It’s cold. Very cold. You all huddle around the cabin’s fireplace to wait out this awful blizzard. Everyone looks at each other with suspicion and disdain in their eyes. Poor Davis was found with their skull split open down the middle, a little too cleanly for comfort. No animal could have done this, and the only explanation is murder with an ax.
You’re all freezing your butts off in these mountains, and one of you wants everyone dead. Was it that Workshop-hogging jerk Jenny? Quiet lil’ Ronson? Old man Harold? Nah, Harold’s always been a help, he’d never hurt a fly. Why would they do this? Don’t they want to get out of here alive? Murderer or not, you have to work with these people to get out of this forsaken icy hellhole.
Get the radio running, then find a Rescue Vehicle to call for a rescue, that’s the job to be done. Some time later, everything is finished, and the blizzard is over. Everyone is running to the helicopter, salvation seemingly in easy reach.
Little did you know, helpful old man Harold was waiting for all of you with a gun. As you lay in the snow, bleeding to death, you ask him why he did this. “Well I got assigned Traitor, so uh, gg!” And back to the game lobby you all go. Welcome to Project Winter Mobile!
Project Winter Mobile is a survival and betrayal game by Boltrend Games, which can either be played completely cooperatively in Beginner mode, or with some extra spicy deception and suspicion: The Normal and Superior modes allow for the game to have 1-2 Traitors, whose goal is to ensure everyone on the team dies.
Whether it be by their hands or by delaying their tasks and therefore the rescue by any means necessary. It’s also a bit more action oriented compared to games like Among Us which it takes cues from: Voting the Traitor out isn’t the end of the game, it only denies them access to the cabin, and you’re more likely to have to kill them yourself with an ax since rather than only the Traitor having an instant kill attack with a long cooldown, everyone in the game can fight each other and have HP bars!
Heck even killing the Traitor doesn’t end things, because you can still freeze to death or wind up a bear’s dinner on the way to the Rescue Vehicle. This Project Winter Mobile beginner’s guide is meant to make life easier for you in the game, but the ability to figure out which one of you is assigned the role of murdering psycho is all on you and your ability to spot lies and make intelligent deductions, even with these tips.
Note that this is specifically for the Mobile version, as the PC version is designed around longer games. This means that Project Winter Mobile has smaller maps, a more useful minimap with the Cabin always marked out, and tighter timers.
SURVIVAL TIPS
Both the Survivors and the Traitors have a common enemy in the environment. Cold, hunger, random blizzards (Moderately less lethal than the Mega Blizzard come 10-15 minutes depending on game mode, which also kills the cabin fireplace!), and the violent local wildlife is just as much a threat to the players as the Traitors trying to kill the Survivors, or the Survivors mobbing a Traitor who blew their cover too early. That being said, half the point of the game is surviving the environment (And each other!) itself, so here are some tips to make it easier.
Swinging Social Distancing
To gather materials, you either punch down trees, ore veins and bushes, or you swing a tool at them. That can also be used to attack other players, friendly or suspicious.
Knowing this, never gather from the same tree, object or even within a meter of your buddies: It is a lot easier than it looks to hit another player by accident, especially if you’re using charged attacks (Hold down the attack/item button) which have wider swings and longer ranges.
Damaging a teammate then apologizing is the best outcome from this, as things can get much worse. Like say, winding up accused of being a traitor then getting locked out of the cabin to freeze to death, even if you didn’t mean to hurt anyone.
Communicate!
Talk with your team, or at the very least, listen to them closely! Not even being shy, a slow typist, or internet-cautious is an excuse: While the game is much better with voice chat, you do have the option of using quick chat instead (Check the top right column of buttons on your screen for a speech bubble button) if you don’t want strangers to hear your voice.
It allows you to quickly say important phrases like “Player Number 3 is the Traitor!”, “Follow Me!” (which reveals your location) and “Fixing Radio Tower requires this and that materials!”, allowing you to coordinate with your team.
A team that talks with each other, even through quick chat instead of voice chat, is much less likely to end up a Traitor’s Donner Party Dinner compared to an overly quiet one.
Trap Awareness
Heading to an objective? Keep your eyes open: Objectives are prime places for ambushes since you absolutely need to go to them to win, especially the final Rescue Vehicle. Any Traitor worth their salt will likely put traps near them when they can. While one cannot see traps placed by other Survivors (Traitors can see traps placed by other Traitors but not those by Survivors too!), it’s best to expect them heading into ambush spots like the Helipad or Beacon, or even in front of the Cabin later in the game.
