Drinking a warm cup of coffee while surveying my frosty domain feels almost cruel. But that’s the world of Frostpunk 2, where the cold is your enemy. To combat it requires careful planning and resource management–but even then, sacrifices must be made.
I never played the original Frostpunk. I knew it made a few waves back when it was released, but despite it being in my Steam library, it just sits unplayed. So this review will come from the perspective of someone who hasn’t played the first game. I did have knowledge of its setting, but sadly, I never committed time to playing it.
When I got Frostpunk 2, I was eager to jump into my role as steward to these struggling people, but it was a rough start: the UI is supremely unintuitive. It’s like the devs are so into their own design that they can’t take a step back and see what it looks like to virgin eyes. I seriously struggled to figure out what I had to do in the first few hours. Tutorials did little to answer my questions. And it's not like I”m new to games like this.
There are two ways to play Frostpunk 2: in story mode, where I spent most of my time, or in “Utopia builder” which is the sandbox mode. It’s a little limited. There are only 7 maps, and each map has a predetermined condition. For instance, Fractured Gorge has randomized resources, frostland, and geothermal deposits ,but limited fuel in a small area. There is no option to add more resources to make it easier or harder. To do that, you’d have to build on another map. And without a level editor, Utopia mode feels very restrictive.
In the story mode you are in charge of New London, which has been prosperous for years, but is now facing a coal shortage. Your goal is to expand outwards looking for more resources to ensure a future for your people. Even if that future is a bleak and horrible one.
The frozen wasteland of Frostpunk 2 has useful things buried in its ice. To do anything at all, you have to send out icebreaking crews, which takes up resources. After you clear away the ice, you can then exploit whatever is underneath: coal, construction material, etc. But to do so takes up more resources, uses part of your workforce, etc. Any bad decision can cascade into failure. In fact, failure almost seems inevitable as you try to squeeze just a little more time out of your citizen’s miserable lives.
There is no real connectivity to the city. Each of its citizens are an abstract number on the UI–another stat to keep within a nominal range. You can zoom in on a district and see tiny people going about their miserable lives, but I never felt connected to them in their plight. I was just a floating entity, so detached from the frozen hellscape that I didn’t care much about it. Sure, my decisions sometimes led to dire consequences, but “did not survive” felt just as disconnected as the gameplay. The key art shows the clouse up of a grimy person covered in teh industrial result of the machines required for survival–and I can barely comprehend what that means. Sometimes you’ll get a quip from a citizen in the form a chat bubble, but it’s all so disconnected from the player. And I think that’s Frostpunk 2’s biggest weakness.
Frostpunk 2 is truly on a macro scale. In fact, as you expand out into new regions to conquer the frozen wastelands you will find new opportunities and new problems.
You have multiple factions of people that represent the citizens of New London, each with their own ideas on how to survive. You will have to balance priorities to attempt to make everyone happy, or you can blatantly favor certain groups over others.
Frostpunk 2 wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for. Its scale makes it feel almost like a 4X game such as Civilization than a city builder. I would have liked a little bit more connection to my subjects, outside of council meetings, that is. However, Frost Punk 2 is a warm spot in an otherwise icy landscape of new citybuilders.
Frostpunk 2 will be available Sept 20 on Steam and Epic Games Store for PC and on Xbox Series S|X and PlayStation 5.