My favourite extraction shooter, The Forever Winter, adds a playable character with a functional gun for a head, tackles its most divisive mechanic and introduces its biggest region yet

The Forever Winter is one of the few extraction shooters I've clicked with—a post-apocalyptic warzone where you play as insignificant scavengers scurrying across desolate battlefields, trying to find loot while soldiers, cyborgs and building-sized machines duke it out all around you. It's tough, intense, and keeps on impressing me with its exceptional art design and oppressive atmosphere.

It's also a bit rough, as early access games often are, but today's huge December update looks set to address its biggest issues and expand it considerably, bringing with it a brand new playable character, significant changes to the controversial water system, the largest region so far, in-game VOIP and performance improvements.

When The Forever Winter launched in September, one of the most common criticisms was the harshness of the water system. Water keeps your base (the Innards) running and the survivors you're scavenging for alive, and the more water you have, the more features you unlock—in particular shops where you can pick up new gear and sell junk you don't need.

But water depletes in real-time. If you bring one canister of water back from a mission, that gives you one extra day of water. As you run low, you lose access to parts of your base, and once you run out entirely you lose everything apart from character progression—specifically your character upgrades and prestige levels. You get one chance to survive—a feature introduced in an earlier patch—if you can fight off a base invasion, but if you die during the assault you lose all your cash and gear, and the Innards is reset.

Water 2.0 introduces some changes to take the strain off you, but in typical The Forever Winter fashion also throws some wrinkles into the mix, to make sure you never forget that this post-apocalyptic future is a terrible place.

Now you can hire water-bots to automatically scrounge around for water and bring it back to the Innards. This happens in real-time, even when you're not playing. So if you're going on holiday for a week, this will keep the water flowing. But this comes with an inherent risk. The more bots you hire, the more likely they are to be followed back to the Innards by water thieves.

If water thieves find your base, you'll need to defend it. Previously these invasions only occurred when you completely ran out of water. The invasion intensity was determined by RNG, but these new water thief invasions will be a bit more structured, increasing in scale with each invasion rather than being random. You'll also be able to better defend your base, since you can add turrets. You can also protect a small number of items and a large amount of credits by hiding them in an impregnable vault.

This all sounds pretty rad. I did find the water system to be too punishing, but I didn't want Fun Dog to simply make it easier—that wouldn't be in keeping with the game's brutal vibes. Adding options and new systems seems like a much better—and more engaging—way to handle things.

The Forever Winter's cast of playable scavengers are an eclectic bunch, but none of them are quite as weird as the newest addition: Gunhead. Their head is a functional gun that can be fired independently or in tandem with your regular weapons. It automatically tracks targets, so you don't need to worry about aiming, just shooting. You can even upgrade the gun, choosing between an SMG, LMG, rifle or auto shotgun.

With your extra weapon, the largest skill tree in the game and the most HP, Gunhead might sound a bit OP, but there's a downside to all this health and firepower: you can't be revived or healed. Given how lethal firefights are in The Forever Winter, this is a significant disadvantage. You'll also be pretty slow, though you won't suffer from encumbrance if you overload your rig while scavenging. The AI knows how dangerous you are, too, so you're considered a priority target.

This definitely isn't an appropriate character for new players. It took me a while before I was comfortable even getting into fights instead of just sneaking and fleeing, as you're always outmatched and outgunned. You can technically defeat any enemy you encounter, but some of them are so tough and well-armed that you'll need a full group with great gear and lots of knowledge if you want to survive. So running around with a target on your back and no way to heal is gonna be pretty challenging. I honestly can't wait.

You'll be able to take Gunhead, or any of the other characters, into the new Frozen Swamp region. This is The Forever Winter's largest map so far, and home to the water thieves "and other dangers".

On top of all this, Fun Dog has added more quests, a narrative quest giver in the Innards who you can trade cigarettes with for lore and cash, a drill device that's required to access certain doors and caches, a higher prestige cap, and you can finally pet the dog. The update also promises network, CPU and GPU improvements to broadly bump up the game's performance, along with enemy tuning, new audio SFX and control pad tweaks.

The Forever Winter immediately impressed me at launch, but there was no denying that its jankiness and difficulty could be offputting. Fun Dog, though, has been extremely diligent, pushing out plenty of hot fixes and hosting regular Q&A sessions, which has helped the early access game go from Mixed user reviews to Very Positive. I took a wee break last month, but this update sounds like a doozy, so I'm rushing back in.