Project Winter brings the classic party game (among us) to a bigger map, more defined characters and a whole lot more. Made by Other Ocean Interactive known for various party titles, Project Winter brings Sus to a wintry map.
Project Winter is survival of the fit and smart
When I first got into Project Winter, I was looking forward to getting dirty in the snow and being deceptive with my friends; Yet still be hardworking and trustworthy as a team player.
Gameplay
Project Winter does a good job of taking the fundamentals of among us and expand with more refined gameplay, diverse roles and giving survivors the tools to survive. Social deception is key to survival for the traitors and communication and teamwork is key to the survivors’ goals. Roles are defined for both survivors’ and traitors as follows:
Survivor:
Survivors role is to complete a series of objectives to escape the wilderness and win by calling rescue vehicles.
- Repair Objectives to repair the radio.
- Break rocks and trees and harvest materials from the forest to repair objectives and survive.
- Explore crates around the map to help with objectives and survival.
- Use the radio to call the rescue vehicle.
- Escape with as many survivors as possible to win.
- Always suspect everyone for the traitors and exile suspicious survivors.
Traitor:
The main Goal is to survive while sabotaging and killing the survivors without being noticed.
- Teammates are revealed as red and a traitor symbol and have red radio to communicate between yourselves.
- Get an advantage for finding traitor only crates, giving you traitor points for special sabotage abilities and hatches for travelling the map quickly.
- Traitor points can be used with various objects to sabotage and help with your survival.
- Traps and poisons are your best friend in preventing the survivors from winning
- Blend in and gain the trust of your fellow survivors. Do not reveal early as survivors can defend themselves too.
Teamwork is key to survival with the cold elements of winter, hostile wildlife and if you stray you become easy bait for the traitors. However, survival is also be achieved by communication with radios of the same colour and proximity voice chat. The traitors’ survive by time, the longer they live, the more powerful they become with traitor points and crates. Therefore finding the traitors early is key to surviving the winter. There are a variety of game modes available for shorter games and smaller map sizes for beginners. And also providing a larger map for the more experienced survivor.
Gameplay can be fast paced, although the game can progress slow and feel empty with all the fun sapped out of it.
Graphics & Audio
Project Winter had very little resolution issues outputting the standard Series X|S resolutions. Creating a smooth experience, heightening gameplay to quality levels and provided no stability issues. The colourful customisation and clothing that makes you feel warm, expanding on the realism of the game and making it feel like a hardcore survival game. The graphics itself are very basic, providing enough detail creating the wilderness experience, more real with lookout points providing a different aspect to the game.
However, music is very mellow in game providing more of an ambience experience alongside the elements of the winter landscape. Voice chat, Text chat are key features of the game helping to make decisions and makes teamwork easier. However the Music in-game is very basic offering not much variety.
Longevity
Like Among Us, you can lose yourself in the teamwork and survival for hours, however, it’s not a game you can play entire days at a time. But you can enjoy a few hours of gameplay each day with new scenarios that can be played out every game. Every game can be unique and bring endless sessions of fun with your friends or make new friends online.
Final Thoughts
Project Winter offers a fresh perspective on social deception gaming, adding in the depth of harsh survival, creating difficulty and variation to gameplay. Thus providing may win scenarios for both survivor and traitors’ and opportunities for fun ways to kill and escape. Although providing these new mechanics creates complex gameplay that many may have difficulty adapting. The in-game music is lacking depth to the gameplay and just there as a distraction during quiet moments. However audio is precise for all weapons and tools providing Project Winter with the realism in survival it tries to provide.
Therefore, I would like to give Project Winter a Thumb Culture Gold Award.
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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