It's basically one of those survival horror games where you have to build a base with whatever stuff you find around to not die in winter. It seems like the people who played this game more than me were motivated to finish it because it's actually a pretty damn hard game.
If you want to know the secret of how to win though here it is: It rains a lot in this game and if you get wet you become stinky so things get hard, but there's a few places to beg for change where it's dry. Try the exit to the train station and you will make thousands. It's hella menial but you just make way more money doing that than working the crappy in-game jobs on offer.
I used to work in a homeless shelter where the fine gentlemen in there would joke about how people were stupid enough to give them money all the time. It's crazy how much money you can make on forgoing all sense of humility and exploiting people's sympathy in public. Addictive street drugs aren't exactly cheap.