I have not replayed in a while so i may not have credibility but ever since i bought the game for $0.98ish cents i have enjoyed it. Enternal Winter may not have the Long Dark's content but they are constantly updating. When I left there was lack lustre content, broken dogs, and my sled glitched through the ice when i got out of it (I RAGED quite a bit), and there was no loot or very little loot. Now that im back I find that i can finally recommend it. The Devs have been active and they have not shown any symptoms to EAGA(Early Access Game Abandonment).
P.S Hey devs if you read this can I be put into a village as a dead dude. thanks

There is no escaping comparison with The Long Dark because of the superficially similar theme.

Cards on the table, if I had a gun to my head and had to choose one or the other then it would have to be The Long Dark at this point as I've plowed hours into that.

HOWEVER, and it's a BIG however, that would be denying yourself a seemingly great game in Eternal Winter and the two are suitably different to justify purchasing both if you (like me) enjoy the general theme.

You have more than one RPG, FPS or puzzle etc in your gaming collection so why not ?

I've not played that much of this so far so forgive me for nailing my colours to the mast early but I am really liking the development progress. Especially after the last significant update.

I bought it ages ago and keep dipping in to check on progress.

A lot has changed for the better and the world is now much more 'fleshed out'.

I'm going to make this my next proper evening gaming experience and will update with what I find more categorically thereafter but so far this appears to be money well spent and given some of the early access cons I've fallen for, this is definitely NOT one of those.

It's on sale (30/7/16) at the moment and is frankly quite stupidly cheap for a game of this quallity... so.... mush....

Not bad for an early access $5 game.
Cons (which should be easily fixed with development):
-Needs more instructions/tutorial. The hints from the vilagers are good.
-I will eventualy get tired of the one map, hope there is a plan for more maps / randomness to be added.
-Hope the hardcore co-op will be fixed soon (one dies, the game is over!)
- Blobby graphics and lack of animations

Pros:
Good performance
Vilage management combined with 1st person survival, great idea!
Devs that appear to update.

Overall : Lots of potential!

Love it. The art style is WONDERFUL. The music is awesome. Lacks content BUT its early access so I hope that will get fixed in the future. Im enjoying this SO much with my friends. I highly recommend it to anyone reading this. THANK YOU DEVELOPER.

I like it :3

Enjoyed the little journey with my dogs. Unfortunately we couldn't find any content. So we had to leave.

Absolutely AWFUL optimization, I had less than 25 FPS with an GTX 660 and a FX-6200 which should be perfectly capable of running a game like this.

Refunding

Be wary of some of these reviews, especially the negative ones - for some reason people think that they can play this game for 35mins and 'see' everything that it has to offer.

Overall Impressions:
It's a Zen-like survival game, without zombies. Finally. Or 13yo camp-snipers. Those two aspects alone are reason enough to buy it. It's permadeath, for you, and your dogs, and you are the village 'champion' - if they run out of supplies, they can die, and you lose. GG. Game over.

I say 'zen-like', because of the pacing of the game, I'd like to say that things happen slowly, but it's more like there are interesting things to do, interspersed with time spent admiring the scenery as you look for the next area to loot. Also, you learn that you can choose your engagements - animals (prey and predator) have an invisible circle around them - stay out of it, and you can leave each-other alone. (however, they are also meant to be your main source of food, so it's a matter of choosing the engagements that you want to).

Overall, its a very enjoyable experience, just being out there, just you and your dogs, exploring new stuff, finding lighthouses and windfarms and all kinds of interesting Landmarks. It's the overall 'feel' of the game that will bring me back again.

Graphics:
Simple, clean, beautiful (especially with the dawn/sunrise updates)
Foxes look too much like wolves from medium distances.
game seems to need optimisation - for the tiny amount of what's going on in the game, it seems to draw a LOT of GPU cycles
many models feel too simplistic - mostly the people and their animations. Especially the 'dead' ones you come across - they look wonky. But it's not a deal breaker, and it's EA, so we shall see.
You can turn the render distance of trees down, and that helps a lot.

Combat:
Jumping off the sled, pulling a weapon, and releasing a dog is difficult to do, especially inside the small-ish detection radius of predators. without a little planning, that will get you (or your dogs) killed.
Bullet travel and drop are a thing, but difficult to judge as you can't really see their path once they leave your weapon.
No auto heal and med supplies are finite in the world (for now)
Your dogs have to be set to the right mode: attack for prey and Defend for predators, else they will ignore them completely and won't even defend themselves.

Survival.
As I said earlier, it has a slower pacing, feels more focussed on exploring the map and scavenging than on getting into fights - but that makes fights more immersive, as you do them because you have to to survive - for food for your village, rather than because some zombie wants a Bloody Mary for breakfast, or a Wolf decides it want to set your base on fire :dshound: . That one aspect changes this into a true survival game, as opposed to the survival/horror genre we have become so used to. there is a day/night cycle, and sleep is a thing, But the only reason to sleep in this game is that is how you update your save-point. There are no other benefits ATM. Also, remember to pick up your bedding before you go, or you won't be able to camp/sleep int he wilderness until you find it again.

