If you’re reading this, then the unthinkable has happened: One of the biggest gaming trends of 2020 has managed to stay trendy into an entirely separate year. Yes, even an uncultured swine such as myself has been aware of Among Us, the game that coined the term “sus”, which is a shortened version of the word “suspicious”. As to be expected, things that are trendy tend to be inferior to a more niche product of its ilk. In this case, an online multiplayer deception game known as Project Winter is significantly better, and I will detail why.
Just take my claims with a grain of salt; I have not played either game myself. One of my biggest gripes with online multiplayer games is that they’re considered so great, despite the fact that you need eight or more friends in order to play them at all. That kind of hurts what little confidence I have; it’s as if having over eight friends is NORMAL in life. Personal issues aside, I at least have some confidence in this post because I have watched many-a gaming video of both games, specifically those uploaded by ZeRoyalViking and ChilledChaos (who you should watch by the way because they have really good multiplayer gaming videos).
How to Play
Before getting into the topic at hand, I must explain the basic mechanics of both games, just in case someone is as uncultured as I am. In Among Us, you are a bunch of little bean astronauts who are marooned in a base that needs fixing. They all must fix the various areas of the facility to win. However, there are two imposters who can kill crewmates. No one is able to speak while walking around in Among Us, except in two circumstances: either someone reports a dead body, or uses one of their limited uses of the Emergency Meeting button. This triggers a brief period where the players can talk to one another, and eject a player through voting; their only way to defeat an imposter. If the crewmates finish all tasks or defeat all imposters, they win. But if the imposters kill enough people so that there is one crewmate left for every imposter, then the imposters win.
In Project Winter, a group of people are stranded in a randomly generated frozen world. In half an hour, a giant blizzard will appear and snuff the life out of them. They must quickly craft, hunt, and repair in order to call a rescue vehicle to save them. However, there are two traitors in the group, who must try to stop the survivors’ efforts. Both traitors being felled DOES NOT declare survivor victory; the only way survivors can win is for at least one of them to escape. Traitors must see every survivor fall; even if they themselves die, it still counts as long as they bought enough time for the Mega Blizzard to finish off the survivors.
Among Us: Pros
Among Us is the more accessible of the two games. It can be played on pretty much any system, including mobile devices. That makes it so anyone can play! It’s also a lot simpler, since you don’t talk to people for that long.
What makes Among Us fun is the lack of communication. Imposters must take advantage of what the crewmates know or don’t know in order to build abilis for themselves. Both sides have a good number of tools at their disposal. Imposters can use vents to quickly travel around the map (as long as they aren’t seen), such as getting a kill and quickly escaping the crime scene so that no one’s like “Uh I saw that guy walking away from the body”. They can also shut off the lights, or trigger a nuclear explosion that instantly gives them the win if two people do not stop it together, which also gives the imposters an opportunity to off two people.
It would be too easy if imposters could just kill willy-nilly. Both imposters have a kill cooldown, and they need to try to act as “un-sus” as possible during that time. Crewmates also have access to cameras, which can be decisive evidence if a killer is caught in the act. Imposters can talk during the meetings to spread discourse among the crew. They can also stick with players for long periods without killing them in order to “marinate” them. Crewmates will need to be clever, and observe every insignificant detail of the players’ pathing; one of them could’ve used a vent (or you could be Ze who gets accused just by walking around).
Among Us: Cons
I don’t know if they fixed it, but one of the dumbest things in Among Us is the fact that the codes for private lobbies are constantly displayed at the bottom of the screen (and since Ze and Chilled have not moved their webcams from that spot, I assume the issue’s still there). That’s just plain dumb.
As far as gameplay is concerned, things can get stale fast. I don’t know if playing Among Us is better or worse with experience. Rookies are likely to play with settings like Visual Tasks, which show animations to all players and can guarantee someone as a crewmate, or Confirm Ejects, which will tell you if you offed an imposter through voting. With those disabled, the game is more fun… or is it?
In an experienced lobby, there are so many nuances that are just understood that it almost puts an unfair advantage in favor of crewmates. Imposters usually spend time standing next to a task to “fake” it. But when you’re a veteran, you know the exact amount of time—down to the second—that it takes to finish a task, and there aren’t many that they can defend themselves with (like the asteroids or card swipe tasks). It’s also understood that the imposters will clarify whom the crew is voting against during a meeting, just so they can off a crewmate. Experienced players also have a system on when to vote and when to abstain based on the amount of people left, which can be used against them by imposters, but still makes games redundant.
There are also a lot of little “cheap” things that anyone can do. The Emergency Meeting button cools down faster than the Imposters’ kill button, but the Imposters’ sabotage ability is ready to go right after a discussion. With good timing, imposters can kill the lights or set off the reactor to where their cooldown is complete before the crew can fix those areas (since the Emergency Meeting won’t work during a sabotage). If they only need one kill (or two if both are still alive) in order to win at that point, then they win. The only way for crewmates to prevent a double kill is for one of them to mash the shortcut key for interacting with something in order to potentially report the first person’s body the instant before they themselves are killed, but it’s not always possible.
Crewmates also have annoying perks. They can stick together, making it impossible for imposters to win unless they get the rare “stack kill” (but even then, it’s possible to tell who did it because of subtle details with the server’s latency). The crewmates can also have someone camp the light fixtures, instantly fixing them as soon as they go out, disabling the imposters’ best tool. There’s also a rock in one particular map that someone can hide behind and catch someone using the nearby vent. Overall, I feel like Among Us can quickly devolve into the same thing over and over again. The whopping three maps don’t help its case either.
