Project Winter

At a glance, Project Winter is reminiscent of The Long Dark, but surviving its low-poly snow fields is only half the battle. At the beginning of a game, two of the eight players are designated as traitors. They each know who the other traitor is, and are tasked with preventing the group from escaping. The non-traitors must suss them out before being shot in the back.

It's a fun-sounding idea, though a tough design challenge. Playing the similar party game Mafia (or Werewolf) is always a good time, but I've never been all that attracted to digital versions of the game, because lying directly to your friends' faces is where the fun's at. In that respect, Project Winter provides multiple communication avenues: "proximity-based voice chat, private voice chat radio channels, text chat, and emotes."

A lot of Project Winter's success will hinge on the effectiveness of those tools and the quality of the playerbase. It's a game that's easy to ruin, since it relies on everyone committing to acting.

Right now, reviews are mixed on the Early Access version, but it seems like many of the complaints are simply that there aren't enough players in the game, not that Project Winter fails in its execution, which is promising.

Recent reviews are more positive. When Project Winter releases in 1.0 form on May 23, maybe it'll get a little boost in player count. We'll plan to check it out then to see how it's come along since its Early Access launch.

Apr 17, 2019
Project Winter - Dibby


Happy Easter, Everyone!

To celebrate this Holiday, we're launching a special Easter event starting now and ending on April 30th.

Holiday Special features:
- An Easter Holiday crate, available during the event's duration only. This crate contains new items added specially for Easter.
- A brand new progression tree for players to unlock new items by completing specific objectives in the game. The tree is only available during the Easter event, but any items unlocked during this period will remain available for purchase.

General features:
- Global events are now randomized!
- General bug and stability fixes implemented.

We hope you enjoy!
Project Winter - Other Ocean


The fourth content update is now live! This update includes a feature we’re really excited about: Swapping clothes with a dead player! Players will now be able to change their appearance to disguise themselves as another player who has died. You’ll have to use your powers of deduction to figure out the truth. The rest of the content update includes:

Swapping Clothes
  • When a player interacts with a corpse they will now have the option to swap clothing.
  • Swapping clothes will only exchange the clothing and hair. Body type will not switch.
  • After swapping clothes the player will switch names with the corpse, and the players role will be re-concealed to any player that used a truth serum on them.

New Global Event
  • We’ve added a new global event, it will last for a short duration and will affect all players in game.

More bonus objectives
  • 21 new bonus objectives have been added. Don’t forget to check the cabin map to claim one!

Animal AI improvements
Animals now have collision.
Wolf AI improvements.


We’ve also fixed a few bugs! Please check out the entire build notes below:

  • Added swapping clothes with dead players
    • A corpse will now have the option to swap clothing when interacted with.
    • Swapping clothes will only swap the clothing and the hair, not the body type
    • After swapping clothes the player will switch names with the corpse
    • Roles will be re-concealed to any player that used a truth serum on them after swapping clothes

  • New Global Event!
    • Global events UI now works slightly differently for all events: warning notification displays a generic message and timer which counts down to the event starting, after which an event-specific icon is shown for the duration

  • Bonus objective additions & changes
    • 16 new survivor objectives added
    • 5 new traitor objectives added
    • Reward adjustments for existing objectives

  • Animal AI Improvements
    • Players can no longer walk through animals and will be pushed out of the way.
    • All wolves in a group will respond with aggression to the attacker.
    • WHen a wolf is aggressively chasing a target, the wolf will choose a new target if another player is closer than its original target

  • Added new shortcuts for inventory management
  • Players can now leave the escape vehicle after initiating takeoff
  • Fixed issue where game over could trigger while survivors are still alive
  • Fixed issue where escape pod was occasionally not interactable after it landed
  • Fixed various controller UI bugs
  • Improved aiming with controller
  • Fixed collisions with items that players are holding
  • Fixed issue where respawning resources would push players
  • Fixed various lobby UI bugs
  • Players should be unable to drop items while in an escape vehicle
  • Pressing esc while in a lobby should prompt to exit the lobby
  • Players should receive points for people who leave the game after escaping
  • Credits should end as soon as they are finished scrolling
  • The cursor lock setting should be set to true whenever the game is switched to fullscreen mode
  • Stat boost popup should be accurate
  • Bear trap hold time increased from 3 seconds to 6 seconds
  • Bear trap damage reduced from 350 to 100
  • Power Station repair costs adjusted to 15/3/3
  • Increased time between exile voting from 30 seconds to 60 seconds
  • Bolt action crafting cost reduced from 3 to 2
  • Semi auto rifle crafting cost increased from 2 to 3
  • Added 8 regular crates inside of truth serum laboratory
  • Removed initial cooldown on truth serum laboratory
  • “You Go First” achievement can no longer be unlocked by taking the escape pod
  • Animations for players on MVP screen will no longer be perfectly synced

Contest news! We have ranked all the traitor clips you guys have sent in and will be releasing the montage of the top 5 traitor clips tomorrow, Friday April 12th. We’d like to thank everyone who participated, make sure to check out the highlights to see some awesome betrayals!

