Frostpunk

Review

Well, you are going to be dumbfounded with what I am about to tell you. Forget about what they are blathering about on the news network. The truth behind Brexit is far more astonishing than what they are saying, and this is from a solid and chilled source of mine! The truth is that the current Prime Minister needed some firm advice on the future of Great Britain. For that, she called upon the famous fortune teller, Madame Irma, who subsequently told the Prime Minister that our planet is descending into a terrible Ice Age (she killed two birds with one stone there: Brexit and global warming). 99% of humans will perish rapidly, except for the Londoners! What!? Here we are, decades after Brexit, and while most of us are becoming frozen statues, the Londoners are marching together to the North Pole toward a crater with a generator, with a view to creating the last city. Good luck punks - you’ll need it - and welcome to the city of New London, in Frostpunk!    

Frostpunk is survival city building / strategy game, developed and published by 11 bits Studio, where you’ll attempt to build and be the leader of the habitat of the last city on earth.

The game at this stage consists of four scenarios and one endless mode, with more to come in 2019 (as per the developer’s comments on the Steam store page). This review is firmly based on one of the scenarios - “A New Home”.

As you launch the game, you’ll be greeted by a superb introduction, and you’ll find out what really happened to your convoy. Your new home is basically a huge crater which has a frozen generator right in the middle of it.  On the outskirts, but still within the crater, you’ll find comment resources such has coal, steel, frozen tress and boxes too. As you have a rather small number of people at your disposal at the start of the game, you have to choose which is the most important resource to gather, after coal, and assign people to start retrieving it. Bear in mind that there is always a maximum number of people, which can vary from 5 to 15, to gather resources or do a job within your settlement. The other important aspect is to make sure that your population keeps a certain level of hope, by building important structures like houses, medical and entertainment facilities, as well as researching new technologies.

It’s truly a fine line between hope and discontent, and it can affect your citizens in several ways. You must have shelter (houses), have plenty of food and medical buildings, and also keep the generator going day and night, which can be tricky at times, especially if you are running out of coal. If your generator shuts down, for example, the discontent will grow drastically, and your people will lose hope.  That can happen frequently as you expand your city and need to place Steam hubs (sub generators) around the city to keep the people warm. It might also affect your productivity in some buildings if it’s too cold for people to work. The other point that can either raise or diminish hope is whether or not you complete specific buildings or tasks on time. New technology or events can trigger a demand from the population.  If the discontent gauge stays too high for too long, you’ll be sent off outside the crater, and it will be game over.

There are three types of citizens in your city: workers, engineers and children. There are jobs that only workers can do, such as hunting, while only engineers can develop new technologies. Regarding the children, you can choose to let them be or force them to work by passing a law through the book of laws. Then you’ll be able to assign them to do safe jobs (or any jobs), but understand that discontent will rise sharply by doing so. Nonetheless, sometimes you have to do what you have to do in order to survive.   

To research news technologies, you’ll need to build workshops; the more workshops, the faster you’ll discover a new technology. However, you still need people to run them to 100% production. The only way to increase your population is to send scouts into the frost lands (in certain locations on the map) in search of survivors or additional resources. Don’t forget, it will take time to get them to a certain location. However, if your scouts find survivors, you can elect to send them on their way by themselves towards New London, or simply escort them. By escorting them to your settlement, you’ll known that every single survivor will arrive in the city safe and sound, but this will probably not be the case if you don’t escort them.

The book of laws is a bit different; as the game works on a 24-hour cycle, you’ll be able to pass a law every few days.  If you forget, certain events will remain open to you so that you can still pass a new law - it will prompt you to open the book in order for you to make a choice, depending either on the event or where you are. It will become harder when the Londoners event starts, and you’ll have to make a choice of following either the path of order or the path of faith. Be ready for it when it comes, as you’ll lose a great chunk of hope, and it will be fun getting rid of these buggers. Personally, it took me three goes before I managed to pass that event.

As you progress, you’ll be able to build automatons (giant spider robots) which are not affected by the cold, can take care of certain buildings by themselves, and relieve an entire crew of people, who you can reassign to new and warmer jobs.

Great graphics and the soundtrack is fabulous. I have no issue with the controls and the games runs very well. What an addictive game this is!