I’ve been a fan of city-building games since the first Age of Empires. And I’ve played many different city-building games over the years.
Most of the games I’ve played had one thing in common—They all look and play the same. It’s the same build a base, gather resources, and defend.
This is why I was attracted to Frostpunk. It looked different from other city-building games and I was right. Frostpunk is truly a very different kind of city-building game.
In Frostpunk, you are playing the role of a leader who’s in charge of a community of people. Your job is to manage limited resources you have to survive in the middle of nowhere, in freezing cold.
You have to constantly send people to gather resources to keep the entire town from freezing, you have to take care of the people who fall ill, and you even have to decide how to kill people.
It’s a very complex and challenging game than it looks. I learned that lesson in my first playthrough. I screwed up real bad in my first playthrough that the people in the city decided to kick me out. And it was game over for me. I had to start again from the beginning.
The game gives you a very limited amount of resources in the beginning. And you need to plan and allocate everything you have in order to keep the city alive and research new ways to gather resources.
There’s a massive Research tree (like a skill tree) that you can unlock one by one to build new resource-gathering stations. The thing is it costs resources to unlock each node.
In between all of this, you also have to take care of the people in the city. And they can be very demanding and annoying. You’ll have to introduce new laws to keep them happy and to keep the city functioning.
There are two paths you can take when introducing laws. You can either try to be a good guy and do things the hard way. Or, you can go the Evil path, where you can kill injured people to save space in medical bays. Or introduce child labor laws to get children into the workforce.
Yes, it sounds pretty messed up. But when you’re trying to survive, you have to make tough decisions. It’s the only way to keep the Hope up and Discontent down.
Once you progress through the game, you will face new challenges. Like people turning against you. Then you’ll have to choose more new paths to introduce different laws.
There’s a whole lot more going on in this game that tests your thinking abilities and decision-making skills. And I’ll have to play the game multiple times to fully experience the game.
It has many different game scenarios and game modes as well. Along with the massive expansions that have added more content to the game.
If you like city-building games, Frostpunk is a game that you must play. It’s an experience that you won’t regret. Frostpunk is now available on PC, Mac, Xbox, and PlayStation.