Check out our discord (www.discord.gg/projectwinter) for more updates, contests, sneak peaks, and to become a part of our amazing community!

- The Project Winter team
Project Winter - Other Ocean


The third content update is now live and it is filled with goodies! This update includes the new Truth Serum! The Truth Serum is used to reveal another player’s role as either a traitor or survivor, so use it wisely. Players will have to work together to unlock the professor's lab to get the serum inside. A second serum will be available after a certain amount of time, so you’ll have another chance to catch the traitor!

Power Station:
In place of the objective locator we have now added a new objective system! The power station can be found on the main tile of the map; once found, players will need to work together to repair the power station which will restore power to the grid. Once restored players can then move on to the escape vehicle and repair that to escape.
With the power station addition, we have also done an Objective UI overhaul to help with first-time user experience and clarity.

Truth Serum:
The Truth Serum is finally here! The serum can be found in the professor's lab; find the lab and work together to activate the consoles to gain access to the serum. The Truth Serum is used to reveal a player’s true role as either a Survivor or Traitor. The Lab can only be unlocked after the first 10 minutes of the game has passed. There are two truth serums per game with the second serum becoming active 5 minutes after the lab is opened.

Survivor Airdrop:
An emergency airdrop for the survivors! This airdrop will spawn when there are 2 survivors left in a game with 7-8 players, or will spawn when there is 1 player left in games of 5-6 players. The survivor airdrop will have repair supplies, survival supplies, and guns to help out the remaining survivors.

Drunk Effect:
If you drink too much Vodka in game, you’ll get drunk! We encourage you to try this out for yourself to see what the effect is.

Ghost Mode Overhaul Part 1:
We’ve added some changes to the Ghost mode to make being dead more enjoyable! Ghosts are now able to teleport between living players, and can also see any traps that are placed. Ghosts can also now switch between radios to hear the remaining player’s conversations. Collisions have also been tweaked for ghost mode. Stay tuned for Ghost Mode Part 2!

Game End prompt:
A prompt will now tell players when they die, the game ends, etc.

As always we also have a list of bugs that we have fixed! Please see the full build notes list below for more details.

