Frostpunk (2018)

Article: Frostpunk Review - A Frigid, Unrelenting Survival Success

Score Report: 8.75 / 10

"Rarely does an interactive experience keep me awake at night wrestling with big decisions. Frostpunk did this on multiple occasions and made me feel squeamish when forcing edicts upon society instead of building consensus. Extraordinary circumstances call for desperate measures, and all I can do is ask for forgiveness from those trampled by my headstrong approach."

• Matt Bertz

i kept seeing this on sale and then realized it was already in my gog library. i like the narrative conceit of "snowpiercer: the game" and especially the way that it makes scenario-based challenges stem organically. beyond the plain mechanics, but i find the law mechanism to be a bit heavy handed. i think it's sort of clear from the outset that "sacrifices need to be made" but it would probably be more interesting for people to codify laws based on your administrative malfeasance than for you to propose, say, child labor, and then let the city run with it. that said, even trying to play morally, i only lasted a week before getting sent away.

fun, but it really chugs away on my m2 macbook air in ways that seem unrelated to any specific graphics settings. will probably give it a few more tries but might just have to try on pc.

Je préviens c'est un jeu frustrant au possible, j'en ai même pleuré à force d'être exilé.

Je me demande même s'il est possible de finir et gagner une partie. Ca va vous demander beaucoup de patience, de tests, d'essaie, d'erreur encore et encore.

Ou alors je suis peut être juste nulle c'est possible mais j'aime quand même beaucoup le gameplay, cette réflexion entre ordre et foi. Les choix qui doivent être fait, la gestion de l'espoir et de la colère.

Nulle ou pas, j'aime quand même beaucoup y joué des fois, pas trop sinon ça me déprime de perdre autant de fois d'affilés.

Really enjoyed my time with this game. At first I had a bit of difficulty with the learning curve and level of challenge, but once I realised how important certain things were from the get go I started having a much more manageable experience. Once that happened I couldn’t stop playing for a while. There’s something so strangely addictive about this game that it almost kept me from physically putting the controller. A big part of this I think comes from the atmosphere it conveys. Frostpunk is a truly grim post-apocalyptic social survival game, and this feeling is achieved through superior visual aesthetic and audio design: to my eyes and ears, every single thing in the game looked and sounded almost perfect, from the buildings, to the sounds machines make, to the voice acting, to the music, to the feeling of icy, depressive desolation that haunts your society from start to finish. I also really liked how uncertain the whole experience felt. There was never one point during my first couple playthroughs in which I felt I was ‘safe’. I was outcast on my first attempt and beat the game on my second, but never did I feel I had ‘nailed it’. This brings a level of tension into the game that really fits in with its atmosphere and works quite well with the solid learning curve, making you take stock of your mistakes and try different solutions if you want to succeed. This means that Frostpunk isn’t exactly built to be an ‘endless’ game - which is why that mode didn’t quite work for me -, but as a finite experience, it’s a really well crafted one.

I did have my fair share of gripes with the game. For starters, the console version could benefit from K&M implementation, as it doesn’t control ideally and a couple of functions seemed to be missing from the PC version (like cycling through buildings of the same type). I also felt some game mechanics and indicators didn’t make sense. An example was when the big storm was about to hit and the staff in a building wanted to go home and pray. My only options were to refuse or have the building closed for the day. I had a surplus of workers, so why couldn’t I have simply replaced the praying ones with those instead? Another example is how my citizens started freaking out over not having enough food when I clearly did - a simple feature to prove/reassure them of this would’ve been welcome. An additional issue I had was that the end narrative, where they sum up how you did as a leader, was somewhat inconsistent with your actions. In my case, I chose the Faith path but never used violence or aggressive indoctrination, yet the game portrayed me as this religious zealot who ‘abused faith’ and ‘crossed the line’. And speaking of which, couldn’t the game have given you a Democracy option as a path choice instead of just Faith or Order? I thought this was a missed opportunity to introduce some fun and challenge to the decision making. All this meant that the game felt too restrictive in some respects and didn’t really respond effectively to some of the things you did. Finally, I would like to have seen some proper stats at the end of your playthrough, though it was still great to watch the time lapse scene of your city being built and expanded.

With all that said, however, I really enjoyed the time I spent with Frostpunk. It definitely has some problems, but it also expertly crafts most of its strong points, so much so that, though you might feel frustrated here and there, you likely end up getting addicted to it. I don’t necessarily think it has amazing replayability even with all alternative scenarios on offer, but it’s more than capable of fully immersing you in its universe while it has its hooks on you. Recommended especially if you’re a fan of tension and bleak atmosphere in your city management games. 7.5/10

I found this game awfully addictive but also time-consuming. There is a general satisfaction making really tough decisions: Should I turn on the heat or turn it off to save some coal? Do I want child laborers when I'm short on workers? Should I abandon the sick or try to get them back home?

Unfortunately, about 4 hours in the first scenario, the game puts these arbitrary requirements such as researching a specific technology or stockpiling enough resources. If you didn't strategize that way you're kind of screwed and most likely will need to restart an earlier save. Also I fast-forwarded most of the latter half of the campaign to wait until I could research a technology or build a specific structure.