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The mercury had long since frozen over. The coal mines were barren. Even if there were coal, the miners’ hands would be too cold to extract it. Angry mutters filled the streets as the whiteout slowly drew to a close. The cost quickly became apparent as the sun came out from behind the clouds. Piles of frozen bodies beginning to thaw in the warmth. Riots were breaking out across the city and the heads of all four political parties were looking squarely at the problem: me. I was exiled without trial. Stranded; left to die in the snow. The city picking up what pieces it had left.
This is how my first run of Frostpunk 2 ended. I went away with my tail between my legs and dropped the difficulty down. Still, I consider it a positive experience for two reasons. Firstly, it taught me to play a bit more conservatively in order to survive. Secondly, it showed me that Frostpunk‘s best point still persists. It can generate stories as you play. Frostpunk 2 may feel a lot different in various aspects – most notably a much slower pace – but at its frozen core still beats the heart of Frostpunk.
Ice, Ice, Baby
If you’re new to Frostpunk, then it’s sort of like the film, The Day After Tomorrow. Only instead of hiding in libraries and running from awful CGI wolves, the people did something useful: they shoveled coal into a giant generator. While most of Britain is a snow covered wasteland, New London persists thanks to its tower of steam. The first Frostpunk was about stocking up in order to survive a colossal storm. By the time of Frostpunk 2, giant storms are commonplace. It’s time for us to think about what comes next. That changes the feel of things quite a lot, as you’ll see.
First though, let’s look at how Frostpunk 2 actually plays. It’s a city builder, with a strong focus on resource management. You start off with just the generator, and district-by-district, you meet your citizen’s needs. There’s housing, fuel, food, materials and goods. These all need to be built on limited deposits, and require heatstamps, workers and prefabs. There’s so much going on and any of them can run out at any moment. This is where most of the tension – and excitement – comes from, and successfully meeting these needs is a good part of the fun.
It’s quite the balancing act. Buildings require fuel to heat them and materials to maintain them, for instance. As your population is continually growing, the pressure grows along with it. Higher difficulties require smart planning to survive (which rather counts me out). Added to this is an array of political parties, all with different agendas. The Stalwarts, for instance, are old school. They think they generator will see us through whatever happens. The Frostlanders, conversely, think we should embrace exploration and adaptation. If you want to pass laws, you’ll need delegates from these parties to vote for it. Failing to keep all parties happy is a big reason for my first failure.
Frosty Politics
The upshot is that Frostpunk 2 is at its best when things are going wrong. When you think you’re comfortable but your population suddenly explodes and now people are digging for food scraps in their shanty towns. The flipside of that is that things tend to be less interesting when everything is going well. When you’ve met your needs, there’s not much to do beyond research stuff and await the next catastrophe. There’s a fast forward function, but that’s a plaster over things, really. Higher difficulties may eliminate this issue, granted, but once you’ve got fuel and food, everything tends to fall into place.
As we’re on the complain train, we might as well carry on. Take them with a grain of salt, though, as my ventures into Frostpunk 2 on difficulties higher than the lowest have (so far) ended in disaster. Anyway, one irritation of mine is Heatstamps. These are essentially taxes, supplied by your populace. I don’t like them because they aren’t interesting. They steadily grow with the population, so they mostly just stop the pace as we wait for them to accrue. Seems pointless, given prefabs do pretty much the same thing. Things tend to snowball towards the end too, once you’ve exploited the Frostland. There’s a moment where you realise success is almost inevitable.
It’s these things that give Frostpunk 2 a very different feel from the original. It’s a lot slower. You pop down the districts, let the resources flow in, then try and keep the political parties from mucking things up. Quite the change from the constant, bubbling panic that Frostpunk championed. I find myself drawn to it, though. The slower pace – and the politics – make the people feel real. There are little bits of writing that pop up throughout when you make your choices, which I love. It’s hard to enact, say, public execution when you’re looking at the face of the man you’re about to sentence.
Frostpunk 2 – Freezing The Stakes
To be honest, I think I like Frostpunk 2 more than the original. If Frostpunk had a failing, it’s that it showed the stakes early on. You had to survive the whiteout. That meant that, while some of the choices made were agonising, ultimately I wouldn’t be around for the consequences. Once the storm was over, I could peace out. Frostpunk 2 makes you live with your decisions. Risky moves to get past the next whiteout mean you’ve got to put out the political flames that result. Double shifts make for a lot of riots. This comes into its own in the Utopia mode, which is essentially a survival mode. One, large overarching goal and that’s it. You’ll see me there for a good while.
One thing to mention before I bring this to a close: at time of writing, Frostpunk 2 is still quite unstable. It crashed constantly, often when I was trying to load a save. A particularly cruel time to crash. Still, I don’t factor these into my score as the hotfixes are coming through. But I wouldn’t blame you if you held off for a month or two. If you take the plunge, however, you’ll find a smart and emotionally-charged city builder, which imagines what happens when humanity pushes past an extinction event. Given how the world currently is, let’s just hope I’m not in charge when it happens.
