There's always something to do in Frostpunk 2, and you don't have the resources you need to solve everyone's problems. I was plagued while playing the main story with constant fires that I needed to put out – not literally, actually… if everything was on fire it would have solved a few problems because my people were hot, at least.
Indeed, it is not an easy task to manage New London, especially with zealots and ideologues who tend to interfere with my way of life. Frostpunk 2 is a rare gem among city builders as the game encompasses its entire theme and narrative. You're trying to cultivate a civilization in a cold, hopeless hell, and it sure looks like it.
Welcome to the Apocalypse
Frostpunk 2 systems work together to make your life miserable. You need fossil fuels to power generators to create heat, but you need workers to search for oil, but workers need housing, and housing needs heat. Everything requires balance, the perfect distribution of power to keep everyone alive for a week.
At one point I worked my main city and two colonies. My oil company had no means of supporting itself so I kept sending food from New London to support the workers there, and it was good and good until the food ran out. I couldn't just feed those in the oil field because I needed oil to heat the people in my big city, so I had to quickly expand my scouting to find new sources of food outside the city. You're always running against the clock in Frostpunk 2, making planning ahead crucial to success.
I admit that I don't have a lot of experience with city builders, but I feel that Frostpunk 2 is aimed at players like me who value the aesthetics and narrative of the system more than other builders in the genre, which I appreciate more type A. Frostpunk 2 certainly has a strong structure, but what makes it so compelling is the stakes you face, and the sense of hopelessness Frostpunk instills in its players.
Sure, Cities: Skylines can create an unnatural sense of frustration and disappointment if something goes wrong in your city, but the result doesn't feel like anything special. When my ill-conceived water system caused thousands of people to get sick and die, it was sad but also kind of funny. Being a god in these games means you won't face any special consequences. But if you let thousands die needlessly in Frostpunk 2, your days as a manager are numbered and you may 'lose' the game.
The dedication to world building in Frostpunk 2 is the game's special sauce. There are strange cultures that inject oil to tell the future, radicals who shun technology and disapprove of all attempts to fight the apocalypse, and reactionary fascists who want to kill thieves with flesh-eating robots. I'm not really into city builders, but I was fascinated by Frostpunk 2 because I wanted to see how this world developed as I played.
A trivial challenge in game development is fitting all the parts together to create a cohesive experience. Have you ever played a game where everything looks good on paper but you come out of it and feel nothing? I think the main reason for this is that it can be difficult to coordinate everything with so many people working on different aspects of a game, and sometimes the finished product ends up being inconsistent. Frostpunk 2 is one of those games where everyone at 11-Bit Studios worked under the same vision, making the world feel bleak and the player feel hopeless, in an attractive way.
I haven't fully explored Frostpunk 2's utopia-building process, but to be honest, I was sad to see it end so abruptly. 11-Bit has already announced three expansions, and I really hope it's a story along the lines of the original Frostpunk expansion, rather than a system-focused update like some have been saying. I'm excited to experience more of Frostpunk 2 after the dramatic apocalypse, to return to my pointless stand at the end of the world.
Frostpunk 2 11 bit studios combines city-building, survival and strategy mechanics as players are challenged to survive on a post-apocalyptic Earth with power-hungry humans.
