Project Winter sounds like an amazing game if someone described it to you.  A group of survivors are in the artic wilderness and must signal for help or face death from various sources.  The problem is that there are a handful of people in the group that are there to simply there for sabotage.  Until help arrives no one can be trusted, not even friends.  The problems start when the ideas are put into practice.

You can watch us play Project Winter from the stream embedded below:

The main fault is there is only one map at time of writing/review.  This means that in a handful of plays it becomes a matter of just running directly to the objectives in a straight line.  It stops being as exciting as the first or second them when there is mystery in what could be behind the next corner, or if it is going to be possible to make it to shelter before the blizzard when it is a known fact where everything is.

The next fault that comes up is the dire lack of player base.  For a game like this to do well it needs a large number of people playing it at all times.  While there are peaks where it is easy to find a match, there are also valleys where it is entirely impossible.  For a multiplayer game the only answer is bots, and that isn’t really a great answer for most people either. 

Then there is the issue of the skill system.  The skills the unlock as when certain milestones are met, as in killing other players so many times with bear traps or crafting so many items.  This might seem all well and good on the outside, but when looked at from someone who lived through the old days of Xbox achievements the problem is instantly clear.  This basically means that there is constantly going to be players on the team that are worthless as they spam one very specific thing over and over again in an attempt to unlock whatever they are going for, making for huge amounts of dead weight when a team is found.

Honestly the game isn’t bad.  When it works it is a ton of fun, and the video linked above will actually show that the first couple of rounds played showed a great time was had.  The problem is that over the course of time the experience has simply run its course, everyone knows what to expect, and it feels more like going through the motions.  The only time that this game might be worth picking up is if there is a Steam sale and you have a bunch of friends that can be roped into playing together at the same time.  Otherwise, you might be looking for a match until then.