Keep a teammate near you too: Landmines can be stuck onto consoles directly, and can blow out half your HP bar if you try to activate said console. You’ll need your buddy to pull you back up if that happens.
As a Survivor though, you at least have access to Bear Traps too: Crafted from 2 pieces of Ore, these are very useful if your second objective is an Animal Wave console on a beacon. Simply set up a lot of bear traps around the Rescue Vehicle’s Animal Wave console, and watch the wolves get stuck while you ax their faces off.
Just warn your buddies beforehand so they are more careful. You can use your teammate’s footprint trails (We discuss these later in the article) to check where they walked to avoid their own traps.
Post-Mortem Aid
So you froze to death trying to find the Rescue Vehicle during a blizzard, got axed in the head after seeing one of your mates open a Traitor Crate, or lost a boxing match with a bear. You can still contribute to whichever team you’re on! You have the ability to drop a cache of food supplies, a ghostly campfire, heal nearby players in an AOE, or freeze an area around yourself, lowering the Warmth bars of anyone around you.
You can also teleport to any player, so there’s no hassle looking for them. You can use this either to keep your buddies alive or make life harder for whoever you want dead: You can heal your fellow Survivors during a fight once they figure out who the Traitor is, freeze Survivors or anyone you suspect to be a Traitor depending on what team you’re on, or even give a campfire for your fellows near the Helipad.
Eyes On The Prize
So you find someone who is sure to be the Traitor, probably because he tried to stick a pickax into your skull a bit too early into the game. You charge into them with your sickle, hit him a few times, but the jerk gets away.
It may be tempting to try hunting him down, but that might be exactly what they want you to do: You have to remember that there is a 15 minute time limit (The PC version has 30 minute timers for Normal mode, but the Mobile version is designed for shorter matches in general) to every match before an unstoppable Super Blizzard comes, which kills all campfires in the map, even the one in the Cabin.
Wasting time chasing them with an ax so you can get the kill is time spent not fixing the Rescue Vehicle, and you can simply return to the cabin and tell everyone to vote the guy out of it. That way, the cold will more likely kill him and you can focus on the tasks you need done before the timer expires.
Of course, if you manage to corner the guy instead or if you have a gun, you might actually catch him! Just make sure you don’t get voted out because everyone mistook YOU for the suspicious guy. Besides, they’ll likely come to you anyway.
INVENTORY MANAGEMENT
An important aspect to any match is managing your tight inventory, and learning to share and coordinate loot handling with your buddies. Even to the Traitor it is a thing to keep in mind, as ruining that coordination and messing with their loot (Through actions such as stealing from the Storage Chest or denying them resources from the Bunkers) can not only delay the actions of the Survivors, but worse, sow doubt between them.
Here are some notes related to inventory management. Inventory slots can be increased by crafting the Inventory item using 3 Animal Furs, found when you kill animals and loot their corpses, and 2 Mechanical Parts, usually found in normal Crates or crafted with 1 Wood and 1 Ore.
Survivor Airdrops
Survivor Crates will sometimes drop later in a match, with the drop location marked on the screen. If it does, you’re in luck! Not only does it contain food, repair materials and tools, it also contains a metric bumload of guns and can’t be opened by Traitors! Opening it will also unlock all structures on the map, even the ones busted shut by Traitors.
Usually though, trying to get this crate is a gamble: Sometimes, it may simply be more important to haul your butt to the Rescue Vehicle ASAP than partaking of the sweet, tempting loot inside this box of yuletide winter happiness. All those shiny, beautiful guns are useless to you if you get caught by the Mega Blizzard!
That being said, you’re a team, so it might help to discuss with the team which one of you should go grab the crate. Also note that if the Traitor finds it first, while they can’t use it, they could still ambush whoever tries to pop it open.
Keep in mind these are different from normal Supply Airdrops, which can be opened by anyone and are marked by orange rather than blue circles on the edge of your screen. Those are also occasionally booby-trapped with explosives, unlike Survivor Airdrops.
Use Storage, Not Just The Cabin’s
If your inventory is too full to do what you want, use storage boxes that you find around the map, and remember where they were. It’s usually a good idea to drop off materials in the Cabin Storage Box, but even when you’re out looking for the Rescue Vehicle, it might be a good idea to offload in a nearby Bunker, especially if you used a second slot for food rather than repair materials.
Check what the structure you’re fixing needs, then if you don’t have the space to carry it all, then you can either eat the food items or check one of the storage boxes to grab the materials, instead of running all the way back to the Cabin to craft them.