  • Ability to teleport to other players when in ghost mode
    • Ability to teleport has a cooldown, HUD will let the players know when they can or cannot teleport
    • When a player is inside a structure they can't teleport
    • Ghosts will now have visibility of all traps
    • Ghosts can now swap between radio channels with the tab key to listen in (but not talk) to living players
  • Implementation of Power Station & changes to objectives
    • First objective is now always near the cabin
    • The cabin map now displays indicators for the objective locations
    • Objective locator has been removed
    • Objectives UI text is now identical for survivors and traitors
    • Exiling will now also prevent access to the first objective
    • First objective can be sabotaged 3 times, which will require survivors to gather more resources in order to repair (with the items needed for repair decreasing for subsequent sabotages)
    • The “activate beacon” contextual action is no longer available on the first objective
    • The “objective sabotaged” banner notification will no longer appear when a repaired survivor objective is sabotaged
    • Traitors will no longer have indicators on the edge of the screen pointing towards repaired objectives (unless the “activate beacon” action is used by a survivor on the second objective, in which case traitors will have an indicator pointing to the second objective)
  • Truth Serum implemented
    • Truth serum laboratory now spawns near the cabin
    • Lab becomes active after 10 minutes into a game
    • Consoles to open lab are spread far apart, all must be used at the same time to open the lab
    • Truth Serum item can be obtained from two crates in the lab, the first one is available when the lab is opened
    • A second truth serum crate becomes available inside the lab 5 minutes after the lab is opened
    • Timeline event listing the player who used the truth serum and the player who it was used on (and their respective roles)
  • Survivor Airdrop added
    • Survivors will receive an airdrop when there are very few of them left alive and enough time has passed in the round
  • Proximity Chat voice range decreased
  • Added game over message which indicates what condition triggered the game ending (all survivors escaped, all survivors died, or last escape departed) prior to the results screen appearing
  • Added drunk effect to vodka item, which blurs the screen and slightly offsets the player's movement direction by either 30 or -30 degrees every time vodka is consumed. This lasts for 10 seconds. Note that drinking while a previous effect is ongoing does not re-randomize the effect but rather extends the existing effect.
  • “Best” region in the lobby will now display the actual region the player is being connected to, ex. “Best [USA East]”
  • New cosmetic items added to reward drops
  • Localization updates
  • Added warning popup for post-processing setting change
  • Added first-time user popup for the cabin map the first time the user walks up to it
  • Added button sounds to the settings menu in a few places where they were missing
  • Fixed controller UI support and added extra support
  • Fixed "Click and Drag" Japanese text going off screen
  • Meat item should not instantly create blood puddles when swapped to
  • Downed survivors at the end of the match should now count as traitor kills
  • Energy drink tooltips should now display the correct values
  • Changed traitor contextual options to the new white credit icon where applicable
  • Cabin radio can no longer be sabotaged
  • Fixed issue where landmines wouldn't deal the correct amount of damage to the player that stepped on it
  • Fixed vanishing animals
  • Mouse prompt near cabin should now appear on top of the tree it's meant for
  • Adjusted position of campfire refuel prompt so that it no longer overlaps fire duration meter
  • Healing items should no longer heal stats of players when thrown at them
  • Join Game tooltip explaining why a lobby can't be joined should now only appear when the lobby is in fact unable to be joined
  • New flag viewpoints should show more of the world and follow the players rotation only when you enter them.
  • New aiming icon added making it easier to see on controller
  • Added a shine effect and bouncing animation on MVP screen
  • Changed recycle text to 'Choose items to recycle'
  • Changed ESC position from center to top left on crafting/cooking stations
  • Changed all survivor icons to the correct diamond logo
  • Traitor should no longer be prompted to sabotage a fulton that's already been sabotaged
  • Cursor lock should work on the main menu
  • Hitting ESC on the main menu will now bring up the quit prompt rather than the settings screen
  • Ghosts can no longer die by falling off a sabotaged bridge (they will be teleported back to the cabin)
  • Fix cases where player status could be listed as “none” on the results screen


Important contest news! We will be having a Traitor Highlights contest this weekend, to enter all you need to do is send in your funniest/best clips of betrayal to the #clips channel on Discord. The contest will run from NOW until April 1st 11:59 PM EST. We will be accepting only three clips from each participant, so make sure you send in only the best. We will not be accepting videos that exceed 30 seconds, and the clips need to be from the latest version of the game (so during the weekend of the contest). The top 5 traitor highlight clips will be featured in a video uploaded by the Project Winter team and all content creators will be credited. All participants who are chosen in the top 5 will receive 20,000 survivor points, with 40,000 awarded for the #1 clip. This contest will replace the MVP contest for now, we will update you on future contest news after the conclusion of this one.

Our next content update is scheduled for April 11th, our main focus is:
  • Holiday Progression and Crates
  • Swapping Clothes with Dead Players
  • A new Global Event
  • New Bonus objectives
  • A new Objective type with Animals
  • Animal AI Improvements
  • Steam Item Store Updates
That’s everything for this update! Don’t forget to join our discord (http://discord.gg/projectwinter) to stay up to date on anything that is happening, contests, and the occasional sneak peak of things to come!

- Your friendly Neighbourhood Project Winter Team
Mar 22, 2019
Project Winter - Other Ocean


It's that time again! The weekly MVP competition is live! Join our Discord [http://discord.gg/projectwinter] to participate. For the next 24 hours we will be accepting your best MVP scores in the #clips channel. Take a screenshot of your best scores and post it there, the highest single MVP score after the 24 hours will be crowned MVP of the week. This week we are accepting scores from both survivors and traitors, so you will have a chance to compete no matter what! The winner will receive 35,000 survivor points! So hop in, post your scores and good luck!
Mar 15, 2019
Project Winter - Other Ocean


We are back with another round of our weekly MVP challenge! Join our Discord [http://discord.gg/projectwinter] to participate. For the next 24 hours we will be accepting your best MVP scores in the #clips channel. Take a screenshot of your best scores and post it there, the highest single MVP score after the 24 hours will be crowned MVP of the week. This week we are accepting scores from both survivors and traitors, so you will have a chance to compete no matter what! The winner will receive 35,000 survivor points! So hop in, post your scores and good luck!
Project Winter - Other Ocean


Our second content update is now live! We’ve been working really hard to ensure we get new content out to you survivors and traitors as quickly as possible, so we are pleased to announce we will be pushing new content every 2 weeks from now until 1.0! In the meantime, please check out the notes for this weeks content update.

