You’ve heard of Steampunk, Cyberpunk, and you may have heard of Dieselpunk but the question is, are you ready for Frostpunk? The makers of This War of Mine, 11 Bit Studios, gave me the opportunity to play the console edition of their city-building game, Frostpunk.
As mentioned, Frostpunk is a city-building game where players take on the role of the “Captain”, the leader of a band of survivors from London in an alternative universe where the world is plunged into a never-ending winter apocalypse. As the leader, you have to establish a city around a giant generator that’s also the only source of heat that will keep your people alive.
You have to direct your people where to go and scavenge materials from the frozen wasteland to be used to either build industry, or power the generator. Along the way, you will be asked to make some choices that can affect the morale of your people. If you lose the trust of your citizens, you will be overthrown and sent into exile.
The art of the game is amazing! It’s influenced by Steampunk but a bleaker version of it as the genre is usually more colorfully upbeat. The way the surroundings are affected by the citizens of your city is nice on the eyes, as groups of people wander through the snow they leave trails that overtime fills back in with drifting snow. You’re even given the ability to see where it’s warm or cold in your city, not only is it helpful, it’s awesome looking too!
The soundtrack is epic as it’s reminiscent of the soundtrack of a motion picture like “Lord of the Rings” and really takes you to the white-out world of ice howling winds. The sound effects and ambient sounds of life within your city are quality too adding to the atmosphere of the game and story.
The controls take some time to get used to but if you give yourself the time you can pick them up fairly quickly, especially if you take the time and allow the hints to pop up and you read them which leads to my next point.
There’s a mode called “Endless Mode” which is more of a sandbox version of the story, where you can make a city wherever you want and customize it however you want. “Serenity Mode” is considered the “easy” mode as resources are not far to get. Since the game can be unforgiving and the AI frustrating, you may want to play the game on this mode first to get the hang of the game before going into the story mode!
You can also check individual citizens and learn more about them!
Overall the experience of playing Frostpunk was a pleasant one as there’s plenty of choices to make of how you wish to play the game and when you do play, you’re met with great art, music, and atmosphere. With the controls being learnable and the opportunity to practice playing before going to the actual story mode is a big plus to me as it can help someone new to this genre to formulate a strategy.
Frostpunk is a unique chilling (pun intended) adventure that shows you the lengths people can go in order to survive a hostile new world, the question is, how will YOU respond to it. On my scale of 5 stars, this is a 4.5.
