Aim at fate, fight by our side!
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."
—Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein
Snowbreak: Containment Zone is a Third-Person Shooter developed by Amazing Seasun Games (formerly Seasun Games of Girl Café Gun fame), and currently available for iOS, Android, and PC. It was released worldwide on July 20, 2023.
In 2057, Humanity had only recently emerged into a "Post-Juvosis" era after Yggdrasil Enterprises synthesized Baldr Inhibitors to treat the disease. Just when society was on the cusp of a new golden age, a gigantic being of unknown origin smashed into a stadium where the 8th Valkyrie Games Finals were taking place. This became known as the "First Descent" of the mysterious Titans. When the first Titan, Ymir, suddenly disappeared, it left behind Titagen, a snow-like pollutant that forced Yggdrasil to quickly build walls around the corrupted city, transforming it into Containment Zone Aleph.
Three years later, a Yggdrasil officer crash lands in the center of Aleph. Despite his missing three years of memories, he is quickly promoted to Adjutant of the Heimdall Force, a paramilitary unit whose operatives are all "Manifestations": humans who, for varying reasons, gained powers of mythological gods. Together, Heimdall will have to venture into the Containment Zone on company orders to deal with bandits, scavengers, cultists, Titans and even more mysteries that lie deep within Aleph and even Yggdrasil itself...
In Snowbreak players control teams of up to three Operatives to defeat enemies with a combination of gunplay and powers, with their skills changing depending on whether they are on or off the field.
This game contains examples of the following tropes
- A.K.A.-47: Weapons are never called by their real names, instead having nicknames or embellished titles. Familiar weapons like the HK416 (Assault Rifle) and the Kriss Vector (SMG) among many other exist in the game.
- And I Must Scream: The victims in the vicinity of the Fifth Research Institute got caught up in an explosion that scattered their particles across time and space, leaving them "ghosts" trapped in an instant of time, and only occasionally perceivable for a moment. Some, like Will Anderson, still have some consciousness, which only make things worse for them.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- Like many Gacha Games, Snowbreak has an "Extraction" system that encourages players to obtain duplicate characters to enhance their abilities. However, every character has a "Personal File" that be used to grind Extractions a few times per day. It might take a long time to reach max Manifestation, but it certainly can be done for free.
- Playable stages are littered with Exploding Barrels; to make it easier to use them, aiming at these objects will have them display a circle indicating their Area of Effect, so there is no need to guess if enemies are in range.
- The "Raining Fire" Operation, where one grinds Logistics Squads, has a progress meter that releases one 5-Star Officer every 100 points. Players can freely select which squad — ie, Set Bonus — to grind for, and each Officer is provided sequentially. This makes gaining the Logistics Squads effortless, only limited by one's patience in grinding the squads one wants.
- While there is a Sprint Meter, it is only used during combat sequences, and one can freely sprint around a stage as long as they need to.
- Your Operators cannot be eliminated by Ring Out like enemies, so accidentally falling down a chasm won't mean an automatic hit to your squad's headcount. The Operator who fell will instead respawn right where they were with only a miniscule amount of health lost.
- To compensate for the long animations of Ultimate skills, your Operatives are actually rendered non-targetable and invulnerable while winding them up, and in solo missions will cause the game to effectively pause while you're at it. This also means the player won't be unfairly handicapped by them in missions with timed challenges, as the timer will halt once the Ultimate animation started.
- Several characters are designed for support functions, including their Ultimate skills. Therefore, players can select whether the quickfire Ultimates will "Switch In" the off-field characters on activation or not. This can allow players to focus on one main on-field character, while letting the support characters pop their Ults to further supplement their main character without having to switch them back in right after.
- Anti-Grinding: Many game functions, Operative levels, and that of their gear, are gated behind your Adjutant level, the XP for which can only be increased by doing content that actually requires Presence to enter at a rate of 1:1. Side content that can be done at no cost like Neural Simulation or Gigalink do not contribute any Adjutant XP, which when coupled with the game's severely throttled Presence economy, makes it very slow and tedious to actually raise one's level enough to make meaningful progression as the experience requirement soars into the thousands later on.
