Water way to respond
When nightmarish sci-fi extraction shooterThe Forever Winterlaunched into early access in September it wassomewhat messy.
Bugs and maddening enemy spawns diminished the tension of being a fleshy human scavenger in a mech battlefield.
But one feature annoyed some players much more - fresh water.
The catch being that this water diminishes even while you’re not playing the game.
If it runs out completely, then everything you’ve collected gets wiped.
Now, on top of the usual downward trickle, burglars will come to steal your H2O as well.
It’s not as bad as it sounds.
Fail to kill the home invaders and you’ll suffer the usual consequences.
Hopefully that means the enemies won’t act quite as unpredictably as I’ve previously witnessed.
I just feel it’s the least of the game’s design difficulties.
Maybe picking up items should be less fiddly first?
Maybe enemy sightlines should be more reliably knowable?
Maybe tanks shouldn’tfly into orbit?
There are a lot of things that make the moment-to-moment antics in these captivating death zones feel janky.
Taken altogether, I’d say that’s a bigger issue than one dwindling resource.
It only has one map to enlootify - theAshenMesa.
It’s one of the better battle zones of the game from what I’ve played.
But it’s possible for you to also see what the player headquarters looks like.
All my quibbles with the game’s rough state aside, it has some very good-looking environments.
It’s worth playing the demo just to indulge in a bit of mech war tourism.
If you find any water, let me know.
I won’t steal it.
