Impact Winter
The Winter of our discontent
Developer Mojo Bones publisher Bandai naMco price $ 19.99 AvAilAble At steaM impact-winter.com/en
There is a good game at the heart of Impact Winter, a survival adventure game that sees players trying to find other survivors and live until rescue arrives after an asteroid strikes the Earth and leaves it in a state of permanent winter. Unfortunately this chewy nougat centre is coated in a layer of strange decisions so thick that the goodness has a hard time shining through. The problems start with the menu screen if you’re a keyboard and mouse user. There are no mouse controls, and the key for starting the game is E, and unless you got a special PR boxed copy, you’ve no way to find that out other than through trial and error. Once you get into the game, the mouse stays absent and half of the on-screen prompts give a controller input rather than anything to do with the default PC control scheme. Half of the prompts are for PC controls even when you use a controller - how can a developer manage to screw up on screen prompts for both schemes?
It’s strange that such a fundamental misstep made it through the design process, given that UK developer Mojo Bones has experience making games and Namco Bandai is the publisher and distributor of the game. It’s doubly strange given how solid the concept and execution of the rest of the game is. Players take the role of Jacob, the leader of a group of survivors. Jacob is a Jack of all trades in charge of a group of specialists. Christophe is a tech guru, Wendy is a cook, Blane is a survival expert and Maggie is a mechanic. Each of these skills is essential for survival. Wendy helps you craft nourishing meals and if you
There are no mouse controls and the key for starting the game is E
can find the right ingredients, create meals that keep up the team’s morale. Maggie can craft more efficient resources and upgrade the church that serves as your shelter. Blane can craft traps to hunt game. Christophe can help upgrade Ako-Light, a flying robot drone that is essential for completing missions within the game. Your ultimate job is to keep this group alive for 30 days. That’s when rescue is meant to arrive.
Rationing food, hunting, finding supplies and the like play a core component in Impact Winter, but it’s not the be all and end all of gameplay. There is a good degree of resource management and This War of Mine style survival decision making, but on top of that there is an RPG like layer that sees Jacob exploring and finishing quests to reduce the amount of time it takes for your rescuers to arrive. Some of these quests are given by the survivors in the base and others are given by characters or events encountered in the world.
Impact Winter is a good game but in its current state it’s essentially broken. The keyboard controls are awful and the controller doesn’t fare a great deal better with some bizarre input lag. Mojo Bones is currently working on a patch to fix, or at least improve the controls. It may be out by the time you read this review. Check the Steam page. If the controls are fixed, give it a shot. TAVISH FORREST