Winter Is Here — Player Guide

Your keep holds the west edge; the infected come out of the east. The day is for building the thing that has to survive the night.

Your first ten minutes

1. Put everyone on wood. Wood is the entry resource — walls, houses and basic towers are all paid in it. Workers cut trees by day and haul the wood home.
2. Raise a first line before you optimise anything. A short wall and an arrow tower where the infected will actually walk beats a grand plan finished on night three. The first night is coming whether you are ready or not.
3. Build toward the mine. The mine is the first real milestone: it costs wood and unlocks iron and ore — and ore is what buys better towers and every upgrade after that.
4. Watch where they walk on night one. The infected path toward your keep and detour around what you build. Where they chose to walk is the map telling you where tomorrow's wall and towers go.
5. Repair at dawn. Whatever held last night is cheaper to fix than to replace. Builders do it — pull them onto repairs first thing.

The core loop

Two loops alternate on a clock. By day, your workers are awake: woodcutters fell trees, miners work the mine, builders raise and repair — and you spend the daylight on economy, construction and upgrades. By night, everyone sleeps and production stops completely. Only what you built fights: towers, walls, and whoever mans them. Day is a build timer you spend; night is the exam.

That alternation is the whole game. Over-build economy and you die at night; over-build towers and you never afford the next tier. Every resource has an implicit price in nights survived.

The systems that confuse new players

The wall rule — walls are a toll, not a "no". The infected will detour a couple of tiles to walk around what you build. Wall further out than that — or box them in — and they stop walking and start chewing through the wall in front of them. So a giant wall around everything is not safety, it is a chew toy in the place you least want them standing. A short, clever wall redirects: it decides where they bunch up, which is where your towers should already be pointing. You are not building a barrier; you are charging a toll, and choosing where to charge it.

Night stops your economy dead. Workers path home at dusk and sleep. Nothing gathers, nothing builds. If a wall needs finishing, it needs finishing before dark.

Towers answer different questions. The arrow tower is the cheap baseline; cannons handle clumps; flame wants a choke you built on purpose; frost slows rather than damages and multiplies everything shooting behind it; the sniper deletes single hard targets. Tower tiers are paid in ore, and the top tier changes behaviour rather than just numbers.

The infected are not all walkers. Crawlers shrug off frost, spitters lob from range, armoured ones turn small arrows — a defence tuned against one type has a hole shaped like another. Mix your towers the way you would mix an army.

Weather is a real modifier. Blizzards cut what your towers can see; cold snaps stiffen everyone — including them. There is a forecast, so it is never a surprise: a blizzard night is a night to hold closer and tighter.

Tips an experienced player would give you

• Build the toll booth, then the tax collectors. Shape their path with short walls, then stack damage where the path bends. A frost tower at the bend makes everything behind it hit twice as often as it feels like it should.
• Cheap walls in front, good walls where it matters. Brittle ice walls are nearly free time; barbed wire taxes them as they pass without even trying to stop them. Save the iron wall for the line you actually intend to hold.
• Houses before heroes. Population caps come from housing, and more hands by day is the only way to afford the night after next.
• It is an RTS at heart — command things. Pull workers off the trees to repair a wall mid-assault; retarget a tower onto the brute instead of the trash. The players who lose at dusk are the ones still micromanaging logistics when the defence needed their eyes.
• Plan for the blizzard before it arrives. Check the forecast at dawn. A defence that only works with full tower vision is a defence that fails on a schedule.
• Do not wall greedily. Every extra tile of detour you demand is a step closer to them ignoring the path and eating the wall. The rule rewards modest, deliberate walling.

Achievements

Thirty, each with locked and unlocked art. They cover:

• Survival — your first stand, reaching deeper and deeper nights, and lifetime nights held across all runs.
• Persistence — runs played, from your fifth to your hundredth.
• The fighting — infected put down, lifetime and in a single run.
• The weather — surviving a blizzard night, and coming out of the storm hardened.

FAQ

Can I play it now?

Yes — the browser prototype is the same core loop, playable today. It is the design sandbox: mechanics get proven there first, then ported to the Unity build.

Why did they suddenly start attacking my wall instead of walking around?

You asked for too long a detour. The infected accept a couple of tiles of diversion; past that they stop pathing and start breaking. Shorten the wall or accept that this section is now a (planned) chew point.

Can I wake my workers at night?

No — night production is zero. The sleep is what makes daylight worth something.

Are the nights random?

The early nights are designed — scripted assaults with a rhythm — and after them a composer takes over that never runs out.

What platforms?

Unity, shipping to mobile and PC, one build with two control schemes. No store page yet.