Store Materials, Grab Crafted Items
Speaking of storage, it would do you good to store wood, ore and berries in the chest instead of crafting them into repair parts first. This is because repair requirements are randomized every match, and nothing is more annoying than crafting a ton of Mechanical Parts only to see that the Rescue Vehicle needed Electronic Parts or Gas instead.
Storing the raw materials in the chest means other players can craft them as needed once you or someone else discovers the parts needed for repairs. This also allows other players to make tools for themselves. Just keep in mind that the Traitor can steal those materials, but that makes it harder for them to chug Energy Drinks since their inventories will get clogged if they do.
Solo Player? Solo Gear
Barring special arrangements with teammates who happen to be your friends, or a team of strangers willing to communicate with you, it’s usually a good idea to have only one tool per player. This is because of how repairing machines works.
They usually require 3 materials: Mechanical Parts, Electronic Parts, and Gas. Mechanical and Electric Parts can be crafted from 1 Wood and 1 Ore each, while Gas is made from 2 Berries each. That’s 3 base materials, making 3 final materials for repair. Once you’re ready to start repairing structures, you’ll need 3 empty slots to carry all those parts, then you run to each structure and dump the parts into them.
All this leaves you with 1 slot open to equipment if you’re in a room with strangers who stay silent the whole match even with quick chat. The Axe or Sickle is typically a better choice than the Pickaxe, as you can light Wood for campfires and you can eat Berries to stave off hunger, but you can only really use Ore to make parts for repairs or for things like radios and bear traps.
Ore is also usually found in small, dense clumps as opposed to scattered all over the place, meaning you don’t see Ore as often as you do Bushes or Trees, and you use a Pickaxe less often.
NAVIGATION
Getting lost while out away from civilization is one of the slower, more grueling ways to die in real life. Thankfully, the Mobile version of Project Winter is relatively easy to navigate compared to the less forgiving PC version, since the Mobile version is designed to have quicker games.
The main difference is how the minimap works: While on PC the minimap is divided int quadrants and has no markings, on Mobile it marks both your position and the location of the cabin, making the mechanic of destroying and sabotaging signs leading toward the Cabin rather useless for the Traitor. That being said, here are some notes related to travel.
Four Corners
You’ll notice a bulletin board next to the Cabin once you exit the front door. On it is a map showing the rather vague locations of the main structures on the map, without telling you what those structures actually are.
While the locations aren’t pin-point exact, they’re useful enough to help you find out where the Rescue Vehicle (Or a set of supply bunkers) is, and they’re often in one of the 4 corners of the map. Afterwards, you can set up a Beacon to let your team know where the Rescue Vehicle is.
A Cold, Deadly Bath
If you see water and it isn’t a Hot Spring, avoid it and look for a bridge, unless you’re in such a huge hurry and have HP to spare: Water in the freezing cold snow soaks into your clothes, translated by the game as a giant chunk of your Warmth bar going down every moment you’re in the water, to the point that standing in there for about a mere second or two can reduce a full Warmth bar to nothing.
Once the Warmth bar goes down, your Max HP will start going down until you set up a Campfire Kit or go into the Cabin. You can spot a Hot Spring fairly easily: It’s surrounded by dirt and not snow, because the heat melted the nearby snow away.
The only time running through Water might be worth the risk is if you’re making a bumrush to the helicopter while the Traitor or anyone else you might have angered (Maybe you hit a guy who came too close while you were mining, or you might have said something stupid on voice chat, and now they think you’re the Traitor) is running after you!
This puts you at high risk, but does the same to who ever is chasing you, and they can either take the cold hit or lose you by taking an alternate path. Just make sure you’re packing a Campfire Kit, or your destination is so close that you can make it there without dying of hypothermia.
TRAITOR RUNS
As a Traitor, your job is to make sure that as many Survivors as possible take a nap six feet deep in the snow by the end of the match. You usually have one teammate at most, and since everyone can use weapons or punch each other, you’re at a huge disadvantage early in the game.
This means you have to rely on deception and snag any opportunities you can to open Traitor Crates and pick loners off without being torn apart by the Survivors, who outnumber you heavily. Your main advantage is your easier access to guns and Energy Drinks, which can turn the tables later in the game.
