The Forever Winter - October 2026 Update

October Patch Notes:

Happy Halloween, Scavs!

Happy Halloween from all of us at Fun Dog Studios!

Thank you to everyone who's continued playing, sharing feedback, reporting bugs, and helping us shape this strange, miserable world. We know development can sometimes feel like a long road, but we're continuing to push forward, and we're excited about what's coming next.

We also wanted to take a moment to reflect on our second anniversary. It's been one hell of a roller coaster of a year, both for The Forever Winter and the industry around us. We've had our share of victories, setbacks, sleepless nights, and moments where we wondered what the hell we were doing. But we're still here grinding through.

This year has also been a reminder of how much we owe to the artists and creators who helped shape the worlds we love. We lost John Blanche, the godfather of grimdark, whose imagination influenced generations of artists, including many of us here at Fun Dog. Our deepest condolences go out to the Blanche family.

We also watched the closure of Phil Tippett's legendary workshop (he is still around and rocking and rolling just in a different way), another reminder of how fragile even the most extraordinary creative institutions can be. If you haven't seen Mad God , please do yourself a favor and watch it. It's a magnificent, deeply strange piece of filmmaking, and a testament to what happens when someone refuses to compromise their imagination.

To all our Dev hommies out there, indie access to game engines these days makes a ton possible, and I know the talent at Bioware will make something amazing again. Mass effect 2 is one of the best RPG’s of all time, that talent doesn't disappear.

And to you, the Scavs out there:

Thank you to everyone who's stuck with us through the good, the bad, and ugly post patch hotfix moments. Can't wait to dive into the new hardware, and hopefully with a bit of luck, we get the endgame where it needs to go.

To that end:

We've been hard at work on another round of improvements to The Forever Winter. This update brings some long-requested features, significant improvements to enemy AI, expanded weapon customization, and a substantial performance pass across the game's environments.

One of our biggest areas of focus this time around has been enemy behavior and combat utility. We've always wanted the battlefield to feel like a living, unpredictable place, where the factions are fighting their own wars and you're just another unfortunate soul caught in the middle.

This update takes some important steps in that direction.

Enemy soldiers now have to manage their ammunition, reload their weapons, and make more tactical decisions during engagements. They'll also use grenades to flush enemies out of cover, respond to groups of targets, and even attempt to avoid incoming explosives themselves. These changes should make combat more dynamic, while also creating new opportunities for players who pay attention to what's happening around them.

And yes, smoke grenades are finally here!

Smoke adds another layer of utility to the scavenger's arsenal, allowing players to break enemy line of sight, cover movement, and create opportunities to escape situations that might otherwise end very badly. Enemies won't simply forget you exist, however. They'll continue firing at your last known position, investigate, or adjust their behavior until they can reacquire you.

We've also continued expanding weapon customization, including new parts for several of the community-voted weapon platforms. The 36M, Kriss Vector 45, USP, and SVD are all receiving additional customization options, with more opportunities to experiment with different configurations.

Beyond the new content, there's been a tremendous amount of work happening under the hood.

We've made substantial optimization passes across nearly every raid environment, reducing memory usage, improving asset streaming, and addressing some particularly nasty performance hitches. We've also removed the 62 FPS cap, improved rendering performance across numerous enemy types, and cleaned up hundreds of small collision issues throughout the maps.

Some of these changes might seem to lack glamor on paper, but they're important steps toward making The Forever Winter a smoother, more consistent experience.

Looking ahead, a lot of the groundwork for our next round of improvements is starting to come together.

The expanded AI behaviors, new combat utility, and additional weapon customization are all part of a larger effort to give players more interesting choices in how they approach the battlefield. We're also looking forward to expanding on player skills and progression in future updates, building on these systems to create more meaningful opportunities for different playstyles.

There's still plenty of work ahead, and as always, we'll be watching how these changes perform once they're in your hands.

Finally, because it's Halloween, we've got a little something extra for everyone: the new Maskochist skin for Maskman, available free to all players.

Stay safe out there, Scavs.

— The Fun Dog Studios Hommies

ALSO a special message from Jason!

Hello all!

Jason here!

I am incredibly happy to announce that the vinyl version of the FW soundtrack is officially complete and ready to ship! So much time and effort went into making this a reality, and it’s amazing to finally hold it in my hands.

First of all, thank you all so much for the kind words and endless support for the music of FW. It honestly makes me so happy to see many of you digging the weird styles that make up the game's sound. Our biggest hope was always to create something that felt like more than just background music, and your response means the world to us.

