A hike with friends in Mount Washington State Park in the American state of New Hampshire is featured in the First-person survival game Winter Survival into a real nightmare. At the same time, this is the starting point for a feast for survival genre fans. Developer studio DRAGO entertainment and publishers Movie Games S.A. and HeartBeat Games also call their game Winter Survival Simulation in some press presentations and this can be taken seriously.
Not only are players left alone in a barren environment after an accident during the hike and without any supplies worth mentioning, they are also faced with no weapons available. Unlike in many other survival games, it will therefore not be possible to create a One-man army and to solve any problems with violence.
There is no combat in Winter Survival, only survival
Instead, players must find a way to avoid encounters with wild animals in order to survive. But it's not just wolves and bears that can be dangerous. The freezing cold and crippling hunger quickly become a physical and psychological burden. This means players need to find shelter and supplies. The "good" news is that the nameless protagonist is not the first person to be involved in this inhospitable place has to find its way around. A shelter therefore does not necessarily have to be self-built, but can already be found halfway usable.
Players will also be able to pick up abandoned Animal traps from hunters that once roamed the area years ago. This allows smaller animals to be caught and a shelter to be better protected from attacks by predators. To ensure that exploring the game world is not too easy, however, the developers have also built in a weather mechanic that causes sudden snowstorms, excessive snowfall and icy winds. The weather can therefore strike just as relentlessly and suddenly as a pack of wolves.
Save yourself or lose your mind
The harder it is for the players to survive, the more difficult it will be for them, Reality and hallucination from each other. This is ensured by a game element dubbed the "reason mechanic" by the developer. However, the Polish studio behind Winter Survival has not yet revealed how exactly and to what extent this will manifest itself during the actual gameplay.
In any case permanent survival in the mountains is not planned. Rather, the aim is to collect enough supplies to make a trip to an old ranger station on a hill. From there, players can call for help and ultimately be rescued. Whoever manages this can then justifiably call themselves Survivalist name.