Steam News6 April 20262mo ago

DEVPOST1: Early Access is Live - The road ahead

Hey! This is the first of hopefully many, many posts I'll make here. The Snow War is now live in Early Access and some people even have magically found and are playing the game!

In this update4

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Full Snow War update

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Repeated intro

Hey!

What changed

1 fix4 additions3 changes0 removals

Gameplay
Maps
Server

changedWe will continue developing the game from here, until unforeseeable future. Our hope is to reach 1.0 by the end of the next year, but we will do this being responsible for keeping up the quality of our work and quality of our own and our close ones lives.

changedThe Road aheadWhen I say WE, I talk abot me (Teemu, lead dev, modeling, maps, coding) along with Jan (coder) and Atte (music, ideas, design, testing).

addedNew MapI have begun working on a new map. There is not much I can share yet, other than two things: This will take us a bit pack to the roots of the original HL1 mod and it is a place where snow might not be the most common element. The map will also link up to a new game mode we have in place, which will be asymmetric CTF style gameplay. Stay tuned for this one. Things might also change depending how the playtesting goes for as this progresses. When it comes to making maps, it is rarely a complete 100% vision when you start making it, but it is more akin to "oh let's add a happy little tree here" x 1000.

addedHatsWe will add hats. There will be more than two.

addedSteam achievementsWe will add Steam achievements to the game. We are trying to make something fresh here, so it will not just be all "get 10 eliminations", "get 100 eliminations" but something else as well. Any ideas, drop by our Discord !

fixedCode fixes & weapon system refreshThis should not be obviously visible to the player, but we will rewrite the weapon system we currently have in place. While preparing for the EA-release we had numerous issues with the current Snowbow mechanics. This was related to it being interconnected with the "standard snowball system". We decided we want to take this system apart and rebuild it almost entirely using C++. C++ is this a fancy thing we use to write the game with.

Snow War changes

changedWhen I say WE, I talk abot me (Teemu, lead dev, modeling, maps, coding) along with Jan (coder) and Atte (music, ideas, design, testing).

addedI have begun working on a new map. There is not much I can share yet, other than two things: This will take us a bit pack to the roots of the original HL1 mod and it is a place where snow might not be the most common element. The map will also link up to a new game mode we have in place, which will be asymmetric CTF style gameplay. Stay tuned for this one. Things might also change depending how the playtesting goes for as this progresses. When it comes to making maps, it is rarely a complete 100% vision when you start making it, but it is more akin to "oh let's add a happy little tree here" x 1000.

addedWe will add hats. There will be more than two.

addedWe will add Steam achievements to the game. We are trying to make something fresh here, so it will not just be all "get 10 eliminations", "get 100 eliminations" but something else as well. Any ideas, drop by our Discord !

This is the first of hopefully many, many posts I'll make here.

The Snow War is now live in Early Access and some people even have magically found and are playing the game! The success has not been great, but don't worry: This has always been a passion project for us, and the continuing it is not up to us getting financial success right away, or at all for that matter.

We will continue developing the game from here, until unforeseeable future. Our hope is to reach 1.0 by the end of the next year, but we will do this being responsible for keeping up the quality of our work and quality of our own and our close ones lives.

Please join our Discord as this is where we are most easily reachable, if you have any ideas, questions and so on.

The Road ahead

When I say WE, I talk abot me (Teemu, lead dev, modeling, maps, coding) along with Jan (coder) and Atte (music, ideas, design, testing).

So: WE have now established the next roadmap for the next months of development:

New Map

I have begun working on a new map. There is not much I can share yet, other than two things: This will take us a bit pack to the roots of the original HL1 mod and it is a place where snow might not be the most common element. The map will also link up to a new game mode we have in place, which will be asymmetric CTF style gameplay. Stay tuned for this one. Things might also change depending how the playtesting goes for as this progresses. When it comes to making maps, it is rarely a complete 100% vision when you start making it, but it is more akin to "oh let's add a happy little tree here" x 1000.

Hats

We will add hats. There will be more than two.

Steam achievements

We will add Steam achievements to the game. We are trying to make something fresh here, so it will not just be all "get 10 eliminations", "get 100 eliminations" but something else as well. Any ideas, drop by our Discord!

Code fixes & weapon system refresh

This should not be obviously visible to the player, but we will rewrite the weapon system we currently have in place. While preparing for the EA-release we had numerous issues with the current Snowbow mechanics. This was related to it being interconnected with the "standard snowball system". We decided we want to take this system apart and rebuild it almost entirely using C++. C++ is this a fancy thing we use to write the game with.

We already have a second weapon 70% complete with arts and mechanics, but we want to take short pause and make sure we have a more robust system in place. We want to avoid any lock-ups or situations where some has an unfair advantage/disadvantage due to us having a less than optimal solution. This will hopefully also open us to make new weapons in more flexible & creative ways.

Questions, Comments?

So there we go! I will try and keep posting these as we make progress. I am also looking on how we can provide Early Access players access to the content we are working on. We might do one server that runs a work-in-progress version of the map once we have a crude version of it, so you can take an early sneak peek.

But until next time, let's chat in Discord/here and keep cool everyone ːsteamhappyː

Teemu aka Zilppuri

Source

Steam News / 6 April 2026

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