Here are a few quick details about the record itself:

• Curated Tracklist: We had to condense the soundtrack down from over 100 tracks on Steam to a tight, 12-track selection to properly fit the format.
• Audiophile Quality: We prioritized the highest possible audio quality over everything else. This dictated our track lengths and our choice to stick with classic black vinyl for the best sound (though maybe someday down the line we can look into a super limited colored pressing!).
• Custom Masters: Every single track went through special mixes specifically mastered for vinyl.
• The digital version on Bandcamp has 3 bonus tracks, one of which is previously unreleased (track in the 2 year anniversary video)

Lastly, a quick note on shipping:

Ah, shipping... Honestly, after fighting to get these costs down as much as humanly possible, rates are still frustratingly high, and for that, I am truly sorry.

• US Shipping: Ranges from $9 to $14. This does include a really sturdy, corrugated cardboard protective box with bubble wrap and insurance to make sure it arrives safely.
• International Shipping: Ranges from $28 to $38 for our homies outside of the US.

Thank you all again for making this project possible. It really is a dream come true for me and the team \\m/

You can find the record on Bandcamp here:

Cheers,

-Jason

!!!INSTALL NOTE!!!

Due to the optimizations on the content (see below) the download for this update is a bit larger than usual, but the final size on disc should be smaller once the update is completely installed.

New Content

Smoke Grenades

• New throwable smoke grenade. Buy it from vendors, find it in the world, or manufacture it yourself.
• Smoke blinds the enemy. Foes will lose line of sight through the cloud. Enemies who lose you will fire a few blind bursts at your last known position, then either pursue or change their strategy until they see you again.

New Weapon Parts and Customization

• New attachments and customization options for the 36M, Kriss Vector 45, USP, and SVD, available at in-world vendors (assuming you get lucky and they have it in stock).

New Maskman Skin

• The "Maskochist" skin for Maskman is now available, free for all! Happy Halloween.

Quests

• New quests are available!

Enemy AI

Enemies throw grenades now. Spread out.

• Infantry will throw grenades at hostile targets now. They favor targets who are high threat, pinned down or hiding, and groups bunched together.
• Enemies will try to dodge grenades thrown at them, and will call out when throwing one or one lands nearby. (languages to follow, place holder for now)
• AI-thrown grenades have landing and roll sounds (as well as HUD elements for incoming danger) so you can sense them coming.

Enemies reload

• Soldiers now carry limited ammo and have to reload, with full animations. Listen for it. That's your window.

Smarter, fairer AI

• Squads now investigate gunshots and extraction alarms properly. If you trip a timed-extraction alarm, expect company at the pad.

Bug Fixes, Tuning Changes, and Improvements

Performance

• Removed the 62 fps cap. The "Unlimited" frame rate option now means unlimited.
• Low settings adjusted. Lumen reflections and Lumen global illumination are off at Low, for a measurable GPU saving on lower-end PCs. Set Global Illumination to Medium or above to get Lumen back.
• Fixed a potential crash when switching audio devices mid-session.
• Fixed a rare crash caused by enemy line-of-sight checks against recently killed enemies.

Maps

• Downtown: fixed some major hitches when new areas streamed in. Worst-case stalls are down from roughly half a second to about a tenth.
• Ashen Mesa: large fights with multiple mechs and tanks no longer slow down as the fight goes on. Fixed a potential multi-second freeze shortly after level start.
• Ashen Mesa, Downtown, Elephant Mausoleum, Frozen Swamp, Scrapyard, Mech Trenches: large reductions in the cost of geometry, texture, and shadows without impacting the visuals. Less VRAM, less streaming, fewer stutters, same look at gameplay distance.
• Stairway Gate and Shanti Rooftops: sky textures use far less VRAM while preserving their look.
• Removed hundreds of small collision snags across Ashen Mesa, Downtown, Elephant Mausoleum, and other maps that stopped the player cold on rubble, debris, and stray geometry. Navigation rebuilt on all affected maps.

Enemies and effects

• Mechs, Exos, drones, turrets, and several infantry types are much cheaper to render. Improved level-of-detail meshes for multiple enemy types.
• Fixed tanks and other vehicles being launched into the air by multiple explosions.
• Fixed the dry grass in Ashen Mesa occasionally rendering with a broken material.

Misc

• If you run out of one grenade type, your throwable slot now switches automatically to any other grenade of the same type you're carrying instead of showing empty.
• Reloading weapons that have been upgraded to larger-capacity magazines / clips will take longer.
• Fixed a few of the weapons being able to stack a suppressor on top of a suppressor with specific barrel customizations.
• Fixed issue where deployable turrets would sometimes refuse to deploy until unseen
• Fixed a bug that allowed too many deployable turrets at once.
• The Europan medium mech's shoulder guns fire less rapidly, but their damage has been adjusted for same DPM.
• Fixed in issue where a player’s HUD may initialize incorrectly after an extremely long load (usually only occurred on slower, fragmented HDDs).
• Fixed a case where recoil could potentially go negative, pushing the player’s gun down vs. pulling it up.