Back in the 1880’s when none of us youngins were alive, there were multiple volcanic eruptions that almost screwed us over as a civilization. But hey, we recovered (kinda). Frostpunk is set in a world where we didn’t recover, like, at all. The dimming of the sun from all the ash and whatnot caused a horrific eternal winter, and people are freaking out. And you’re in charge! (yay!)
You migrate with your fellow survivors up north to where you settle down in front of a nice generator that, if you’re not extremely nice to it, will die. And if it dies, so will you.
Nice.
Starve or… well, just starve
11Bit Studios has done an excellent job at reviving Frostpunk for console, however it’s not flawless. The camera controls are a bit funky sometimes and often feel slightly clunky, but it was never impossible to work around.
You’re constantly trying to balance keeping your people happy while also making sure you don’t die. Oh you don’t want to work for 24 straight hours to ensure we have enough coal to survive the night? Fine but when our medics are chopping off limbs you lost to frostbite don’t come complain to me.
What’s that Brent? You don’t want to eat soup for four weeks straight? Well maybe if the scouts we sent out to explore the Frostlands actually found anything worth while maybe we could have a nice family dinner for
once.
What do you mean you don’t think it’s safe for the children to work with the advanced coal mine, Susan?? They have to earn their keep somehow.
The Dark Souls of Sims
Frostpunk is one of those games where you’re going to die the first several times you play before you figure out what you’re doing. While the tutorial is helpful, I felt like I was definitely thrown in the deep end before I figured out the best way to keep my people alive and happy. There are two main ways to keep track of your success as a leader; Hope, and Discontent, which are displayed very nicely at the bottom of the screen as a red and blue bar. If hope falls beyond a certain point, your people will be like “yo, you
suck and we’re all gonna die because of you.” You don’t want that. If discontent raises too high, your people will overthrow you and bam game over.
Every choice you make effects these bars. Laws that you pass could potentially raise discontent and lower hope, but if you know you’re not going to have enough resources to survive the night, it might be worth passing the emergency shit law. People will hate you, but at least they’ll live. If too many people die, you can basically say goodbye to any hope
unless you have passed laws to help people deal with loss – like ceremonial funerals. It’s a constant balance and I found myself completely immersed in ways to try and make my people happy.
Choose your own dystopia
Order and Faith play a huge part later in the game as well. Eventually you can pass laws that either create a church and religion, or the fuzz. I found creating order was easier for me than maintaining faith, but to each their own. I did find this aspect extremely helpful late game as there was usually a big storm or several on the horizon, and people seem to lose a lot of hope and get really grumpy when it’s -60 degrees Celsius – funny that huh? These laws are able to create new roles and buildings to make things easier for you as a player.
Once you manage to survive the first 20 days, you unlock different “scenarios” to follow, including an endless mode. I found some of these really fun – The Arks, where you have to ensure that your people are satisfied while also automating the city AND keeping alive the last lot of nature in these giant greenhouses was one I found myself replaying again and again. And then there’s the one where you essentially have to rebuild a city of hundreds of people because they started to riot and burned everything down. This one made me wish they would’ve overthrown me sooner.
Worth its weight in frozen gold
The game itself has a very industrial look to it. Frostpunk knows what it wants to be and does a very good job of doing that. There’s enough to look at to keep it interesting but I felt that the few and far between cutscenes drew away from the main aesthetic and I often found myself just skipping over these as they seemed to just be there to add a new element that I personally didn’t think it needed.
The asking price is $29.99 and I would have happily paid up to $40 for this game. It’s very fleshed out and I absolutely got my moneys worth out of Frostpunk. If you’re after a new city builder, definitely give Frostpunk a go.
- Overall