We’ve got a lot of extraction shooter aficionados at PC Gamer, but I’ve never really been able to find one to float my boat. Then I got to check out The Forever Winter, an ambitious, improbably gloomy PvE extraction romp with heavy survival vibes and a penchant for ruthlessly murdering players—and it turned out that was exactly what I was looking for.
It hit early access yesterday, and I managed to survive a few scavenging hunts last night. I love it, but like a lot of multiplayer early access ventures, it’s still got plenty of kinks to work out. It’s sitting at a Mixed rating on Steam at the moment, largely because of performance issues. I’ve not actually had to deal with any myself, but I’m also running it on a pretty beefy rig with an RTX 4090 and an Intel i9-13900k.
One particular mechanic has also proven to be divisive, which doesn’t surprise me. A bit of background first: The Forever War is set during an apocalyptic conflict between two heavily mechanised factions who’ve ruined the world by throwing cyborgs and mechs at each other. Players are not super soldiers or mechwarriors, though, instead being mere scavengers trying to survive in Hell. Missions, then, revolve around you scurrying across battlefields, looting, and trying not to get spotted by a building-sized death machine or a squad of troops.
Loot can range from booze and packs of smokes to tech that can be sold for a premium back at your hideout, netting you cash that you can spend on weapons, upgrades and consumables—almost all of which you’ll lose if you die while carrying them on a mission. Unless you manage to return to the site of your death, anyway. You always get one chance to get everything back.
Arguably the most precious commodity you’ll find out in the warzone, though, is water. H2O keeps your hideout running, and you need enough water for a specific number of days to access some of your facilities. Where this gets really punishing, though, is water runs out in real-time.When you run out completely, you lose all of the upgrades you’ve applied to your hideout, as well as everything you’ve gathered on your excursions. All that’s left is your character and their XP.
The mechanic has faced quite a bit of criticism on the Steam forums so far, though it also has a bunch of defenders. I’m kinda split. I think the ruthlessness is a bold move, and in keeping with the tone of the game, but it can already be tough for people to fit multiplayer games around their lives, and when you need to worry about having enough digital water for your fictional hideout before you go on holiday for a fortnight, it all starts to sound a bit much. That said, it isn’t too tough to get a decent surplus, since water tends to spawn in specific parts of the maps, so you always have access to more.
Still, that’s what early access is all about: getting plenty of feedback. And players are offering lots of it. Another issue that understandably has them frustrated is the challenge of finding anyone to play with. I’m in the same boat. Quick play just doesn’t work, and I’ve been unable to join any open squads. Design director Jeff Gregg has addressed this, at least, and a hotfix is on its way.
Even playing solo, though, I’m genuinely having a blast. During one of last night’s scavenger hunts, I hid behind a wall as a group of soldiers managed to take out a heavily-armed mech, leaving its burning remains behind for me to loot. I managed to net myself some advanced weapons tech, but that turned out to be a problem rather than a prize. I’d stolen precious loot, not random junk, which meant that the faction it belonged to was alerted to the theft, immediately sending hunter-killers after me. Naturally, I legged it to the extraction point, only managing to outrun the pursuing cyborgs by dragging them into a conflict with another horde. Mechs literally started dropping from the sky, a couple of tanks showed up, and as I turned around right before extracting, I saw this big bastard bearing down on me.
It’s a very good time.
