[Introduction]
Frostpunk is part city-building survival game, and part case study on the slippery slope of letting safety supersede morality. Incidentally, the developers are Polish, and Eastern Europe is no stranger to abject human misery caused by totalitarian states, so you know this is gonna be one hell of a bleak affair.
[First Impressions]
Starting a new game, you might get the impression that the tutorial is gonna sort of ease you into things. Don't believe that for a second. It's a lie. From the second you start, you're in a race against time; there's a big ol snowstorm on its way and you have to prepare for it. Fire up the generator, build shelter, get resources, build more shelter, start food production, research technologies, expand resource production. You can say a lot about Frostpunk, but it's hard to deny that it starts as it means to go on.
And boy does it mean to go on, whether you're keeping up or not.
[Development]
Largely inspired by the success of 2014 title This War Of Mine and announced in 2016, Frostpunk was originally slated for a 2017 release. This was pushed back to 2018 due to an internal interest in "final polishing," although what exactly this was supposed to entail is something I haven't been able to find out. Presumably it involved bug fixes and optimising performance; the usual stuff.
In this regard, Frostpunk's development is really rather unremarkable. The only thing that really stands out is that it was created using the studio's own internal engine, Liquid Engine.
[Game Mechanics]
This is a deceptively straightforward game. It's rather simple, but don't let it trick you, because things can become more complex than you might anticipate pretty easily.
You have your generator, your main source of heat. This runs on coal, so you need to acquire more coal.
Gathering coal requires workers. Workers need food and shelter, so you need to get more of both.
Food is gathered by hunting parties and hothouses. Like shelters, these require wood and steel.
Getting more wood and steel requires more workers. To get more workers, you need to find them.
To find workers, you need a beacon. The beacon needs to be researched, so you need a lab.
This is not the full extent of Frostpunk's resource balancing act, but you get the idea. Everything you need to do is balanced against something else you need to do. It becomes a fractal puzzle of setting up a stable survival economy, but once you get the hang of it, I'm sure it might seem rather mundane. Not because there isn't a lot to do, but rather because there's... really a rather narrow range of ways to do it all. Most playthroughs will follow extremely similar patterns. The only variation is likely going to be either experimenting to see what'll work or just a different city layout. Even so, you're likely to at least play through Frostpunk twice, just to see what the difference between the Faith and Order branches of the Book of Laws.
The Book of Laws is a fairly unique mechanic. Unlike the research trees, where new tech requires investing resources, new laws can be passed as soon as the cooldown timer runs out. They're also (arguably) optional. Some laws are exceptionally useful, while others are merely situational, but all have a very real impact on the lives of your people.
The player starts out passing Adaptation Laws, which (as the name implies) largely deal with adapting to the new environment through various measures, ranging from funeral rites and fighting rings to child labor and prostheses. Every law passed allows new decisions, begins new events, grants access to new technology, or some combination of those. They also impact the Hope and Discontent meters. Naturally, it's in your own best interest to keep the former high and the latter low.
Eventually, Purpose Laws become available, branching into Faith and Order. These laws instead focus on establishing a new society and both branches become increasingly authoritarian, but it can be hard to distinguish exactly when you really began to be a dictator in the first place. Was it when you sanctioned child labor? Or was it when you mandated that organs should be harvested from the dead to benefit the living? It might also have been when you extended the work day by 4 hours. With all the questionable things you've done in the name of survival, everything kind of becomes a blur.
All in all, the path from surviving harsh conditions to establishing an authoritarian police state is seamless. In my first successful playthrough, I accidentally established a fascist police state without realising the extent of my actions. It was simultaneously horrifying and satisfying, simply because Frostpunk so effectively brought about a scenario where it becomes crystal clear that small steps corrupt... but only at the end of it all.
That said, I really must reiterate that the margin of error is small. There aren't very many ways to play Frostpunk, because you have to follow some very specific steps in order to succeed. This is particularly true for certain scenario maps, where your experience will be even more on rails than the default scenario. It's really a shame, because it's quite easy to get the impression that Frostpunk has randomised events and affords the player a great degree of freedom in their choices.
[Graphics]
The models and effects are of good quality, but that's really neither here nor there.
What matters is that you can see your city in motion as it grows. People will travel to and from work, congregate in squares or around heat sources, go to brothels and bars and leave deep trails in the snow if they go beyond the streets or range of heat sources. Buildings will even become covered in snow if they get too cold, providing visual indication that heating needs aren't being met.
The aesthetic of Frostpunk permeates everything you build. Expand enough, and you'll eventually construct for your desperate charges a steampunk Victorian Age London facsimile right in the middle of an endless expanse of frigid wasteland. Smoke rises from every stack as coal is burned to fight off the frost and people work to keep the wheels of the survival industry running - not always smoothly, but running nonetheless.
The most important job of the visual aspect of this game is to properly convey two things:
1. How dire the situation is.
2. How hard your people are working to survive.
And it's a job well done.
[Story]
Right off the bat, we're told that the brave new world had its groove thrown off by a sudden rapid decrease in global temperatures. Fortunately, all sorts of wondrous technologies are available in this steampunk version of Victorian London, so great engines are built to carve through the ice and snow with the goal of establishing new cities in the far northern reaches of the world, near the pole.
It's implied that basically every other known attempt failed, so the player is quickly thrust into a position of "if you mess up, humanity is screwed. No pressure."
With this great weight on your shoulders, you have to ask yourself whether the drastic actions available to you are worth the sacrifice. Make no mistake, your actions will be judged, because just as you ask yourself this questions, so too will your citizens ask themselves the same thing.
And take action accordingly.
[SPOILERS]
Turns out it's not just particulate matter from volcanic eruptions in the atmosphere that are blotting out light and heat, the sun is actually dimming. Even at the end of the campaign, the temperatures don't go above -20 Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit).
On the flip side, the implication changes from "we're the only ones left!" to "there might be other cities out there," so not all hope is lost.
[Pros]
- Abject suffering has seldom been more enjoyable
- Mechanics are simple in nature, making them easy to approach but challenging to master
- Highly customisable difficulty
- Unique setting
[Cons]
- Circular construction makes sense, but can be annoying to deal with
- Certain elements (such as outposts) feel arbitrary
- The game is something of a one-trick pony, replay value is relatively low despite its best efforts
- Experience may come across as being on rails; failure margin is quite small
[Conclusion]
Don't let the score fool you, I very much enjoyed Frostpunk for what it is. The thing is, at the end of the day, for all its fancy bits, it actually isn't all that much. The dire circumstance of your struggling Londoners in the arctic is overshadowed by bouts of irritation more often than I really care to admit. Not so much because it's hard to stay invested in the plight of these people due to mishaps, but rather because it's hard to enjoy this sort of game to its full extent when there is often only one path to success. It's a railway track in the guise of a city builder. The train ride is fun, and although it features few options, it still provides a decent apocalypse scenario for the player to struggle against.
"There is no justification for taking away individuals' freedom in the guise of public safety."
- Thomas Jefferson
Moral compass optional.
/DUX
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