What Makes A Cool Winter Level?

I really like Circhester and the ebtirety of the Crown Thundra dlc. It has some of the best winter music I've heard. Another one I enjoy for feeling like a winter level with calm music that somehow fits the tone is the escape from echo base mission in lego starwars Complete saga.

This video was so high quality it legit gave me the chills

this makes Halo Infinites campaign hurt even more

the winter area in It takes two was my favorite

GTA 5 starts cold!

The temperature 😎
(I'll defenestrate myself out the room thanks you)

The beginning🤣🤣💀

You missed a couple of games when listing first winter levels: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game (Snowy Toronto) and Grand Theft Auto V (North Yankton).

ristar is great

I love to see tropical freeze rep!
Although my favorite ice level is from my favorite game, A Short Hike. Its a story about a bird who is trying to climb a mountain called hawk peak so she can get cell reception on her phone.

Eventually you get to the snow covered area nearing the end of the game. throughout the game, the collectables, golden feathers, are used to climb and flap your wings, and they replenish when you touch the ground.

but once you near hawk peak, feathers freeze after being used up, adding resource management to the game. you can only unfreeze your feathers by going to campfires or hot springs found on the mountain, until you finally make it to the top.

I dont want to spoil why it is that she needs cell reception, as its a very heartfelt ending and i recommend you play it for yourself. its not a very hard, expensive, or long game.

Design doc got cool puns in the title (cool because cold puns)

I've always loved ice physics, I even enjoyed the ice level in Soul Calibur 2.
There's just something really fun about sliding around everywhere and managing the momentum.
Never found anyone who agrees with me though, everyone else seems to hate ice levels with (ironically) fiery passion.

When he started talking about ice floors in fighting games I could only imagine Smash Bros Brawl sitting there like that side eye puppet.

Mortal combat has two installments witch ice levels that have changed mechanics.

to be honest... terraria ice biome is great.

every water surface is frozen over by ice. but it's not solid thick ice so if you land on it from too high above you break through. which is an issue as contact with water in the ice biome makes you move slower for some time, also, if you're at the start of your game you might not have an easy way out of that and even drown. very accurate.
of course there are ice themed enemies which can inflict the cold debuff and slow movement on you aswell but you can find specific ice biome loot like boots that increase your movementspeed on ice and prevent breaking through. also all earth and stone is replaced by snow and ice (solid this time).
Then there is a chance of a blizzard occuring in which your vision is strongly reduced and you move slower. plus enemies can spawn now, even during daytime and some special enemies only spawn during blizzards.

I think that counts.

no mention of Fireboy and Watergirl 3: the Ice Temple? disappointing.
(genuinely I do like the physics it brings though — Fireboy can move faster on ice but can't climb icy slopes, while Watergirl is slowed on ice but can cling and climb. it's a puzzle game that can be played with one or two players (if one player, they have to control both characters at once). it gives a lot of interesting mechanical combinations that aren't often seen in the other games in the series, thanks to essentially giving them two different movements so they can't be used as interchangeably — rather than just achieving that with the water/lava pools that completely block a path, there's a bit more flexibility)

No I Am Setsuna, really? That game is the embodiment of a winter adventure, specially on setting the melancholic vibe

Harsh winter levels to me always represent a man vs. nature setting, where making progress is a constant fight. Oftentimes, the landscape is uninhabited or only inhabited by the hardiest of foes. I will always remember making my way up to Mt. Silver as a final frontier, with the mountain against me, all to fight Red.
I think along that vein, winter-themed hubs/safe areas always seem a little cozier and intimate. It sets a colder, darker tone as the default, so any warmth or light radiates a little stronger. An example for this would be Whitebrim Front in FFXIV. The memory of questing in the harsh weather and then returning to the hub, though functionally identical to any hub, always felt a little warmer. Home felt a little more welcoming in Coerthas.

Croc Legend of the Gobbos on PS1 had some neat winter levels as I recall.

PHENDRANA DRIIIIIIFTS

The way that donkey Kong tropical freeze uses ice levels is very similar to super Marios sunshine, the whole game is it summer and beach themed

The Mega Man Zero 3 opening stage is such a cool intro to Omega, and the snow enhances the mood.

