Frostpunk
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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