The mommy mechs of The Forever Winter are stomping into early access next month

rockpapershotgun.com:

It is with quiet anticipation (and some nervousness) that I await to be stepped upon by a freaky mech in The Forever Winter. If you missed its announcement in May, The Forever Winter is a co-op extraction shooter set in a grim future where you struggle to survive amid an unending hyperindustrial war. Since that reveal developers Fun Dog Studios have mostly been sending out small "burst transmissions" - essentially footage from the hellfront - like this patriotic beheading and some panicked gunfights. But today they've made a longer video revealing an early access release date. And - oh! - it's quite soon.

It's hitting early access on September 24th, the developers say, with four maps, a bunch of guns, and five "broken down characters, each with their own baggage and play styles". That "baggage" may be both metaphorical and literal, as one of the game's features is having to strap an unwieldy modular backpack, called a "rig", to your body before venturing out into the killzone. Imagine the courier backpack from Death Stranding, but kitted out with jump jets, or stacked with deployable turrets instead of cold pizzas.

I've seen it described as a "PvEvE" looter shooter, in which enemy factions wage war as you scavenge to make ends meet. The whole idea is that you're a fragile little fleshbag in an overblown mechanistic conflict, and it's often better to avoid patrols and let opposing machines duke it out than to engage in a fight yourself. There was a recent beta, and YouTuber "Riloe" made a swish hype-inducing video explaining the game's general principles and inspirations. It was enough to make me lurk into the game's Discord, where I first witnessed people becoming very horny about the leggy mech they are now calling "harvester mommy".

Anyway, the video above features creative director Miles Williams addressing us from behind the cyberhelmet of a human scavenger. He sets out some promises for what the game's early access period is going to look like, much of it