- Anti Poop-Socking: Enforced with the Presence system and related economy. Unlike similar games of this genre, players aren't given a full energy top up upon hitting a new level, with the Presence granted being roughly half of their current maximum. While it is possible to refill by spending DigiCash or using Baldr Inhibitors, they too have their own limitations, with all three only restoring small, flat amounts that rapidly become less economical when spammed, due to the former having an increasing cost each time and is limited to ten uses daily, and the Inhibitors being very limited in quantity. This means that no amount of Bribing Your Way to Victory will allow the player to grind to their heart's content, since all of the stages with drops that are vital to leveling and upgrading Operators have energy costs attached, and every player will have to take a break at some point, sooner or later.
- An Interior Designer Is You: Snowbreak's Base System allows players to give their Operatives bedrooms, and subsequently buy furniture to place in them. Each Operative has select furniture, so their rooms can't be freely customized, but one can see their personalities express themselves as they get fully decorated.
- Arbitrary Gun Power: All weapon classes subscribe heavily to this idea. As each weapon has its own damage stat that's influenced by its own and/or the Operator's passives, how big or small a firearm looks has no bearing on its stopping power. As a result, a smaller but more extensively-upgraded weapon tends to significantly outperform a much larger one that's not invested in as much, leading to the hilarity of a low-level sniper rifle taking several magazines to whittle down a mid-tier enemy with headshots, while an adequately-leveled pistol can drop them in less than a handful.
- Armor Is Useless:
- Operatives have pre-defined base health and DEF values that are completely independent of their outward appearance, which goes even further when they're equipped with premium cosmetics that are more often than not Vapor Wear or literal swimsuits, which do not hamper their ability to eat damage whatsoever. Fenny in particular takes the cake due to her nature as a Shotgun user and tank, yet all of her variants and outfits can be summed up as "tactical minidresses".
- On the enemy side, how bulky a unit looks tells the player very little, as enemy health is scaled with the level of the stage, which will outpace weapon damage upgrades at some point, meaning that at later stages of the game, even the squishiest of trash mobs can eat several sniper rifle magazines worth of ammo to the face without dying. Averted with enemies that have destructible armor, which does mitigate or outright nullify damage done to their squishy parts.
- Armored But Frail: The bulk of Adventist troops and the Changed are protected by an energy shield that reduces damage done to them, but are quite fragile once that layer of protection has been stripped away.
- Artifact of Doom: One major plot device in the early story is a supposed Yggdrasil-owned device called Brisingamen, which produces lethal amounts of Titagen. Not long after it goes missing, the Adventists start unveiling "Shrines" built from its components, which also produce enough Titagen to summon small Titans.
- Automatic New Game: Upon logging in for the first time, players are immediately put into the story and several gameplay sequences. Only after finishing the prologue is the main menu accessible, and it takes several more chapters to open every option.
- Ballroom Blitz: The first half of Ballad of Chaos takes place in Tatiana Orlova's mansion, where a party for Yehrus's power players is taking place. Naturally not long after it descends into chaos as rival factions attack the place, forcing Heimdall to shoot their way through the decorated hallways and main ballroom.
- Big Bad Ensemble: As the plot develops, it eventually settles on two different overarching villains: Yggdrasil's board of directors, who are experimenting with Titagen in order to achieve immortality and godhood, and Edda, a rogue AI that undergoes a Zeroth Law Rebellion and seeks to "save" humanity by wiping them out and uploading them into Valhalla, a Mind Hive. The two villains wind up being the driving force behind various chapters, forcing Yggdrasil to keep its attention split between them.
- Bittersweet Ending: The Yehrus arc, which runs from Perilous Snowpath to Skyward Blaze, ends with Heimdall successfully destroying the Titagen tree at the Suzdal Launch Center, killing ω, and rescuing Eatchel, showing that there is a way forward amid the mass outbreak of Titagen worldwide. However, the death of Tatiana Orlova means the last eligible leaders of the Yehrus region are gone, leaving the place a politically fragmented mess that will face an unknown future without any guiding force.
- Bizarre Human Biology: Manifestations are noted to have continued brain development, and grow what are known as "Theotropic Nerves", which a Deiwos can inhabit. Even without a Deiwos, the Nerves are capable of receiving information, including memories of other people.
- Bolt of Divine Retribution: Stages with the "Thunderous Judgment" special effect have a chance to, upon killing an enemy, spawn a lightning strike directly on top of the offending Operative that will zap and stun her after a short delay if the player neglected to move out of the way.
