The Forever Winter is a co-op shooter about scavenging among the wreckage of a never-ending mech war

If I was writing What’s Better, it would be a short series. The first entry would declare that the best thing in video games, obviously, was watching NPCs fight among themselves.

It’s this which most interests me about The Forever Winter, which takes place in a “PvEvE conflict” in which enemy factions – including enormous, stomping robots – are constantly fighting one another while you and your squad try to scavenge and survive in their shadow. Its first trailer showing in-game footage is below.

“Enemies have their own goals and agendas, operate in coordinated groups as part of a combat ecosystem, and undertake full-scale battles both against you and other NPCs—and each faction will intelligently react to your actions in different ways,” says a press release about the trailer. Delightful if true.

Players need to scavenge to survive, building up their gear and arsenal over several runs alongside three human or AI squadmates. If your entire squad dies, that’s game over, and you’ll lose all your gear and will need to start again from scratch. Given the stakes, you’ll need to use stealth and teamwork to survive among the much larger NPC enemies.

If any of this proves true, it sounds tremendously exciting, and it has fabulously creepy art direction and mech deisgns. On the other hand, the trailer above shows pre-alpha footage, and it’s notably rough around the edges. There are certain elements of it that are reminiscent an overambitious mod, or a machinima of something purely hypothetical, but I love overambitious mods and aspirational machinima so these aren’t complaints.

There’s no release date yet but you can, as ever, wishlist The Forever Winter on Steam.