There’s always something to do inFrostpunk 2, and you never quite have the resources you need to fix everyone’s problems. I was kept occupied during my playthrough of the main story by the constant fires I needed to put out - not literally, actually… if everything was on fire then that may have solved a few problems because my people would be warm, at least.
Indeed, managing New London is no easy task, especially with zealots and ideologues hell-bent on getting in the way of my pragmatic approach to survival. Frostpunk 2 is a rare gem among city builders in that its gameplay embodies so wholly its themes and narrative. You’re trying to cultivate civilisation in a cold and hopeless hellscape, and it certainly feels like it.
Welcome to the Apocalypse
Frostpunk 2’s systems work in combination with one another to make your life miserable. You need fossil fuels to power the generator to create heat, but you need a workforce to excavate fuel, but the workforce requires housing, and the housing requires heat. Everything requires balance, the perfect allocation of resources to keep everyone alive for another week.
At one point, I was operating my main city and two colonies. My oil colony had no means of feeding itself so I was constantly sending food from New London to support the workers there, and that was all well and good until I ran out of food sources. I couldn’t just feed those at my oil colony because I needed the oil to keep the people in my main city warm, so I had to rapidly expand my scouting operations to find new food sources outside the city. You’re constantly on the clock in Frostpunk 2, making pre-planning vital for success.
I’ll admit that I don’t have extensive experience with city builders, but I feel Frostpunk 2 targets a player like me who values aesthetics and narrative over excessive systems more so than other stalwarts of the genre, which favour more Type A personalities. Frostpunk 2 certainly has robust systems, but the real attraction is the stakes you’re facing, and the feeling of hopelessness that Frostpunk instils within its players.
Sure, Cities: Skylines might illicit feelings of struggle and hopelessness if something goes completely wrong in your city, but the consequences just don’t feel as personal. When my ill-advised sewage system caused thousands to get sick and die, it was unfortunate but also sort of comedic. Your godly status in these games means you won’t face any personal consequences. But if you let thousands perish needlessly in Frostpunk 2 then your days as steward are numbered and you’ll likely ‘lose’ the game.
The commitment to world-building in Frostpunk 2 is the game’s special sauce. There’s a weird cult that sniffs oil to divine the future, radicals who shun technology and disapprove of any attempt to fight against the apocalypse, and reactionary fascists who want to kill thieves with flesh-vaporising robots. I don’t have much interest in city builders, but I was enthralled by Frostpunk 2 because I wanted to see how this world developed as I played.
An understated challenge of game development is fitting all the pieces together to create a cohesive experience. Have you ever played a game where everything is good on paper but you come out of it and just feel nothing? I think a large reason for this is that it can be difficult to make everything cohesive with so many people working on different aspects of a game, and sometimes the finished product ends up feeling disparate. Frostpunk 2 is one of those games where everyone at 11-Bit Studios was operating under the guidance of the same vision, make the world feel bleak and the player feel hopeless, in an enticing manner.
I’ve yet to properly explore Frostpunk 2’s utopia builder mode, but honestly, I was sad to see the story mode ended so abruptly. 11-Bit has already announced three expansions, and I sincerely hope they’re narrative scenarios in the vein of the original Frostpunk’s expansions, rather than systems-focused updates like some have predicted. I’m excited to experience more of Frostpunk 2’s intriguing post-apocalypse, to delve back into my pointless stand against the end of the world.
Frostpunk 2
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11 bit studios' Frostpunk 2 blends city-building, survival, and strategy mechanics as it challenges players to survive on a post-apocalyptic Earth with power-hungry humans.
