Murderous winter comes to consoles – “Frostpunk” review

What Frostpunkthere is, everyone can see – the main assumptions of the game and the essence of the story are actually very simple. We are dealing with an alternative version of history in which the end of the 19th century brought the world a sudden cooling and the beginning of a new ice age. The reasons for this are not fully understood, although the violent eruptions of volcanoes, which released enough dust to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching Earth, are partly responsible. So there are indications that the cooling is temporary, and that humanity only needs to wait it out. For this reason, it was decided to create steam heat generators in regions rich in the necessary coal to power them, and to build new cities around them that would be able to resist the lethal temperatures. This is where we, the leaders of a certain group of refugees, enter wishing to settle down around one of the generators constructed by the British Empire. This is how our adventure with this specific connection beginscity ​​builder  with a simplified economic strategy, sprinkled with a pinch of 11 Bit Studios’ deliberations on the moral face of humanity at the time of the greatest crisis.

The biggest strength and weakness of this title is the fact that the gameplay is based on relatively linear scenarios. There is also a “sandbox” mode with no time limits and a top-down story build, but it was added some time after the premiere and clearly not the way we should interact with Frostpunk by default . On the one hand, it is good because each time we lead a different community, learn a different story and face slightly different challenges, on the other hand, it limits our freedom of action. The big problem is also the fact that the prepared scenarios are simply few – apart from the base story entitled “New Home”, we can get access to only three additional adventures.

Adapt or die!

As already mentioned, each of the four story games offers a different kind of challenge. When dealing with this production, we must understand it as soon as possible and start thinking flexibly, anticipating impending difficulties and efficiently reacting to those against which we were not able to protect ourselves in advance. Anyone who works out their favorite strategy and sequence of actions and tries to stick to them at all costs will quickly see the end credits – and not very flattering ones. For example, when playing Arki, we will have only a handful of heroes at our disposal, which will make us want to minimize deaths and injuries and find a way to effectively fill many jobs and stabilize the extraction of raw materials, despite having a very small workforce.

However, if we launch Refugees, our game will look almost completely the opposite – our town will be bursting at the seams with people in no time, so there will be a long queue of people at each workplace, so deaths or amputations among employees will not impress us much. However, it will be extremely difficult to provide them with tolerable living conditions and thus reduce the likelihood that the next time we stumble, an enraged crowd will drive us out of the city.

If you survive, do it with style!

Quite an important aspect of this winter simulator of the fight against doom, which distinguishes it from other survival games, is raising moral issues in the background and asking the player: what exactly is he willing to do to outsmart death, where will he set the border? This approach did not surprise me at all, as the studio’s previous production, This War of Mine , had a similar overtone . Most of the time it is simple – the more ruthless our approach is, the easier it will be for us to win. In theory, then, the whole thing is about asking yourself for additional challenges, or not. In practice, however, it works much more cleverly and illustrates well the dilemmas faced by a cornered man. Many situations that Frostpunk will create for us, these are delayed fire bombs, and we will only be faced with the choice when there is basically no choice left. What am I talking about?

It is easy to remain “good” and maintain a commendable attitude when we are doing well, and in the recent past we have made a number of sound decisions and the right steps. Unfortunately, in the snowy wasteland, problems tend to pile up imperceptibly, and when we painfully feel the consequences of an earlier mistake (which at one time did not look like a mistake), usually the situation is on the verge of completely getting out of hand. So it will not really be a matter of choosing between saving face or taking the easy way, but between grabbing the razor and drowning.

Let’s transfer these considerations to the ground of mechanics – while struggling with the challenges of the ice apocalypse, we will be constantly looking at the red Discontent bar and the blue Hope bar. Simply put, they illustrate the mood of our pupils and react in opposite proportions to most events: positive events cause the first to decline and the second to increase; negative – vice versa. They mainly differ in how “plastic” they are. Dissatisfaction is quite dynamic; it rises easily, but it also falls off easily, and there are many undemanding ways to reduce it temporarily. Hope, on the other hand, is much more static – it does not fall too easily on its own, but repairing it after a stumble requires much more work from us. However, none of the stripes should be neglected,

Have you set up a neighborhood watch? In a week you’ll wake up in a police state.

