I remember back in the day cause I spent many hours on Midwinter.
First, the huge booklet. Iirc there was a full 30 pages of background story. Because a meteorite hit earth, diamond dust effect caused Earth climate to change to a ice age in a matter of years.
Midwinter is supposed to be the Acore Island, but imagine the ocean have lost 100meters height. The story of Midwinter start roughly 100 years after the meteorite hit earth and the remnant of Humanity start to strive on this island. Geothermal plants and radios can be found, and factories...
You are Captain John Stark (heard that name somwhere) and you're the chief of the militia of Midwinter. All radios are shut down and Stark quickly finds out a force led by General Masters. You have just your skis, and a rifle, and you're chased by an army coming from the southern east of the map. Your task is to form a resistance force with contacts, other settlers. Those are many, but you can only recruit them if you're in good standing. For example, Stark can recruit a young girl, who is the only one who can recruit a geothermal engineer. You can use your skii, different types of snowcars, you can fly in a hang glider...
You can play in real time, first person style all the character in your party for two game hours. Some can be skiing, some can be resting, some can just stay in a settlement or even drive together in a snowcar. You have several victory conditions. Destroy the General Masters hq, take all 3 radios to instantly recruit everyone on the map, or take control of the 42 geothermal plants on the map.
The game can be really hard, nigh impossible by adding mortars and bombers. Basically, you're in the middle of nowhere happily skiing, then a plane comes (recon). If you don't shoot it, mortars will shoot your location. Or bombers comes and bom you to death.
Once injured (from trips, bombs, mortars, enemy snocats missiles, believe me you can fall really easily and it's your main source of danger), it is quite difficult to be healed if you're alone.
I remember beating it twice, but it took me like two months my first real try, and I had deactivated mortars and bombers. Recruiting ppl and organising your two hours time was really fun. Fighting in snowcars against enemy battalion was really hard and you got injured real fast. However, moviong in the snow, trying to move around enemy position was super fun.
This game was wayy ahead of its time.
