"Betray your friends in this 8 person multiplayer focused on social deception and survival. Communication and teamwork is essential to the survivors’ ultimate goal of escape. Gather resources, repair structures, and brave the wilderness together. Just beware that there are traitors within the group who will be steadily gaining strength as the match progresses. Traitors’ only goal is to stop the survivors by any means necessary."
—The website's official description
Project Winter is a multiplayer game published by Other Ocean Group. It is a survival game where players must gather enough resources to survive the winter. Up to 8 players have different roles to play, and must finish tasks for maintenance. However, up to three of them are Traitors, whose objective is to impede the Survivors' progress, kill every survivor, or simply screw them over to win by putting resources in traitor boxes.
The game has a single map which generates differently in each new game with the cabin centered in the middle. Survivors are given specific tasks to fulfill to escape the snowy wilderness, but who is a Survivor or Traitor depends on the player. Dead Survivors and Traitors become Ghosts to either help or impede other players. A global event occurs every once in a while, whether a blizzard, throwing players across the map, or putting players in bunny suits.
To win, Survivors must gather every available resource and call in a rescue vehicle, and escape before time runs out. Traitors simply either off a Survivor, or take their resources and let the game's heavy blizzard kill them.
Compare with Among Us, a Werewolf (1997)-type style game and its variations based on finishing tasks and having traitors called Impostors to impede the Crewmates' progress.
The creative team behind the game followed with a The Walking Dead Licensed Game called The Walking Dead Betrayal with similar gameplay that is subtitled as A Project Winter Game.
Betray these tropes!
- Alone with the Psycho: You could be traveling with a Traitor and not realize it. Or you're the Traitor and ready to kill your hapless victim.
- And Show It to You: You can steal a heart from a dead player and show them you literally possess their heart.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- Dead players can still participate even if they are dead. They can either help or impede other players with special abilities as a Ghost.
- If you still have enough resources, a second rescue vehicle can be summoned if you were left behind. If you don't have the items required for another rescue vehicle, either the heavy blizzard or a Traitor kills you.
- Communication is set by the in-game radio. If you have a radio with the same color, you can easily communicate with each other. Traitors have their own radio for their use, but they can also grab a Survivor radio.
- There are crates containing stat-boosting items. Traitor have their own boxes while Survivors have their own.
- Asymmetric Multiplayer: Every player has their own specific roles to play.
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Every lobby allows 8 players to join.
- Bears Are Bad News: There are two kinds of bears in the game — a brown bear and a polar bear. They can inflict heavy damage to an unlucky player with a Ground Pound shockwave.
- Bodyguard Betrayal: As with Alone with the Psycho, your bodyguard could be a Traitor and you might not realize it until they make their move.
- Balance Buff: The early version of the game was weighted heavily towards the Traitors, giving them several benefits. This was fixed that Traitors and Survivors can fight each other on equal ground should they encounter each other.
- Big Bad: The remaining Traitor will be this. Especially if they used stat-boosting items to prepare killing Survivors.
- Big Bad Duumvirate: Two Traitors per game, but this can also be set to three.
- Character Customization: The characters you play can be customized to your liking. Including their gender, weight, and clothes.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Should a Traitor feel that the other Traitor was weakened by the Survivors, they can invoke You Have Outlived Your Usefulness and kill them with the other Survivors.
- Cooking Mechanics: You can cook food in the cabin's kitchen. While wild berries and herbs are safe to eat, raw meat and hearts give you a health penalty for eating them raw.
- Cool Down: Survivors and Traitors have their own abilities based on their roles.
- Difficult, but Awesome: Killing every Survivor by yourself is a feat not everyone can do. As hololive demonstrates with their talents, it IS possible
depending how much the Traitor buffs themselves. - Divided We Fall: It's best to stay in a group. Stray too far, and you could end up getting killed by a Traitor or wildlife.
- Dwindling Party: It's preferred to avoid this, as Everything Trying to Kill You is in full effect. Staying in groups is beneficial in the event a buffed Traitor comes at you with an axe.
- Everything Trying to Kill You: If a Traitor doesn't kill you, wildlife and blizzards will.
- Exact Time to Failure: All matches have a 20-minute time limit. If that clock hits zero, it goes into overtime to give you more time to collect any resources you might have left. If you don't or take too long, a heavy blizzard kills you.
- Face–Heel Turn: In the Blackout DLC, each game begins with only one Traitor, but the Traitor can convert other survivors. One Traitor role, the Whisperer, can send out a pulse that reaches other players within a visible radius, slowly influencing them. How close they are to converting is shown by a meter above each player, and the Whisperer can charge the meter faster by gathering resources. Conversion by the Demon is more along the lines of Face–Monster Turn.
- Foregone Victory: Lack of resources is a Traitor's win. Even if all the Traitors are dead, any lack of resources can screw you over, which will force the Survivors to kill each other and themselves.
- Game Lobby: A lobby is set next to the cabin. To help pass time, players who join in can participle in a snowball fight while waiting other players to join.
- Heel–Face Turn: A Defector's role is to join the Survivors, and they have the ability to open Traitor boxes.
- Item Crafting: All food and items are to be crafted in the cabin where it has a workshop to craft your tools and weapons.
- Kill and Replace: You can kill your hapless victim and steal their clothes and identity. However, it's a Paper-Thin Disguise if your character's body type is overweight.
- Reforged into a Minion: In Blackout, the Demon converts by picking up downed players. Converted Traitors are implied to be minions working under the Demon to impede other survivors. The message to all Traitors upon a new conversion is "Our legions grow further", and if the Demon dies, everyone transformed by the Demon dies.
- Snow Means Death: It is in the title. It takes place in a snowy wilderness.
- Spot the Imposter: A Detective can check another player's role, which allows them to see if they are a Surivior or Traitor.
- Survival Horror: An update called Blackout gives the game this feel. Literally everything is trying to kill you, the map is darker, and Traitors can convert Survivors into other Traitors. There's even a role to use Demonic Possession on an unlucky Survivor.
- Taking You with Me: If the blizzard happens before survivors can even call in a rescue vehicle, a Traitor can try to kill everyone else when it happens.
- Vengeful Ghost: In Blackout, a 3-minute-long global event called Witching Hour "revives" all dead animals as ghosts which attack players, and living animals become hostile as well. The ghosts disappear when the event ends.