The simplest method of dealing with the mood swings of our survivors is to use the laws and innovations belonging to a tree called the Idea. The Book of Laws, through which we define our group’s approach to life in new conditions, is responsible for the social dimension of our fight for a better tomorrow (or maybe a better tomorrow). It has two sections – Adaptation, thanks to which we decide on the most basic issues, e.g. how we will ration food, deal with children or how we will deal with the sick and the bodies of the deceased; and the aforementioned Idea. The idea is to represent attempts to consciously define the purpose of our community and to have a direct impact on individuals disrupting the shaky order in our town. This tree is two-part,

Both paths look innocent, and their initial improvements seem quite amusing: we can set up a neighborhood watch to make residents feel safer, or we can build a few churches and shrines where the fearful and mourning for their lost loved ones will find a moment of encouragement. What could go wrong? Unfortunately, the farther into the forest, the more disturbing the next laws become, although from the mechanics side they will provide us with very useful bonuses. We, as leaders, will get it easier – but the reality of our subjects will gradually become darker and darker. Order will take us from simple watchtowers and volunteer neighborhood patrols to checkpoints, prisons and harder work megaphones, and from there to secret police, brutal interrogations and loyalist signing. In the end, we can impose one valid ideology on the whole city, creating our own totalitarian plaything. To sweeten potential remorse, this move will eliminate the Hope bar from the game – after all, living in such a system, citizens cannot complain. Literally. The same applies to Faith – community services and friendly priests distributing food in field kitchens may show their teeth over time by organizing a miniature Inquisition and public penance (whoever has watched Game of Thrones knows for sure what it is about). Finally, we can declare ourselves the only prophet of the new religion and grant ourselves exclusive sovereignty over mankind by divine will. How nice, right? To sweeten potential remorse, this move will eliminate the Hope bar from the game – after all, living in such a system, citizens cannot complain. Literally. The same applies to Faith – community services and friendly priests distributing food in field kitchens may show their teeth over time by organizing a miniature Inquisition and public penance (whoever has watched Game of Thrones knows for sure what it is about). Finally, we can declare ourselves the only prophet of the new religion and grant ourselves exclusive sovereignty over mankind by divine will. How nice, right? To sweeten potential remorse, this move will eliminate the Hope bar from the game – after all, living in such a system, citizens cannot complain. Literally. The same applies to Faith – community services and friendly priests distributing food in field kitchens may show their teeth over time by organizing a miniature Inquisition and public penance (whoever has watched Game of Thrones knows for sure what it is about). Finally, we can declare ourselves the only prophet of the new religion and grant ourselves exclusive sovereignty over mankind by divine will. How nice, right? The same applies to Faith – community services and friendly priests distributing food in field kitchens may show their teeth over time by organizing a miniature Inquisition and public penance (whoever has watched Game of Thrones knows for sure what it is about). Finally, we can declare ourselves the only prophet of the new religion and grant ourselves exclusive sovereignty over mankind by divine will. How nice, right? The same applies to Faith – community services and friendly priests distributing food in field kitchens may show their teeth over time by organizing a miniature Inquisition and public penance (whoever has watched Game of Thrones knows for sure what it is about). Finally, we can declare ourselves the only prophet of the new religion and grant ourselves exclusive sovereignty over mankind by divine will. How nice, right?

Nevertheless, the Book of Laws does not oblige us to reach for any of the available bonuses, and thus – we can give up using morally dubious solutions of the Idea tree if we are good at management and are able to tame the moods of our people without resorting to drastic means. Whether we managed to survive without the rule of an iron fist is one of the most important factors in determining what the tone of the end credits will be – these always appear when we reach the end of the script and evaluate our actions in a very heartfelt way. Believe me, nothing takes the satisfaction of a barely-won victory more than an accusatory finish full of questions about who we have become and whether it was worth surviving at all …

We would like to thank Cenega for making a copy of the game available for review .