Sound;
pretty good, adds to the ambience. There are a few moments in the sound track which are out-of-place, but these have been brought to the dev's attention, and they have said it will be fixed (children laughing at the end of one of the tracks - it's the creepiest thing you can imagine when you're supposed to be out there alone...)
You can turn off the start/stop whistle sound, Whew. I'm thankful for that one.

Bugs/crashes/EA issues
It has a couple of bugs, the most consistent one is that if you let your dog off, whilst on ice, he falls through it, and cannot reattach to the sled, meaning you cannot move the sled, creating a catch-22 that ends your run.
Important items, critical to your survival are finite you can run out of stuff you need to survive. eg. You need matches to cook food. there are only 103 matches on the entire map. I know, I searched it (and made a map, too)
Medkits, bandages (to stop bleed out), bullets and bolts... all finite.
The compass isn't useful enough - if you set a new waypoint, you will not be able to find home base again (unless you made a map...) And it doesn't show NSEW.

I felt it was due time for me to update my review of this game, which I'm growing fond of.
Unfortunately, I still haven't had a lot of time to play it as much as I'd have liked, with university exams and all, however, I feel able to produce a somewhat more developed review.

This game is as zen as zen can be. That's the best I will ever be able to describe this game.
The developer, a one man crew, is planning to release the game with a single player mode, as well as a 4 co-op player mode. Either way, the maps are so big, I'm pretty sure you'll have a hard time finding anyone anywhere! This leaves you with four best friends, your dogs. Your dogs will live and die for you, and you will live for them, and die without them.
Eternal Winter is a survival game where you've to make sure you survive, but you also have to make sure your dogs survive, or else you can be damn sure you'll be the next in line.

Graphics wise, the game is very cartoonish, but the movement are very fluid. There's a possible tweak here and there, but not even close to being a game breaker.

The soundtrack will make you feel isolated, with only your four best friends around, and no one else in the whole wide world.

To resume all of the above, Eternal Winter is a great game, and an even greater one when considering the one man team, which keeps pumping out updates, and good updates I must say (/points to the dogs coming out of the sled to help hunt).
You'll either love, or like this game, there's no hating, unless you've serious problems, or simply don't like survival games. There are no zombies, there are no sharks and there is also no one else around (at least for now), but you'll never feel alone.

My previous review can be viewed on the spoiler tag.

I'll try to keep it simple, as I know I can't be as funny and original as most, if not all, as the other
reviewers.

So, here it is.

I adore this game. I wish I had more time to play it.

Eternal Winter is a first person open world survival game. Set in a harsh winter environment, survive and take care of both yourself and your huskies, and mine goes by the names of John Wick, John Madden, John Doe, and John Snow. *happy face*

Now, it's going to be said, as I said it too, "it looks like The Long Dark", so let's talk about that.
Both share similar art style, but one is using cel-shading and a cartoon direction, that being TLD, and the other is using a simpler style with a focus on shades and shadows on its objects. Both are set in the same setting, a harsh winter environment, but EW is more open in it's world compared to the narrow structure of TLD. Both are survival games, but EW is more simple in its approach with more easy and fluid controller system in comparison to how more feature focused, more hard and complex TLD's gameplay system is.

I can keep this going for a while, but to rap it up, Eternal Winter and The Long Dark are very similar to each other, but also very different with their approach and structure of the games.

The game itself looks nice with its simple shaded graphics, but obviously it still need much work. I like it's simplicity, it's graphic style, and it's openness, but I don't like how it feels bland, and how there isn't much to do in it yet. There isn't much 'things' to do or look at in the game, just going from one point to another to check for supplies for your and huskies survival.

I want to see stuff that will make the game more lively, more interesting to explore in, like adding more creatures to the game, and not necessarily hostile like birds, rabbits, bears that attack once attacked, and other environmental structures like a rabbit hole, or a cave, maybe a fairly big lake that's iced where you can cut a hole and start fishing, with mountains surrounding the area.

Also the building in the game, while i do enjoy how they're open with no loading in them, they all feel like cheap plastic, even that not run down ones feel hollow, it doesn't look like a place where any one would live or take shelter in. I hope it's made more closed, more texture and details in it, I want it to feel more closed in and not so open that i can see everything in it from 20 meters away. Doors and windows won't hurt too. I hope they add music soon by the way, from the trailer it sounds nice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRFQKlm2Hxw

It looks like I'm bashing on the game, but I'm just giving my honest opinion, giving feedback to make the game as awesome as it can be, and doing this conveniently while it's still really early in development. I like the game, and I don't have an issue with the price for what you get in the game, aside from being extremely plain at the moment, I'm keeping myself neutral on whether or not to get the game. If you want to give feedback and see the game flourish, then by all means get it, if not and want a good experience then wait until beta/release, like with all in development games.

Shameless link to original post.