Winter can also be great use for multiplayer games. Take Ark, the snow biome can be very unforgiving, especially for unprepared players. However if you manage to build a base in the snow biome, your base becomes much harder to raid for enemy players. It’s in a location that’s much harder to reach, and if you build ACs in your base you can defend your base wearing flak armor which is much more resilient than the fur that your attackers have to wear to resist the elements.

i swear to god, every snow themed area/level in a game has banger music. this is universally true.

Push Comes to Shovel is an all winter themed game ❄️

Metroid Prime's "phendrana drifts"

there's an area in Genshin Impact called Dragonspine, that's basically a perpetually winter mountain. the lore you find there is depressing, the environment beautiful, yet hostile because of the Sheer Cold mechanic (a temperature mechanic similar to BotW's). it's why it's my favorite place in the entire game.

sly cooper had a pretty good winter level

winter in survival games at time is brutal, a mild annoyance, or the entire theme of the game. the long dark is an example of a game where everything is snow, or in sons of the forest it's just cold, decreasing food supplies and stamina.

"We're going to a goddamned ice world, oh its such a pain.
Slipping all over the place, into a pit without a trace, IT BRINGS ME DISTAIN!"

No way bro just dissed my shoes

this is a good thing to focus on but i just wanna say its kinda hilarious that you talk about how "winter theming can apply to a level in ANY genre" because like....why wouldn't it? Winter is a real season on earth and specific genres don't necessarily exclude a whole 1/4 of the seasonal cycle lolll

Desert levels next plz!!

The Roblox-styled zombie survival game Unturned has a winter themed map called Yukon, based in Yukon, Canada. Compared to the other maps, it's the snowiest. Not only does the player have to deal with the common obstacles of other survival and zombie games like hunger, thirst, and of course the zombies, they'll also have to deal with the lack of heat in an admittedly small environment with almost all of one side of it being a giant frozen lake. Can't forget the resources that are very rare in this map, even more so compared to the other maps.

god the music from phendrana drift is amazing! i love that game all the sound tracks are perfection

Is there no kingdom two crown enjoys you all got to admit that when winter hits in that game you start to panic and brace for the worst with the greed getting more painful, less money flowing as farmers can't farm any more and you can no longer fish. or does this one not count... Fuck

The sand castle form bug fables is a great ice level

Deep Rock Galactic does something interesting with its ice area. The Glacial Strata has probably the largest number of unique mechanics of any of the games biomes.
It has variants of the common enemies from other biomes who take more fire damage and less ice damage, along with some different attacks.
The cold status effect build up doesn't go away for the player over time like it does everywhere else, instead requiring you to stand near a hotspot or be hit with fire damage, probably from another player.
Blizzards will happen periodically, slowing you down and dealing cold build up to you, on top of the cold build up you already get from some enemies and the wind gusts coming out of parts of the walls.
There's soft snow that lessens fall damage but slows you down when you walk through it, slippery ice patches that only effect the players movement, and even fairly well hidden chasms which only break open when you walk over them, making an open room a potential minefield o pitfalls if you don't stay alert.
small blobs on the walls can be damaged to make a platform which can be surprisingly helpful, given that they spawn in random places when the mission loads, and some plants on the floor create a large icy explosion when damaged, great for stopping hordes of enemies in their tracks for very little ammo, and large icicles can be shot from the ceiling to hurt anything below them.
The icy terrain can be stripped away, all be it slowly, with fire damage from a number of different weapons
And if all that wasn't enough, most of the surfaces are slightly reflective and the dirt that blocks tunnels even has a different, mor crystalline texture than in any other biome, though these are both just cosmetic.
And despite all this uniqueness, it doesn't stand out significantly against the other biomes. Some of the only things it shares with other biomes is its 2-hit terrain and the floating jellyfish-like Naedocyte Shocker, which only spawn naturally in one other biome. But all the biomes have unique traits and hazards, so even with all its wintry wonder, the Glacial Strata fits right in with the messed up, backwards, hostile planet that is Hoxxes IV.

A "cool" winter level.

ba dum tss

Cool video. I hope we get something similar for desert levels eventually. I remember really liking how immersive the Gerudo desert in Zelda games was, and I was really looking forward to a great experience when they added a desert in Genshin Impact, only to be really disappointed by it feeling so empty and not immersive at all. I think it has something to do with how that game didn't use any environmental hazards that deserts are known for, like quicksand, sandstorms, desert heat etc, so it ended up feeling like any other area, just with some different visuals. But I digress.
Still, would be fun to analyze different environments and how they can be used in gaming =)