- Breather Episode: The Verdurous Holiday event, as its title implies, takes place after the relatively grim Chapter 11, and serves as a light-hearted pause as it follows Heimdall visiting the resort destination Yallu Island for team building exercises.
- Bullet Hell: Adventist and Titan enemies in particular are prone to firing elaborate patterns of slow moving energy bullets that players have to dodge.
- City of Adventure: Snowbreak's story takes place on the abandoned roofs, hallways, streets, subways and sewers of Midgard's Containment Zone Aleph, which remains inhabited by various desperate scavengers, cultists, and more.
- The Corruption: Titagen, the snow-like substance that Titans leave in their wake, especially Ymir, who flooded the whole city with it. It's toxic, interferes with radio communications, can penetrate solid matter, and in larger concentrations gives Earth's physics a middle finger. Worse still, large concentrations seem to summon more Titans in new "Descents".
- Embarrassing Hospital Gown: When not in the field, Operatives wind up donning nondescript white medical gowns, which can be seen in the Base. Conveniently, it's also a source of Fanservice, as the off-duty girls lounge around in short dresses that expose their long legs.
- Exploding Barrels: Playable stages are littered with destroyable items that damage nearby enemies — or you. Besides the usual fuel canisters, there are multiple variants that all weaken enemies in different ways: some freeze, some electrocute, some pull everything towards them in a vortex, some suspend them in the air, and some poison enemies.
- Freemium Timer: Par for the course for Gacha Games. Snowbreak provides up to 160 points of "Presence" that regenerates over time. It can also be refilled when an account levels up, when Baldr Inhibitor items are used, or when players in one's Friend list gift a few.
- Fire, Ice, Lightning: Thermal Damage, Frost Damage, and Electrical Damage make up the majority of the damage types, alongside Chaos Damage and the elementally neutral Kinetic Damage.
- Gacha Games: Snowbreak's character progression is tied to its Echo system, encouraging players to gather (or buy) Operative Recruitment Chits and Weapon Permits to acquire random groups of one or ten items of varying quality, and which includes a "Pity" system that ensures one highest-rarity weapon or character after a certain number of purchases.
- Girls with Guns: Snowbreak's playable cast are currently all various attractive women who know how to wield lovingly detailed firearms and battle enemies.
- God Was My Copilot: Most Manifestations have a "Deiwos", or god from mythology, that grants them related powers. The most obvious example is Lyfe Bestla, who carries Odin within her Theotropic Nerves, granting her powers over lightning and ice.
- Gun Accessories: Available as an unlockable as you progress through the story.
- Guns Do Not Work That Way: Double-barreled shotguns share the same animations as the rest of their class. This means they somehow can load more than two shells at any given time, are fed from underneath the receiver, and the Operators will rack an imaginary pump to top them off.
- Hand Cannon: The severely-Understating category of "Pistols" is composed of entirely of these, with even the weaker members sporting huge extended barrels and equally bulky frames.
- Immune to Bullets: Snowbreak has a "ricochet" mechanic, where enemies in armor have a certain chance to nullify a shot with a "ricochet". The different weapon classes have different chances to ricochet, from lowest to highest: Sniper Rifles, Shotguns, Pistols, Assault Rifles and Submachine Guns. It generally balances itself out: Sniper rifles might avoid ricochets, but only because their low fire rate needs every bullet to count, while Submachine Guns might ricochet a lot, but will wind up dealing appreciable damage sheerly from the amount of ammo they throw out.
- Inconsistent Dub: The English script for the main story and the Personal Files use different terms and even characterization.
- In the main story, the leaders of Yggdrasil are known as the Board of Directors, while in Chenxing's Personal File, they're called the Elders.
- Nita is described as being born to scavengers, while in her Personal File she says she's from an orphanage. Not that these are mutually exclusive, neither mentions the other.
- Marian is depicted more as a Combat Sadomasochist who relishes in the chance to get injured, while her Personal File makes her more somber, and implies that she allows herself to get injured as self-flagellation.
- Lighter and Softer: The Verdurous Holiday event. It's set in a tropical island free of pollutions and infections.
- Limit Break: All playable Operators and their variations have access to an Ultimate ability of some sort that becomes available after accumulating enough U-energy.
- Mascot: Ymir in the app's icon during the game's release then in Version 1.7, the icon changed to Lyfe Bestla, the main protagonist of the game.
