Frostpunk is a stone cold classic, so to speak, among the city-builder community. A near-perfect mix of survival and city building, with management going beyond large overhead components of a town like hunger and water. While I loved this first RTS outing from 11Bit Studios, there was some secret sauce somewhere that was missing. Whatever it was, a hearty helping has been poured into Frostpunk 2, which is easily one of the best city-builder games ever made.
The campaign of Frostpunk 2 is around eight to ten hours, just as the first game. But like its predecessor, it offers dozens if not hundreds of hours in playtime for those who are ready to brave the cold. The vestiges of New London, your town from the first game, will rally together the disparate tribes of the Frostland in this post-apocalyptic real-time strategy game. And at the heart of your beating civilization is the generator – the only thing keeping your town shielded from the -40 degree cold.
Right up front, Frostpunk 2 warns the player that it is not kind. It recommends the easiest difficulty (Settler) and says that players should only try for the next highest difficulty (Citizen) if they are veterans with dozens of hours under their belts. Thinking Citizen would be a cakewalk for a big brain gamer like me was a huge mistake. During the tutorial I was absolutely destroyed by the whiteout and nowhere near prepared for this level of brutality, and had to restart the campaign on Settler. I recommend heeding 11Bit’s warning on this; Frostpunk 2 is unforgiving. Don’t underestimate it.
You’ll start from humble beginnings, with a wonderfully made tutorial that teaches you exactly the basics and lets you figure out the rest as you play. In order to lay down districts and build out your city, you’ll need to frostbreak the deep layer of ice, which takes time and workers. This is actually great, because it provides you something that you can (almost) always be doing while waiting for events to trigger or tasks to complete. There is very little downtime in Frostpunk 2; you are going to be on the edge of your seat, sucked into the Frostland, from minute one.
The campaign is smoothly structured to help you learn to build out New London from the barebones that are left, set up exploration teams, explore the Frostland for more resources and even discover places to found new towns. Frostpunk 2 manages to perfectly balance the micro-level stuff like dictating if mothers raising children can be released from labor obligations with managing high-level movements of dozens of exploration teams across multiple uncharted territories. You’ll also need to manage sending resources between your settlements via trading parties, especially when you’re trying to keep enough oil coming in to keep the fires of New London burning. It’s all seamless, and it all feels like it’s part of one game.
My favorite new component is the City Council. Not only are you selecting which laws you as the Steward would like to enact – you are also going to be lobbying the different political parties who will agree and disagree with each proposed law. If you want something passed, you’re likely going to have to make promises to research X science or pass Y law. There are four political parties: The New Londoners, the Frostlanders, the Stalwarts, and the Pilgrims. Roughly, the New Londoners like reason over faith, the Stalwarts are big proponents of science, the Frostlanders like more expansion of settlements, and the Pilgrims, the bane of my existence, are basically religious fanatics that won’t be satisfied all the riches of heaven.
Depending on how events play out in your city under your rule, the political parties will gain different amounts of seats in parliament every year. This adds so much complexity to Frostpunk 2, because even if you know there’s a law you could pass that will result in warmer houses for everyone at the cost of people simply CHECKING THEIR HEAT PIPES FOR LEAKS ONCE A YEAR, some faction will declare this a violation of human rights and protest through the streets that you are the devil incarnate. It’s just like real life!
I am astounded at the layers of complexity at work in Frostpunk 2. It is not a simple game, and there is no point where it pretends to be. It’s also not really a multitasking listening to a podcast kind of game, at least not in the campaign. In addition to all the political rallies, protests, riots (Pilgrims, obviously), and general many-layered political complexities, you’ll also be managing your distribution of labor throughout your districts. After frostbreaking the ground, you’ll find a limited amount of resources like food, materials, coal (and later oil), and more on which you can set up extraction districts. In those districts you can place specific buildings that you create based on the research being done in your science institute, which drastically changes how resources are harvested and managed.
There are also hubs for stockpiling these resources for whiteouts (years-long blizzards that come once every few years), but also transportation hubs and surveillance hubs for bolstering your exploration teams and security force. I’ll be honest, I absolutely did not spend enough time and resources on establishing a police force during my first run, and on the next one I’ll be much more aware of it. I had well over 100 people die each year in muggings and assaults, but I was too focused on keeping the generator going. It is really not possible to have it all in Frostpunk 2.
Research generally falls into three categories: researching a new technology you will be able to build, researching a new law that will change how people will live, and researching a new passive or active upgrade for your existing equipment and districts. The generator has to be kept up with upgrades, and you’ll also need to maintain your districts from general wear and tear by spending precious prefabs to repair them. I made the stupid mistake of giving the Stalwarts giant mechs to run around town in to keep the peace, so I am now dealing with destroyed buildings in every district every year as a result of the vigilante justice I legalized. Whoopsie!
There is so much desperation built into every facet of Frostpunk 2, yet there is also unimaginable hope. There’s a nobility that comes with watching the last vestiges of humanity band together to battle the elements, and, eventually, to live – not just survive. It ironically warmed my heart every time I saw individual citizens rallying to help each other, offering up extra food or space in their homes, fighting for children’s rights. It’s a beautiful game, both narratively and visually.
Speaking of the gorgeous visuals, my rig is an RTX 3080 and Ryzen 7 3800x. I played Frostpunk 2 on high settings locked to 60 fps in 1440p, and experienced just a few sporadic frame drops during my playthrough. Overall, this is one of the better looking and better running PC games I’ve played in the last few years, and honestly it is just so nice to play a game perfectly formatted only for mouse and keyboard. The UI is both beautiful and easy to navigate, and everything in this wildly complex game is easy to understand at a glance. Also shout out, I suppose Ryzen worked with 11Bit to set up custom RGB keyboard effects as a default! During snowfall, snow actually falls in patterns on your keyboard, and during blizzards waves of white wash over it destroying all in it’s path. This is such a luxury thing that normally I wouldn’t care, but it’s just icing on top of an incredibly polished game that showcases how complete the experience is.
I would be remiss not to mention that Frostpunk 2 has one of the best musical scores of the year – yes, possibly even better than Final Fantasy VII Rebirth in my opinion. Every second of it feels like an epic cinematic moment in some way – yes, the quiet parts are building. Piotr Musiał’s score is always building. Just as you are. During the moments of great emotional peril, when the world watches a young child die of frostbite, or a new vein of coal is discovered, the score swells to something that makes The Avengers movie scores feel weak. It is so self important, so longing, and so tired, but there is triumph in every note of misery. I will need more time with it, but Frostpunk 2 may be a top 10 game score of all time for me. I am floored.
Frostpunk 2 does every single thing better than its predecessor, and at this point is second in its genre only to my all-time favorite Against the Storm. This game is brutal, unforgiving, hopeful, complicated, and not for the faint of heart. It will make you sweat, it will stretch your brain to its limit. It is polished beyond belief and every single piece of it works perfectly together. Frostpunk 2 is a game I will be playing for a long time to come, and it’ll be a warm day in Frostland before I let a single one of you miss out on it. Frostpunk 2 is an absolute essential for all RTS fans.
Nirav played Frostpunk 2 on PC with a review code.