Console Overload:
  • Traitors now have the option to overload a console instead of just helping the survivors use them. Once the consoles are overloaded they will emit a smoke PFX, and can’t be used for 90 seconds. All of the connected consoles will smoke so the traitor can’t be immediately outed.

Hot Spring Overhaul:
  • We’ve completely overhauled the hot springs for both Survivors AND Traitors! Hop in to find out what it does ;)

Animal Guardians:
  • Wolves will now sometimes guard the second objective!

Stat Boost Items:
  • Stat Boosts are now in the form of energy drinks and are found in traitor crates. There are three types of Energy Drinks: Weak Energy Drink, Energy Drink, and Strong Energy Drink. Energy Drinks also have a low chance of spawning inside of crates for Survivors, so you can’t be outed as a traitor just because you have one.

Traps and land mine tweaks:
  • Traitors are now able to see where each other have laid bear traps or landmines.

Portuguese added


In addition to all this new content we have fixed some bugs the community have been experiencing, along with some small tweaks to improve gameplay.

Bug Fixes:
  • Added extra checks to the "What's in the Box" achievement to prevent it from unlocking incorrectly
  • Fixed issue where escaping while exiled would result in the player being locked in the cabin as a ghost
  • Fixed issue where only the first global exile event would take effect
  • Removed player icon from the gameover results screen
  • Changed ALT to L ALT for clarification
  • Rebalanced hunger system to work the same as it currently does now except with a value of 500 instead of 1000
  • Player's max hunger cap reduced from 1000 to 500
  • Player's hunger depletion rate reduced from 1.65 to 0.825
  • Cabin stats volume hunger value reduced from 1.64 to 0.725
  • Amount of health given by raw berries reduced from 75 to 50
  • Amount of health lost by eating raw human meat reduced from 50 to 25"
  • Fixed framerate issues for lobby snowball fight
  • Updated Photon networking plugin to latest version
  • Added pain and death vocalizations for players
  • Added contextual action animations for using the traitor transporter and airdrop abilities
  • Fixed issue where player would drop equipped item when closing containers using the B/Square button on a controller
  • Fixed issue where active beacon indicator position would not update when a player died and moved around as a ghost
  • Fixed issue where camera would continue to shake after being killed by animals
  • Fixed issue where key mapping would reset every time the game was launched
  • Fixed issue where text chat would spill out of the input field causing it to overlap with other text
  • Fixed issue where the second objective timer would keep counting down even after being completed which would cause the second traitor drop to occur
  • Made it so music and sfx sliders could go to zero
  • Added setting to toggle mouse cursor lock and made it so setting would remain active after display modes were switched
  • Made it so on the main menu, ESC key now brings up the exit game prompt and doesn't interfere with other menus when pressed
  • Fixed issue with alt-tab after switching between fullscreen and borderless window
  • Animal pathfinding improvements
  • Set the 6 player game modifiers 'max coop terminal limit' from 2 to 3
  • Decreased blizzard warm-up time from 75 seconds to 45 seconds
  • Increased blizzard time from 45 seconds to 75 seconds



We are running a new MVP of the week contest starting this week on every Friday. Compete with others to get the highest MVP score within 24hrs to win. The highest score will win 35,000 Survivor Points! Check the discord for more information.


Our next content update is scheduled for March 28th, our main focus is:
  • New repair flow for objectives
  • Truth Serum
  • Drunk effect (From drinking Vodka!)
  • A Survivor Airdrop
  • Ghost mode overhaul part 1
  • Game end Transition

That’s all for this update! Don’t forget to join our discord (http://discord.gg/projectwinter) to stay up to date on anything that is happening, participate in the MVP contests, and maybe get some sneak peeks from time to time!

Happy deceiving!
The Project Winter Team
Mar 8, 2019
Project Winter - Dibby
We are back with another round of our weekly MVP challenge! Join our Discord to participate. For the next 24 hours we will be accepting your best MVP scores in the #clips channel. Take a screenshot of your best scores and post it there, the highest single MVP score after the 24 hours will be crowned MVP of the week. This week we are accepting scores from both survivors and traitors, so you will have a chance to compete no matter what! As usual, the prizes for the winner are a FREE copy of the game to give to a friend and 20,000 survivor points! This will be the LAST week for the foreseeable future that we will be giving out a free key of the game, so get your games in and try to win!

