Reasons My Winter Car Often Feels Like a Survival Game, Not a Simulator

While the general point of My Winter Car is to purchase a car and fix it, that's easier said than done. My Winter Car often ends up feeling like a survival game instead of a simulator with how much maintenance your character needs. In fact, your character likely needs more maintenance than your car, which is interesting for a game that's about fixing up a vehicle.

There are quite a few elements that make My Winter Car such an unforgiving game, even in Early Access. At the same time, these elements are often the same ones that make it so ridiculous to play in a good way. After all, there aren't many games where you can die from your bladder exploding.

7 The Problem Meter

It's a Problem on its Own

The Problem Meter is actually an alcohol meter. Your character has a drinking problem, and you have to go purchase and drink alcohol to lower the meter. If you don't, you could end up dying, and the paper you get shows you died of dehydration. The solution is simple in theory, as you can head to the pub or PK to buy drinks, but the reality isn't that simple.

It takes multiple bottles to lower your Problem Meter, and that makes your screen warp and movement more difficult. Luckily, you can kind of beat this meter by drinking one alcoholic beverage in your apartment, then chugging water from your kitchen sink. This makes your meter empty quickly, and limits how tipsy your character becomes.

6 No Inventory

You Can Carry One Item at a Time

This issue is both frustrating and inconvenient, especially when you start a new game. It's usually a good idea to start off by going to the gas station for food and beverages. That way, you have them on hand for your survival. You might even want to get started on fixing the car you have by buying parts.

While most small items are put in a grocery bag, large items aren't. This means you have to juggle your items or make multiple trips from the register to your vehicle. Then again, when you get to your apartment, you carry everything in from your vehicle. It's definitely frustrating at best, but can impact your meters, especially if you can't get your car to start and have to walk to the store and back more than once.

5 Temperatures

You Have to Care About Heating

Since My Winter Car is set in winter and takes place in Finland, you have to worry about the cold temperatures. This impacts gameplay in multiple ways. Your car can end up not starting from the cold, which is why you definitely want to keep it plugged into the little box in the apartment parking lot when you're not using it. You also have a Temperature Meter, because you can die from hypothermia in this weather.

You'll use more energy when you use the radiators to warm up your apartment, but you also won't be able to go to sleep if your apartment is too cold. So, you have to plan for how long it takes to warm the rooms, and how that can impact your energy bills. It feels too realistic in the worst way, especially if you're used to this kind of winter in real life.

4 Prison Sentences

The Time is Based on Real Life Hours

If you decide to break some laws intentionally or accidentally, such as hitting an NPC with your car, you'll likely wake up to the police at your door. You can't avoid arrest, as they'll be at every exit you have. Instead, you basically have to accept your fate and go serve your sentence in prison, which currently doesn't have any methods that allow you to break out early.

Unfortunately, each day for your sentence means you have to sit in your cell for two real-world hours. Depending on the crime, you could spend entire days in prison. This can be so extreme that it's sometimes better to just start a new game if your sentence is too long, because you essentially soft-lock yourself out of progressing with long sentences.

3 Limited Job Options

You Have to Balance Money and Time

My Winter Car has one main job, and then multiple side jobs that you can do in addition to the main job or instead of it. However, all of these options come with multiple pros and cons that make it tough to decide how you want to earn the money you'll need to survive, and then eventually purchase a car to fix it. At least you start off with unemployment benefits to help, but it doesn't give you too much income.

The main job consumes a lot of time, but pays the best. Then, you have options like being a taxi driver or delivering advertisements. If you want to just complete side jobs, then you can do tasks like cutting and selling firewood. Avoiding the main job limits your income, but it gives you a lot more time to actually work on your car.

2 The Main Job

Designed so You'll Never See the Sun

The main job involves putting items in packages like you're the conveyor belt. However, this also means that it's shift work, and you have to show up Monday through Friday for a full day of work. If you're late or skip too many days, you'll be fired, and that locks you out from ever working this job again.

In addition to the long shifts, you have to drive to the other side of the map to reach your workplace every day. It's inconvenient, and the work itself is mind-numbing. Considering these conditions, it's not that surprising that players tend to avoid the main job and stick to other income sources, which tends to be taxi driving since it provides decent enough income.

1 Permadeath

If You Die, You Have to Start Over

My Winter Car isn't the kind of game that you'd expect to include permadeath, but you also probably don't go into it with the belief that it'll be one of the most difficult survival games available right now. It doesn't tell you that it has permadeath, but you might be fooled into believing that when you save, you can return to that save in the event of death. You can't.

This can be frustrating, especially if you've made good progress so far. All it takes is a meter overflowing, or getting hit by an NPC driving, to end your game. Then, your only option is to start from the beginning again. The combination of how easy it is to die and how difficult it is to make progress is what makes permadeath particularly brutal.

My Winter Car is a fun follow-up to My Summer Car, if you've tried it. However, it doesn't make your in-game life easy. As a result, you have to go into the game with a strategy and understand how to keep yourself alive long enough to accomplish any car building in My Winter Car.