Frostpunk Review - Survive, Adapt, Overcome

You will fail. Not once, twice, or three times. And what’s worse, you won’t fail all of a sudden, but gradually. So much so that you’re going to develop a new sense that tells you are going to kill everyone soon, and there is no single decision you took that can be blamed. This is the harsh life in Frostpunk.

People have been playing city building games for a very long time, and it’s one of the most longlived genres. The inference is that you’ve probably played pretty much any kind of variation on this type of gameplay, and you would be right, for the most part.

People imagine city building games to look like Sim City, Anno, Cities: Skylines and a few others, but that’s an incomplete picture. While the aforementioned franchises have produced some exquisite titles, they don’t represent the majority.

In fact, in the past few years, we had a resurgence of such games that were entirely different from the pack, like Banished for example. The only reason I even mention this particular title is because it’s the only one that comes close to the level of punishment dished by Frostpunk.

You might think that I’m using some kind of hyperbole to exaggerate the level of difficulty, or that I’m merely an unskilled player. While I could imagine the latter being true, I don’t think that’s the case.

Story and gameplay

The premise of Frostpunk is straightforward. The humanity is brought to the brink of extinction by a global freeze, and the end seems bo close for our species. A small group of people have fled from London and went North, trying to do something to survive.

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After wondering for months through the wilderness, they come across an abandoned generator. They settle around it and set up what could be the foundation of the last city of Earth.

The premise of the game works because it’s set in an alternative Victorian era where the steampunk technology and its principles are the true rulers, hence the name. That’s why you have both massive coal-driven generators and automatons that looks an awful lot like robots.

In the end, the story carries little weight, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s not a game about someone, it’s a story about you and about the choices that you’re going to make. And if the Frostpunk taught me anything is that poor choices are the foundation of all failures, working hand in hand with good intentions.

Unlike other city-building games where you can build pretty much everywhere, in Frostpunk you have to use the heat of the generator to stay alive. So, everything that you build will be in a radial pattern, extending towards the colder edges.

You start in what looks like the remains of a volcano, so the circular pattern is kept by the level as well. The generator is not working, so you have to gather come coal to start it. The problem is that people also have no shelters, so you also have to gather wood.

The first two objectives are set, and you start to think that it’s just like any other city-building sim. Soon, the first night hits, and it’s freezing. It turns out that people really don’t like to work at night, so you need to stockpile coal if you want to survive.

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Pretty soon you need to think about food, so you designate some people to become hunters, and the meat needs to be prepared, so you build a cookhouse. Now, people are also becoming ill, so you need a facility to care for them.

And suddenly you are running out of people to manage all of the needs of the community. Which takes you to the book of laws, which are mainly edicts regarding essential aspects of the society.

It’s easy to fix the shortage of coal, wood, steel, and so on by enforcing a new law regarding emergency shifts, allowing me to force people to work through the night. The downside is that people are much more susceptible to become sick from the extreme cold, and the overall discontent will rise accordingly.

This takes us to another core gameplay component. Everything that you’re doing in the game translates into either Discontent or Hope. With the exception of the primary objective, which is to survive at all costs, all the other goals are created on the fly, by your decisions.

For example, people will ask in the beginning what are your plans regarding the construction of shelters, and you have three choices. You can promise to take care of everyone, but that will give you more difficult objective to fulfill, or you can say that some of them will be housed soon. A choice to ignore the problem, for the moment at least is present as well.

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Failing to meet an objective will result in discontent, but fulfilling a goal will give people Hope. The two currencies are pretty much the players biggest concern.

The most pressing problem is that you never have enough people to do what you need. Some tasks can be done by everyone, like carrying wood or coal, but other more complex jobs can only be carried out by engineers.

Since the gameplay takes place on a timeframe of days, new people are not going to be born anytime soon, and taking care of the existing children is a problem of its own.

Building a beacon is one of the primary tasks, right at the beginning. It allows you to put together a team of explorers (from an already shrinking pool of workers) and send them out into the wild. They have to find other survivors, which is the only way to get more people working in the city. The explorers can also find new technology and resources, which are going to help an awful lot.

And since we’re talking about technology, we also have to mention the research tree. It’s huge, and it gobbles up a ton of resources. On the other hand, pretty much everything in that research tree is paramount, so you’re not going to waste the resources.

Difficulty and morals

I have to say that Frostpunk is one of the most difficult games I’ve played in a while. I must have started the game dozens of times, and each time I would fail inevitably. It’s true that the defeat came later and later, as I became better at micromanagement and at predicting the crises. But it wasn’t enough. And then it hit me. I was trying to do the right thing and survive at the same time. In a way, I was making the game much harder by trying always to do the right thing or choose the lesser evil. While it’s a lovely notion to have, being ethical and moral in Frostpunk will get everyone killed.

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Soon after I quit burring the dead and use them for body parts, after the kids stopped enjoying doing nothing and started working like everyone else, and after people began to lose limbs instead of getting palliative treatment, things improved considerably.

Players have to choose between winning the game and doing what’s right, and this is the main theme of the game, as the developers from 11 bit studios are trying to teach us.

Graphics and sound

Right off the bat, the graphics in Frostpunk are satisfying, for lack of a better term. People make trenches in the fresh snow while gathering supplies, and everything is beautifully animated and colorful.

In turn, the music is really depressive, in a good way, if that’s even possible. It sets the mood and the undertone of the entire experience, underlying the fact that you’re probably going to die. I don’t think I ever heard at least one cheerful accord.

Pros and Cons

Despite the difficulty spikes in Frostpunk, I can’t remember the last time I forgot to check the time while playing something. Even after my city failed, I would still try to build it again, in a different way. I never got tired of it because I always knew I could try something else.

The concept behind Frostbpun is what supports the gameplay and the beautifully chilling atmosphere, and it gives me a kind of warm feeling that I want to repeat over and over.

“While it’s a lovely notion to have, being ethical and moral in Frostpunk will get everyone killed.”

I played the game before the launch so I can’t be sure of the things I’m going to mention. As far as can tell, it’s a stable version, but I’m positive that some patches are going to arrive soon.

With all the problems Frostpunk has been throwing at me, I only had two major issues that caused the city to fail, almost invariably. First if all, I never seem to be able to get enough food, despite erecting more than enough hunters tents, and the rest of required facilities (yes, they were manned as well).

Secondly, the people getting sick don’t seem to either heal or die. They gather more and more and become an ever-increasing burden, even with available facilities. And I’m not talking about the people losing a hand or a leg. People remain patients for far too long. At this point, I hope that it’s a balancing problem and not something that I’m doing wrong. At least one of those has a chance of getting corrected.

The Good

The Bad

Conclusion