REVIEW – Not enough food. Not enough heat. Not enough manpower. Chaos everywhere, but especially in the player’s mind; that’s the shortest way to define 11 Bit Studios’ game, set three decades after the first installment. In this city-builder, it’s not just our surroundings that are frozen, but our souls as well. That’s why Frostpunk 2 is destined to be one of the biggest games of the year… but only on PC!

How we build on the hexagonal grid can quickly determine whether or not we’re successful at city management.

A warm place does not really exist in this world

You can stack different parts of the city on the hexagonal grid, and then build different buildings in the space available for each area. You have to think about what you build where. You should not put a factory block in a residential area because it will pollute the air. In addition to resources, you will also need the generator, and although everything seems fine at first, as time goes on, annoying problems will arise that will test our patience and skills, because the different factions will be stressed. Everyone has their own goals and they compete with each other. We need to make laws to control what we do with people, what we do to them, and what equipment we use to survive. Decisions that may seem unimportant at first can become profound and blow up in our faces a few chapters later… and all of this has to be coordinated with the council, the leadership, so that they can agree with what we want. There will be some bizarre proposals at first, because one of the groups will suggest that corpses could be useful as donors.

It will be a political game, because we will have to please the other factions, and if we do not keep our word, the people in that faction will be up in arms. This makes Frostpunk 2 a political thriller, and it is a bizarre expression, but it is the truth. It will not be uncommon for factions with smaller populations to be essentially overwhelmed, which could lead to civil war. So many people will prefer to grab pitchforks to keep our butts out of the leader’s seat (and popular uprisings tend to get results). Before the steam blows out, we can still use the figurative valve. A promise here, a little extra heat there, a little research, and we could be in a calmer mood. It’s not efficient enough to describe it, it has to be experienced, and it’s worth experiencing, because it’s one of the best parts of Frostpunk 2, and that’s why it might be one of the PC games of the year (remember, this title is currently only on PC!). When everything seems hopeless (everyone hates you, there are hardly any workers in the factories and the coffers are almost empty) and you can turn the situation around, it’s fantastic and gives you an almost indescribable feeling of well-being.

Being a leader is not easy (and it’s better that way…)

Once everyone is happy, it’s time to start expanding our city. This is when we need to send out scouts to gather information about the snowy landscape – what resources are there, what opportunities does the new territory hold? Frostpunk 2 then moves from micro to macro, with different economic and other challenges for each settlement. It’s also a time to think about trade routes, and because the game never lets up for a moment, there’s another area where things get tense. Even when everything seems to be going well. That’s like real life: at first glance, everything seems pleasant, but then comes the slap in the face.

Frostpunk 2 will play this out all the time (e.g. in a new location, everything, literally everything, goes wrong in an instant), but first it’s worth learning the basics. Once you have that, you might as well spend the time with the endless mode, which increases the replayability considerably, as you can learn everything in the research tree, get to know the other factions and learn the laws, so it’s a good game for a lunch break, which is why it got the high rating it got a few lines below. It’s just nice to see our little army suppressing the rebels (as this will become a realistic possibility later on), and while it’s as bizarre as the political thriller adjective applied to the game, it still holds its own.

It’s really cold outside…

Frostpunk 2’s 8.5 rating is well deserved. It’s atmospheric (you have to listen to the soundtrack), it’s addictive, it doesn’t have much of a system, and it’s very good at showing how hopeless things can be. When everything comes together, it’s excellent. When everything falls apart, it’s shocking. And we have to maneuver between those two extremes on a very thin thread. So this is a recommended purchase. 11 Bit Studios has rightly continued the elements set up by the first part, but it was a bit buggy at release!

-V-

Publisher: 11 Bit Studios

Developer: 11 Bit Studios

Style: city building, survival… political thriller

Release: September 20, 2024.