Permafrost Early Access Review – 30 Hours in the Cold

Thirty Hours Alone in the Snow, and I’m Still Not Sure I’m Ready to Leave

I first played Permafrost roughly two years ago. Now, after around 30 hours solo in the Early Access build, I’m still freezing, still exploring, and still finding reasons to go back.

7/10

Reviewed on: PC

Playtime: Around 30 hours solo

Display: 32:9 super ultrawide

Two years ago, I came away from my Permafrost preview wanting more. The cold, the struggle for warmth, and the constant need to think about your next move already worked for me back then.

Now I have put around 30 hours into the version heading into Early Access, all of it solo, and strangely my feelings have not changed that much. Permafrost can be beautiful. It can be brutally difficult. It can swallow hours without you noticing.

And some of the bugs and glitches I remember from two years ago are still here.

Watch the Gameplay

Watch Permafrost gameplay on YouTube

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The Cold Is Still the Real Enemy

This is a survival game where being careless can kill you surprisingly fast.

You are constantly thinking about warmth, food, water, shelter, and how far you can travel before turning around. Heat sources are not everywhere, and when your temperature starts dropping while something hostile is coming after you, things can go bad very quickly.

Sometimes the solution is basically: drink some vodka, run like hell, and hope you reach somewhere warm.

A Permafrost survivor warming their hands over a heater inside a snowy shelter.

Finding heat can mean the difference between pushing onward and freezing before you get there.

The current build gives you Story, Survival, and Custom options. Story is aimed more toward exploration, base-building, and narrative, while Survival gives you scarcer resources, harsher conditions, and tougher consequences. Custom lets you shape the experience more around how you want to play.

Whichever way you approach it, the game can still be a real struggle. You learn quickly that wasting resources can come back to bite you.

That was true two years ago, too. Back then, simply getting enough wood together for a fire could feel like progress. Thirty hours into this version, that survival foundation remains one of Permafrost‘s biggest strengths.

You Will Explore. A Lot.

A huge amount of my time has been spent moving through the world, looking for supplies, figuring out where I am supposed to go, and slowly learning what is worth carrying.

At first, it can take a long time to understand what you should be doing. Then you start getting the hang of it.

Or at least you think you do.

It is still hard.

Two survivors looking out from an ice cave toward a snowy forest in Permafrost.

Exploration keeps pulling me farther into Permafrost’s frozen world.

You need a base, but I would not waste the opening hours trying to build some huge palace. Put together something simple and useful first. Get warm. Store your stuff. Keep moving.

The building side works just fine for this kind of open-world survival game, and the crafting, skill system, and upgraded recipes feel much more developed than what I remember from the earlier build. That is one area where I can clearly see the work that has gone into the game.

If I could make one wish for Permafrost, it would be to add a little Cairn-style climbing into the mix. Then this would be dangerously close to my perfect survival game.

Hunting Dinner

I found a solid rifle surprisingly early, and that changed things.

A Permafrost survivor running through deep snow with a large bear close behind.

Wildlife can turn a supply run into a much bigger problem very quickly.

The bow is not bad, but larger animals can take several shots. With the rifle, it can be one shot and an elk is down.

Then it is survival-game business as usual: skin it, take the meat, get what you can from the carcass, find some wood, and throw dinner on the campfire.

That loop works because hunting is not just another map activity. You are doing it because you need food and because staying alive is expensive.

My Dog Is Basically a Backpack With Legs

I like having the dog around, but after around 30 hours, his most useful job for me has been carrying more loot.

That is not nothing. Inventory space disappears quickly in Permafrost, so having a four-legged mule following me around is useful.

A Permafrost survivor and dog approaching a deer beside a snow-covered cabin.

The dog is useful company, but in my playthrough the extra carrying capacity has mattered most.

Maybe he will save my life later and I will have to apologize.

For now: good dog. Hold this junk.

Sleeping Needs Work

The sleeping system has been one of my bigger frustrations.

Every time I went to bed, even if it was early in the morning, I woke up the next morning. In a survival game where time, cold, and movement are so important, that can make sleeping feel more like a skip button than something you have to manage.

If it is getting dark and freezing outside, sleep and suddenly it is another morning.

I would like more control over that.

This World Looks Fantastic in 32:9

This might be my favorite part.

I played Permafrost in 32:9 super ultrawide, and it can look absolutely beautiful.

Trees, snow, sky, frozen landscapes, abandoned places — everything can stretch across the screen in a way that makes exploration feel huge.

A survivor holding a bright red flare in a snow-covered ruined city in Permafrost.

The frozen city can look fantastic when the lighting and weather come together.

I was born and raised in Norway, so snow, cold, dark winters, and brutal weather are not exactly foreign to me. This kind of setting works for me.

Kind of.

There are reasons I left.

But visually, Permafrost gets the frozen atmosphere right surprisingly often.

Someone Forgot the Superglue

Then you find the terrain splitting apart.

One glitch I ran into is pretty wild: sections of the world can visibly separate like two enormous plates that somebody forgot to glue together.

They need some stronger superglue here.

Permafrost 32:9 gameplay showing a large visible seam splitting the snowy terrain.

The “superglue” problem: a huge seam visibly splits the snowy terrain into separate sections.

If this were just one random Early Access glitch, I would laugh and move on. The problem is that some of the bugs and glitches feel very familiar from the build I played roughly two years ago.

Early Access means unfinished. I expect bugs. I expect things to break.

But if I recognize the same kind of problems two years later, I am going to mention them.

The Church Area Is Rough

Around the church and nearby areas, the technical problems become harder to ignore.

I was not really watching the framerate counter while I played, and most of the time the game felt smooth to me. The counter is visible in my gameplay video if you want to look at the performance more closely.

The technical roughness around this area is still worth mentioning because the rest of the world can be so convincing. Even though the framerate generally felt smooth to me, the glitches here can pull you out of the experience.

The church also becomes part of the game’s mission and trading flow. You talk to people, trade, and pick up things to do rather than simply wandering forever without direction.

Thirty Hours Still Feels Like the Beginning

This is the strange problem with reviewing an open-world survival game.

When are you finished?

I have spent around 30 hours alone in Permafrost, and it still almost feels like first impressions.

I have built, crafted, hunted, explored, frozen, fought, looted, traveled, and followed missions. And I still feel like I need another 30 hours.

So that is what I am going to do.

I want to find out whether there is a real endpoint to the current Early Access content, or whether I eventually reach the point where the answer is simply: keep building and continue freezing my ass off.

That is also why I am treating this score as my verdict on the Early Access game I have played so far, not some claim that I have seen every corner of an open-world survival game before launch.

Verdict — 7/10

Right now, Permafrost is a 7/10 for me.

The number could move as I keep playing.

I am having a blast. That is important. Despite the bugs, performance drops, strange sleeping behavior, and technical problems, I keep wanting to go back.

The survival loop remains strong. Exploration works. Crafting and progression have improved. The frozen world can look fantastic, especially in 32:9.

But Permafrost is also entering Early Access with issues that need attention, and seeing problems that remind me of the version I played two years ago is harder to excuse than encountering something completely new.

There is a very good survival game underneath the ice.

SpaceRocket Games just needs to keep working on the cracks.

7/10 — Good, with a lot of room to grow.

And I am not finished freezing yet.

Permafrost

Release: Early Access on October 9, 2026

Genre: Open-world survival / crafting / adventure

Developer / Publisher: SpaceRocket Games / Toplitz Productions

Platforms: PC via Steam, GOG, Epic Games Store

Permafrost Early Access Review – Beautiful, Brutal and Still Frozen Around the Edges