Especially once everyone runs to the Rescue Vehicle, which is usually the place for a climactic final ambush. Note that the nature of the game actually allows you some more indirect murder methods: It is also possible for you to sneakily delay tasks instead by stealing materials, distracting them by calling for help, or locking Bunkers shut using Sabotage Tools from Traitor Crates, letting hunger and cold do the killing for you. Here are some tips for backstabbing psychos.
Tracking Trails
See the trails behind the players running? You can use those to track players, as they linger for a rather long time. Keep an eye out for them to find other players. Keep an eye on your own trail too: A trail passing a Traitor Crate leading to you might clue a sharp-eyed Survivor in on you being a Traitor.
You can try making your trail more erratic to delay people stalking you, though usually you might be better off running as fast as you can. Just keep the trail you and others leave behind in mind at all times.
Traitor Crates
The Traitor Tutorial shows crossbows and the works inside Traitor Chests, but the reality in an actual match is less predictable: You’re far more likely to see some gun parts, a couple of berries, and a bear trap in a Traitor Crate.
You’ll need at least two of them if you want a Shotgun, and chugging energy drinks will help you kill Survivors quickly enough not to let them escape. Make sure never to leave the Gun Parts and Drinks for the survivors to take, lest they make guns and get stat buffs for themselves.
Opening these is usually a choice for more aggressive Traitors, as while these boxes raise an alarm when opened making it much easier for the Survivors to know you’re the psychotic weirdo trying to murder them, you get the ability to murder them much, much faster.
Even if they lock you out of the cabin and stop you from making a gun, enough energy drinks will still let you rip the other survivors to pieces with that axe you crafted at the start of the match, and the berries inside the boxes will keep you running long enough.
Sabotage Kits
One other thing Traitor Crates give you are Sabotage Kits, which are kept separate from your main Inventory and allow you to sabotage things like objectives and bunker doors. They can give you some time to set up as they can destroy already repaired objective structures, forcing the players to waste time fixing them again.
They can also be used to lock doors so Survivors can’t get the juicy supplies inside. This makes it not only take longer to get what they need to repair things, but it also allows you to force them into an open door that you booby trapped with landmines (Helpfully, landmines can be applied directly to Crates and consoles, and are hidden from Survivors if done so), bear traps, you and your shotgun, or all of that at once.
If you manage to beat the Survivors to the Survivor Airdrop, you best hope you have some of these: While you cannot open a Survivor Airdrop crate, you can still lock it shut!
Prime targets for Sabotage include bunker door consoles, objectives, and the Armory Bunker which is marked by a crosshair symbol. Especially the Armory: While it may be tempting to open the door and take the guns inside, keep in mind that the Armory requires 3 people to open.
This means the Survivors get access to the guns too. You already have better access to guns compared to Survivors thanks to Traitor Crates and Gun Parts, so just lock that door and don’t get too greedy.
Traitor Airdrops
Should the Survivors take too long to fix things, either through your sabotage or, if you’re lucky, their own mistakes, a Traitor Airdrop occurs. Traitor Airdrops spawn a new supply cache for you via parachute somewhere on the map if an objective’s timer runs out. It acts much like a Traitor Crate, often containing similar supplies like bear traps, crossbows, tranquilizer guns and energy drinks.
It has one special thing that makes it better than a Traitor Crate though: It allows you to use Sabotage Kits to fire up a new power for you, such as telling you where the Rescue Vehicle waiting spot is so you can ambush them ahead of time, locking everyone out of the Cabin for a few minutes, or other such funny lethal pranks. Getting one of those up can spell the difference between a safe escape for the Survivors, or them winding up a tragic headline on the 9 o’clock news by your bloody hands.
Ambush Points
Knowing where the objectives of the Survivors are is important as a Traitor: Places the players are forced to go through are the best places to ambush them. The Arsenal, any Bunkers that happen to be near the Rescue Vehicle, the Survivor Airdrop if you beat them to it, and especially the Rescue Vehicle (ESPECIALLY if it’s a helicopter!) at either the midgame or the last minute can make good spots to lay a few Bear Traps to damage people, or even simply delay them from doing their tasks.
If you’re feeling spicy, you can even throw off suspicion from yourself by being helpful, even finding the Rescue Vehicle for your “teammates” and firing up the beacon yourself. Then you wait for the survivors there with a gun and some bear traps after sabotaging it! Make sure you don’t get seen too early, and don’t let them run if they do.
You can access the Rescue Vehicle easily by using Traitor Hatches, but make sure you don’t get seen. Not because they’ll find you out, by the time you prepare for a Rescue Vehicle ambush, it’s too late for that: You just don’t want them with their guards up and expecting a fight!