- Mass Super-Empowering Event: Ever since the First Descent, people wind up becoming Manifestations in one of three ways: Contracting and surviving Juvosis, taking a Baldr Inhibitor, specifically rare prototype ones, and finally, surviving exposure to Titagen or a Titan during a Descent.
- Mythical Motifs: The game as a whole has a strong Norse motif going on, with multiple characters, objects and organizations taking their names from things in Norse mythology. Even the presence of the snowy Titagen is a reference to Fimbulvinter, the harsh winter that precedes Ragnarok and the end of the world.
- Non-Lethal K.O.: Operators that have their HP reduced to 0 are "retreated" and dialogue in the beginning of chapter 3, where the assignment involves assaulting the Coyotes, has the operators equipped with a "sleeping bullet".
- Not Using the "Z" Word: Or "G" word in this case. People choose to call the god inhabiting each Manifestation a "Deiwos" in an attempt to be as clinical as one can be about such a thing.
- The Plague: One recurring plot element is Juvenile Crystalosis, or Juvosis, a disease that seems to hit people between 14-to-19 years old. Causing auditory and visual hallucinations, organ failure, neurological issues and inevitable death, it killed a large proportion of the human race, setting the stage for Yggdrasil to come to the forefront with AI development and Baldr Inhibitors. There's also an implication that it is somehow connected to the Titans and Titagen.
- Ring Out: A valid tactic where applicable, as included in the game's tactical training. If an enemy is knocked into a Bottomless Pit (or walked into one due to their Artificial Stupidity), they're considered dead for the purposes of a mission. Averted with the playable Operators, who will just respawn unharmed where they once stood, though for very good reasons.
- Saving Christmas: This makes up the plot of the "Mingdeng Ritual" event, as a terrorist attack hits one of the rare chances to celebrate in the Containment Zone, which serves to piss off everyone — Adventists, Coyotes, Heimdall, and Taigu-Connect, who were hosting the celebration — causing them all to band together and fight back.
- Set Bonus: All characters can equip three "Logistics" officers that have randomized stat buffs. Their true value, however, comes when three Logistics of a matching "Squad" are put together, which gives the equipping character a Squad-unique benefit.
- Short-Range Shotgun: Shotguns are lethal in short range, as their many pellets are more likely to hit an enemy. Shooting from further away, however, increases the chance some of the pellets will miss, given the cone-shaped trajectory. Fittingly, all the shotgun using characters have skills encouraging them to get up close and personal.
- Speaking Simlish: Not in audio, but many scattered in-universe writings are using letters unique to the setting.
- Subsystem Damage: Many enemies have separately damageable sections, such as their guns, armor plating, and volatile backpacks. The larger Titans and bosses also have limbs or other parts that can be broken to stun them temporarily and expose their weakpoints. This makes Operatives with multi-target kits like Chenxing's Ethereal Cloud exceptionally powerful against them.
- Sword Beam: If an enemy carries a BFS (or two in the case of Adventist Judges and their King Mook Gavin), you can expect them to fire these to engage your Operators from a distance.
- Take Cover!: As with most Third-Person Shooter, you can do this, and huddle behind walls or other barriers to avoid enemy fire. Though it quickly became an unnecessary gimmick thanks to the general agility (including the ability to dodge roll) and tankiness of the player character.
- Tech Tree: The Neuronics system provide Operatives with six tweaks to their skills, with two for each. While refunding is possible, once a player selects one node to start upgrading, they're locked into it until it's maxed out.
- Urban Warfare: Given the game takes place within one city, all the gunfights therein will be based on maneuvering abandoned urban sprawl.
- Weird Weather: Titagen "snow" is not snow at all, but the drifting flakes of the Eldritch Abomination Titans that have polluted Containment Zone Aleph. Being under the snow without sufficient protection is dangerous, and large concentrations of Titagen go from "harmful to humans" to "harmful to reality".
- Wham Episode: Chapter 11 ends with a major shake-up of the status quo. Director 𝜏 is able to present evidence of the other Directors engaging in inhumane experiments that created the Titans, ousting them. Elsewhere, smaller Titagen trees are emerging worldwide, meaning Heimdall's operations have vastly expanded. Meanwhile, Edda declares an informal war against Heimdall to see whether she or they are considered the better of 𝜏's "children".
- Zombie Apocalypse: The Titagen infected humans, which resembles crystallized human beings, is basically a PG-rated version of this, though the Titagen infected is as good as dead as a human.
