Hello survivors and traitors alike!
We have officially released our roadmap, outlining the development plan leading up to 1.0 & beyond. There is no bug fixing update this week but the team has been working on improving stability, fixing bugs and focusing on quality of life improvements to the game. This unfortunately delays us getting to the "fun stuff" of adding new items, features, etc. but is a necessary step in the development process. Some deeper information on our immediate goals are below!
Server Browser
We initially underestimated a number of things regarding matchmaking. Our first concern was ensuring people had others to play with and the original plan was to funnel ALL players into three regions; NA, EU and Asia. What we did not take into full consideration is how unplayable the game is if you cannot communicate effectively. This meant people with different language backgrounds were unable to communicate effectively and if you don't speak your fellow players’ language then the game is frustrating and the experience falls apart.
To mitigate this, we opened 6 regions: NA, SA, EU, RU, KR and Asia. The downside of that was: no visibility into how many players were on, the small community is again now split even more and lobbies are hard to fill up.
The team immediately decided that the system had to be changed, and promptly started working on a system overhaul. We want to allow players to be able to control who they play with, what language, in what regions, easily and with more visibility. Our first content patch (scheduled for Thursday Feb. 28th) will include a server browser to give players this control.
Feedback & Bugs
Project Winter is an early access game in the truest sense of that term, the game is not finished. We released Project Winter fully anticipating that there will likely be inherent gameplay problems, bugs, and features that will need to be reworked. We are fortunate that our community has been amazingly receptive and communicative. We thank those that have helped with suggestions and bug reports, this helps us ensure we are going in the right direction and ultimately shapes how we develop the game. Thankfully, almost everything that has been brought up already has a plan in place to solve these problems through various mechanics.
Expanding Survivor’s and Traitor’s Roles
Escape Flow
Today’s version of Project Winter was our most solid iteration in terms of gameflow. We want to make this experience more varied, as variety is the spice of life! Looking forward expect the “escape” flow to differ from what you are used to. While some maps may follow the standard repair x task, repair x task, escape flow - others maps will start to come into play where the repair tasks can be more complicated, combat based, forces survivors to split up, etc.
Deception Flow
Another goal of ours is to give players more options when it comes to deducing player roles. A few items in the works right now:
- Professor’s Lab/Truth Serum: A special bunker that needs survivors to split up and coordinate in order to open. Inside there will be a truth serum item which can be used on a fellow player to reveal their role (survivor or traitor) only to the player that administered the serum.
- Console Overload: When opening a bunker, traitors get the choice to “overload” the console. This sets all the consoles back to the off position and will have a cooldown on being used again.
- Armory Bunker: Another special bunker that requires separation and coordination, but reveals more powerful weapons such as a silent crossbow and automatic rifles.
- Traitor Disguise: Traitors can swap clothes with a deceased character to try to fool the other survivors.
- New airdrop abilities for Traitors.
As we continue to develop Project Winter, we encourage you to join our Discord and chat with us! The team is committed to getting these features in and even looking to grow the team to make it happen even quicker!
Hope to see everyone in game! As a friendly reminder we have an MVP Challenge starting every Friday afternoon (Eastern time) where the winner gets a free copy of the game to give to a friend and 20,000 survivor points to get some new cosmetic items! Join us in Discord to participate and see you there!
Project Winter Team