Weak Earlygame, Strong Lategame
Traitors are typically heavily outnumbered by Survivors, but have more access to powerful murder implements such as landmines, energy drinks, and guns. This means Traitors must be patient: They cannot rush a murder lest they get spotted by the entire team and simply mobbed to death.
A Traitor must at least hold the Survivors’ trust long enough to power up, maybe get a Shotgun or some Landmines for booby traps, then find opportunities to kill Survivors one at a time. One can help out with the first objective to throw off suspicion, then inconspicuously leave to find traitor crates and lock Bunker doors as the team scatters to look for the Helipad or Rescue Beacon.
Words Can Kill
Remember how we said Survivors can communicate with each other? You can also take advantage of that to sow discord or waste the Survivors’ time. With voice chat you can do a lot more, but even with just quick chat you can say “Follow Me!”or “I need help!” to lure someone into an ambush, or simply to put them on a fool’s errand.
Heck, yelling “Help me!” while being chased by animals is probably the least suspicious way to lure people into a bear or pack of wolves, though that does run the risk of them killing the bear and eating it, thus making them less dead than when you started!
One advantage quick chat has for you over voice chat though? It’s much easier to hide your lies with it if you don’t have the vocal equivalent of a stone cold poker face, so take advantage of it if you’re dealing with randoms who don’t mind not using voice chat.
Guns Guns Guns!
As a Traitor, you’re likely going to get a gun before the Survivors do. Here are the types of ranged weapons available to you. Note that barring the Shotgun, they’re a bit poor in a prolonged fight, especially against animals, and are best used to initiate a fight rather than end one. You can then switch to melee to finish your target, since it has a wider swing area and is faster to use.
Crossbows are the weakest but easiest to find ranged weapon in the game if you’re a Traitor, sometimes found vanilla even poisoned in Traitor Crates. Never pull it out in front of another player unless you fully intend to kill them right then and there, since it’s the easiest way to get confirmed as a Traitor much too early.
That being said, it’s a quiet weapon, useful if you want to initiate an ambush without attracting your target’s friends to your position. Especially since it can be upgraded to a Poison Crossbow by adding Poison to it, made from Herbs and Gas.
Tranquilizer Guns are best used in conjunction with another weapon, since they do only similar damage to Crossbows, but can slow a player down AND render them unable to use any communication methods such as voice or quick chat to call for help.
Open up with a Tranquilizer gun, then either switch to a Shotgun or run them down with your gathering tool. They aren’t craftable in either version of the game, and are rare finds inside Traitor crates and Traitor Airdrops.
The Explosive Crossbow, as cool as it sounds, isn’t the best choice since it is quite rare, and while it has AOE, it still only hits as hard as a normal Crossbow. It is exceedingly rare on Mobile, and isn’t worth crafting on PC since the Bolt Action Rifle is craftable there.
Unless you’re very lucky, you won’t see these things over the course of a normal Mobile match. And even if you do, that typically means there’s a Bolt Action Rifle nearby, and you should grab that instead.
Shotguns are not only a good choice, but often the only choice available if you’re playing the Mobile version of the game. A shotgun blast up close can hit 5 times as hard as a Crossbow, and the gun has a narrow enough spread to be decent at range should you charge your attack. It can blow chunks of HP off an attacker easily.
Bolt Action Rifles are a favorite among PC players, since while they hit 1 crossbow bolt weaker than a point blank Shotgun attack, they maintain the still incredible damage along a much longer range. They also only cost 2 gun parts on PC, like the Shotgun. A Rifle and a Bear Trap can be an utterly lethal mix, especially against unaware players rushing blindly into a booby-trapped Helipad console.
The problem? You can’t craft them on the Mobile version, in spite of what the in-game wiki tells you! Take these whenever they’re available, usually from the Arsenal or Survivor Airdrop, since they’re typically considered the strongest weapon in the game.
Semi-Auto Rifles cost 3 Gun Parts, making them the most expensive gun in the game to craft on PC, and are even more rare on Mobile since you can’t craft them there as of this writing. They only hit as hard as Crossbows, but fire much faster.
This makes them okay for a fight, but most people prefer the Bolt Action Rifle when that’s available, mobile or PC, since burst damage is typically considered more useful than raw DPS. Especially since players are actually fairly hard to hit even with Mobile’s target locking, so you might as well make your hits count.
And that’s the end of our Project Winter Mobile beginner’s guide. Watch your back out in the snow, and don’t hesitate to give us your own tips in the comments below!