IMPACT WINTER

Chill survival leaves us cold

Leading your group to survival in the apocalyptic winter wonderland of Impact Winter is an arduous task. Sure, you wouldn’t expect an end-of-days scenario to be a cakewalk, but Jacob and his fellow survivors actively seem to be avoiding holding out. He’s unable to make crucial notations on the harsh environment, and quest-line details are never stored anywhere, lost to the void.

Instead they rely on Ako-Light, a robot they found which is broadcasting a rescue signal, and will call for help in 30 days – you’ve got to get by till then. You can level it up to reduce the timer by a few hours at a time, but you’ll probably not reduce it much below the maximum 12 or so hours the timer would usually take. 1 You’ll be spending most of that time running back and forth between your church and scavenger sites, trudging through samey snowscapes. Equipped with upgradable tools that drain its battery, Ako-Light can help you with a flashlight, drill, a radar, and more. But we’d trade it all in for Jacob to just pick up a notebook and pen and take some helpful notes instead.

Graphically, though, the game is lovely. The snowy tundras crunch underfoot, and there’s a haunting, eerie quality to the halfburied ruins you explore for items. It’s all punctuated by a fantastic John Carpenteresque electronic synth score that throws us back to old disaster movies. 2

There is a moreish quality to searching through cabinet after cabinet , and some elation to be felt upon finally finding that one rubber hose you really need. But ultimately it’s a sparse game that leaves us quite cold. Oscar Taylor-Kent

FOOTNOTES1 After you upgrade to a certain point of almost self-sufficiency, you can just play the waiting game anyway. 2 Escape From LA is the best John Carpenter movie. [ Really? – ed.]