’s unfair. It’s super easy to find yourself repeatedly dying of the same things. There’s no way to defend yourself against wolves early on, and you start the game very close to dying regardless of the presence of wildlife. Just one miscalculation will get you killed. The game promises to get harder the farther you get, due to the insanity system. However, it’s already ridiculously hard right from the get-go.
Performance Issues
While the game is in early access, it must be pointed out that it suffers from performance issues. I had trouble running the game on high settings, and still had issues with FPS drops and frozen screens on medium and low settings.
Climbing Is Wonky
The tutorial demonstrates that your character has the ability to climb short platforms, about the height of your character. You didn’t need a rope or ladder to climb these during the tutorial. However, in-game, it seems that there are only a select number of places you could actually climb. A lot of the rock formations, even if it’s not even half your height, can’t be climbed on, which is really frustrating since you were taught a gameplay mechanic that you couldn’t really use. It also spelled out my death multiple times, as I got stuck behind these things that I should’ve been able to get over while being chased by wolves.
Is Winter Survival Worth It?
Not At Its Current State
Winter Survival, although shows promise and potential, needs a lot of adjustments to be worthy of your time and money. It’s way too difficult even on the easy setting and suffers from performance issues. It may be better down the line thanks to its decent story, good graphics, and unique Sanity system, but has a long way to go until it’s actually good, assuming it ever will be.
| Platform | Price |
|---|---|
 Platform Store |
Wishlist Only |
Winter Survival Overview & Premise
You’re a rookie survivalist off to Mount Washington State Park with your friends on a hiking trip away from your pregnant wife. Everything that could go wrong went wrong, and it’s up to you to look for yourself, all while surviving the extreme environment around you where you’re not that high up the food chain.
Winter Survival FAQ
Where to find water in Winter Survival?
There will be bodies of water that you could drink from and wash your clothes scattered all around the map. There’s one close to the dead body in the parachute, but be wary of the wolves that also drink from it.
Which symptom should you choose first?
Perception fatigue should be the one to least affect you negatively among the other symptoms.
Winter Survival Product Information
 |
|
| Title | WINTER SURVIVAL |
|---|---|
| Release Date | March 6, 2024 |
| Developer | DRAGO entertainment |
| Publisher | DRAGO entertainment, HeartBeat Games |
| Supported Platforms | PC |
| Genre | Survival, Adventure |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | RP |
| Official Website | Winter Survival Website |