Project Winter - Dibby
It’s time for our weekly MVP Challenge! Join our Discord in order to participate. It will be ongoing until 3:00pm Eastern (UTC-5) tomorrow (March 2)! This week we will be taking only the best SURVIVOR scores again. We will not necessarily be taking “MVP” scores (as traitors can sometimes get more points than survivors and become MVP at match end), but we will be taking the best SURVIVOR score achieved in a 24 hour period that is posted to our #clips channel, and crowning that survivor as MVP of the WEEK! They will receive a free copy of Project Winter to give to a friend + 20,000 Survivor Points to spend on themselves.

Project Winter - Other Ocean
Greetings survivors!

We are happy to push our first content update to Project Winter. We have been listening to feedback and prioritizing our efforts accordingly. First and foremost, we heard the need for a better matchmaking experience so this week’s update includes our server browser!



With the server browser you will be able to:

  • Join/Host a lobby
  • See open games looking for players
  • See games currently in progress
  • Easily switch regions
  • Set passwords for lobbies
  • Set language preference for lobbies
  • Kick/Ban players from your lobby

This is a massive overhaul to our matchmaking code, so you are likely to run into some bugs. If you come across any issues please report them in our Discord. We will be looking out for reports and trying to resolve them as soon as possible.

We’ve also added Nvidia Highlights to easily capture those traitorous moments! This should enable by default if you have a compatible card, but can be turned on/off through GeForce Experience.

For our next content push, we can start getting down to the “fun stuff”. There will be two major changes we will be looking into for the next content patch:

Changes to the escape flow

We will be changing up how the current escape system works. There will be a number of things changed in this but overall goal is to make the process easier to understand for new users while also allowing more options for deception & risk. We will also be adding in a little danger around some repair tasks to keep things interesting.

Deception mechanics

Next patch will include giving people more chances to try to reveal player roles, and more chances for traitors to mess with the survivors! We have two items we’d like to focus on getting in the next update:

Traitor Overload - the ability to overload a bunker console with other survivors. This will block out the consoles for that bunker for a limited time but would also reveal that one of the three people using that console was 100% the traitor.

Truth Serum - a special serum that when used will reveal another role, only to the one administering the serum. This special item will be locked behind a special bunker that requires the players to co-ordinate and split up in order to enter.

We have a number of other bug fixes and changes, which can be found in the change log below:

  • Player nameplates now ON as default, L-ALT to toggle
  • Delay between exile votes increased from 10 seconds to 30 seconds
  • Bear traps now cost 2 ore instead of 1
  • Land mines now cost 3 ore instead of 2
  • Fuel now costs 2 berries instead of 1
  • Throwing impact audio works on all clients now
  • Kicked players no longer able to return from lobbies they have been kicked from
  • Fixes for Steam Cloud loading sometimes failing
  • Collision, visual, and animation changes for bridges for clarity, and to kill players more reliably when sabotaged
  • Modified text chat positioning
  • More fixes for objectives not loading
  • Fixed vodka not counting for cooking items progression
  • Added localization support for languages on lobbies
  • Updated existing localization data files
  • Exile station UI updated: coloured icons replaced with vote count plus tooltip that displays names of the voting players
  • Moved the 'Esc' to the top left of the crafting/cooking station
  • Fixed up the Player name so they vertically align correctly. Charge bar/eating bar sizing has been fixed and made the images a higher resolution so they aren't blurry. Whole thing moved up slightly so the name/traitor icon does not overlap player head
  • Made trackers on side of screen smaller and more solid. Redid flashing animation so the icons scale back down to the correct size
  • Added the Survivor points icon to the stats screen and game-over stats screen
  • Added icons for each of the new cosmetic items
  • Added animation to the game over stats screen
  • Added a sound for the normal stats screen
  • Fixed aiming on the VTOL ramp
  • Fixed flag camera on main tile to improve rendering
  • Increased size of triggers for picking up items
  • Updated melee attack PFX and animation timings

That is all for this week! Please join us in our Discord for discussions, MVP of the week contests, meet up with new folks to play with and more! We are always around answering questions and talking strategies.

See you in game!

Project Winter Team
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