Project Winter: Pros
Unlike Among Us, everyone talks constantly. However, Project Winter has proximity chat; a piece of 21st Century technology that dynamically adjusts the volume of players’ voices in the call based on their distance. Things get more interesting thanks to the radio items. By pressing the CTRL key, you can talk to anyone who has the same color radio over any distance. Traitors also get a free red radio to coordinate on.
Project Winter plays like Minecraft; you have to worry about hunger and warmth along with your actual HP. You can cook food, and craft weapons and resources. Every game of Project Winter requires you to fix two facilities located somewhere on the map. These can require sets of mechanical parts, electronic scrap, and gasoline, or batteries and buried pieces spread throughout the world.
What makes Project Winter fun for traitors is having to hold a conversation with the survivors, while also coordinating with each other over their radio. Imposters get better firepower and items through traitor-only boxes found throughout the map, but obviously, they cannot be seen opening them. The ideal strategy for traitors is to spread discourse among the survivors. While they can try to get survivors alone, it would look extra sus if they were the only one of two people to return to the hub area. If tasks are being done, they can try to sneak a sabotage on the repaired objectives. Unlike Among Us, traitors can still try to win even if caught. There is a voting system to exile them from the hub, but they can easily live off of traitor crates around the world.
Nature itself will try to mess with the crew. Wild animals will attack, for starters. Also, random events will occur. They can scatter boxes throughout the map, or do things like make everyone go crazy, turning them into bunnies who look indistinguishable from one another (a perfect opportunity for a traitor to launch a surprise attack). While not nature-related, there’s also the possibility that an escape pod will spawn, allowing one player to abandon the mission and secure a win for themselves (like Ze did in that one video).
I’ll admit that Project Winter wasn’t at its best in earlier versions, but it gets a lot more depth with current patches. One notable addition is that of roles, special abilities that both traitors and survivors can have. You can have a scientist, able to bring a player back to life at a special area on the map (although that player will be muted), or a hacker who can open bunkers by themselves. There’s also the defector, a survivor who can open traitor crates; an easy alias for traitors to claim.
Project Winter gets even MORE interesting with its new Blackout mode. In the Blackout, there is only one traitor. However, that traitor can convert survivors to traitors in one of two ways: as a Demon, they can revive a downed player to convert them, and as a Whisperer, they can use an AOE attack to slowly fill up a traitor gauge and convert players. It’s a really good, long-con style mode that can go south for the survivors if the traitor manages to convert several people (although one of them could accidentally throw when they get converted for the first time by yelling out “They made me a traitor!” in a panicked stupor). There are also some scary new events, like darkness covering the whole map (except for traitors, who can see with “red vision”), and sending the spirits of all the animals that players have killed against them. Blackout also has the yeti, a neutral role who cannot be converted, and must merely live to the end of the game to win, even if it means siding with the traitors.
Project Winter: Cons
Since I obviously like this game better, there aren’t as many issues. One annoying traitor tactic is the ability to steal necessary parts to repair facilities and hiding them behind structures (which cannot be seen due to the fixed camera). There’s also the fact that dead players can use their chill ability on the traitors to send a message from beyond the grave. This isn’t necessarily a flaw, as dead traitors can also use this to spread discourse, but I doubt it was the dev’s intention for the dead powers to be used this way. Inventory management is also abysmal, even by survival game standards.
The Most Important Ingredient for Both Games…
The thing with online multiplayer games comes down to one simple monniker: they are only as good as those you are playing them with. The digital world is full of toxic people. But even in private lobbies, you get bad games of Among Us AND Project Winter, even with your personal friends. This passage is probably because I’ve only watched YouTubers play these games. I get that they’re entertainment, but it’s annoying when they throw “for content” (even if Tay killing everyone because of Chilled getting her to write Ze’s name from beyond the grave was pretty hilarious).
I’ll admit that a bad Project Winter match is worse than a bad Among Us match. Everyone in Ze’s group has good enough experience in Project Winter to know exactly what to do, yet Ze tends to be the only one who actually tries to help, even as a traitor! The others, even as crewmates, will just mess around, and sometimes consider offing someone for shits and giggles (however, I’ll admit that the one time Chilled made poison berries and stuck them in the community chest was pretty funny). It’s unfair for both sides, because the survivors would be losing a valuable person, or they could just get a lucky BS shot on a traitor. While it does capture that “survival drama” feeling really well, it’s annoying to see only one person (i.e. Ze) carry the game EVERY SINGLE TIME.
Overall, Project Winter at its best is a really fun experience. There’s more opportunities for role-playing, which can be really fun if you have really good friends. The random maps make it to where you can’t just memorize everything like in Among Us, requiring players to not just play fast, but learn fast. And even if the traitors get a really good gun, it’s possible for a survivor to win with just punches (even if it’s unlikely).
Conclusion
It’s pretty consistent in popular culture: the less depth, less thinking required, and more accessible something is, the more popular it’ll become. Project Winter takes a lot to get used to—but dammit—it’s better than Among Us by a longshot! Well, that’s another item on my list of popular things I don’t like. I think the lesson learned is that gaming is better if you have eight or more friends… Man, there goes my confidence again.
Weeb Revues 
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