Frostpunk

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Frostpunk

Frostpunk is the first society survival game. As the ruler of the last city on Earth, it is your duty to manage both its citizens and its infrastructure. What decisions will you make to ensure your society’s survival? What will you do when pushed to breaking point? Who will you become in the process? Frostpunk is a brand-new title from the creators of This War of Mine. It’s a society survival game that asks what people are capable of when pushed to the brink of extinction. In an entirely frozen world, people develop steam-powered technology to oppose the overwhelming cold. The city’s ruler has to manage both the citizens and the infrastructure they live in. The leader’s tactical skills face challenges that will frequently question morality and the basic foundations of what we consider organized society. Optimization and resource management often clash with empathy and thoughtful decision-making. While city and society management will consume most of the ruler’s time, at some point exploration of the outside world is necessary to understand its history and present state. What decisions will you make to ensure the survival of your society? What will you do when pushed to the limit? And…

Frostpunk Review

Frostpunk combines the best elements of survival, city-building, and 4X games into one of the more captivating strategy games I’ve played in a while. Thanks to stellar presentation and storytelling, it seamlessly combines these different components into one interesting experience that never feels like a burden to play, even when the difficulty of maintaining a colony during an oppressive ice age ratchets up.

Frostpunk sets the stage with a compelling and timely backstory in which climate change devastates humanity in the late 1800s. Those left alive must seek out the few remaining resources as they attempt to carve out the last city on Earth. It’s not a hopeful tale, but one that effectively communicates the challenges that lie ahead and sets the stage for some difficult and desperate decisions.

The essentials are pretty simple, though. People need houses and jobs. Because this is a survival situation, everyone works on a near-constant basis. The day starts at 5:00 AM, and people have a few hours to finish any construction projects before they head to their primary job for 12 hours. Then they head back home, finish a few small tasks, and go to bed.

Frostpunk itself, in the tutorial, notes that the people you serve are always looking for a solution, but not necessarily the best one. What’s ultimately best depends on the emergent challenges you face. Do you have a mysterious illness spreading wildly through the camp? Are you struggling to find coal, forcing you to char firewood and construction materials to keep the generator going? These questions are constant and agonizing throughout. Frostpunk drips cynicism and bleakness. And yet it is that hopelessness, that fundamental need of human beings to persist in spite of everything that Frostpunk seeks to embody most. You become the bulwark against fear–even as you look across the land and internalize just how hard this fight will be. That’s powerful precisely because it hurts. Every time you make a tough call, doubts linger. If you had been better, if you had chosen differently, maybe you’d have been able to save everyone. Adding to the distress, Frostpunk’s Hope meter shows you the consequences of your decisions right as they happen. Send children into the mines and you can watch the camp’s faith evaporate as a whole chunk of meter gets lopped off.

Frostpunk is among the best overall takes on the survival city builder to date. Its theming and consistency create a powerful narrative through line that binds your actions around the struggle to hold onto humanity in uncertain times. Hope is a qualified good, but you may not always be strong enough (or clever enough) to shelter that flame from the cold.

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Summary
Frostpunk keeps your view several stories above the frosty misery of the city, so you can never really connect with your citizens. Sometimes instead of looking at labeled meters to tell my how my people feel, I wish I could just peer into their faces and read their expressions, to see their hope or misery for myself. Then again, who has time to take the temperature of the masses? I've got coal to mine. Get to it, my dear automaton. You might break down from time to time, but you'll never lose hope.
Good
  • Agonizing conditions force gut-wrenching decisions about how to run your camp
  • Phenomenal aesthetic choices reinforce core themes
  • Effectively pits short-term and long-term goals against one another to create challenging play
9.2
Amazing
Gameplay - 9.5
Graphics - 9
Audio - 9
Longevity - 9.3

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