Frostpunk 2’s beta takes you through a gameplay loop meant only for the cold-hearted

While you’re knee deep in a challenge Frostpunk 2 campaign, I was distracted by a pop-up notification.

“Steward, some want changes to our quarantine policy,” one of my anonymous advisors explained. “Forced separation from loved ones is difficult for everyone when they have to be quarantined. It is especially difficult for parents whose children are taken from them and placed in quarantine. One such mother comes to the quarantine camp every day and asks to come in to take care of her daughter. “She’s terrified of being alone; she can’t live without me!’ she begs. Should we allow healthy parents into the camp with their sick children?

I had introduced the quarantine into the game several weeks earlier as a desperate attempt to eliminate a cold-and-starvation-induced disease that was, for all intents and purposes, a direct result of my poor leadership. The mountains of citizens who succumbed to disease had put a damper on my reputation and, perhaps more importantly, robbed me of one of the greatest resources in the urban planning game: people who can work. And so the sick went into quarantine to prevent the dire situation from turning into a full-blown crisis.

Frostpunk 2 recently enjoyed a week-long early access period, during which Polish developer 11 bit studios invited anyone who pre-ordered the deluxe edition to try out a beta version ahead of the game’s full launch on July 25. Like its predecessor, the sequel tasks players with running a community in a world ravaged by the snow-white totality of endless winter, though it apparently focuses far less on the nitty-gritty than the original.

You and your fellow survivors can withstand these harsh conditions thanks to the city’s generator, a massive, heat-generating feat of engineering treated with a reverence usually reserved for gods. The severity of the situation is reflected not only in the constant pressure of the glacial ice that surrounds your city (and, in the midst of particularly brutal snowstorms, in the edges of your computer screen), but also in the main menu itself. Where in other releases you would expect to click a simple ‘start’ or ‘begin’ button, Frostpunk 2 requires you to proclaim that “the city must not fall” before beginning your mission.

The preview was limited to free play in one region and a maximum of 300 in-game weeks (approximately one to two hours of playtime), but the content shown turned out to be a perfect taster to get even me, a relative newcomer to the game, into the city-building and survival genre, hungry for more. Although I was initially overwhelmed by the game’s interwoven mechanics – there’s an entire council system where you can secure votes by, for example, making promises to the city’s various cliques that resonate elsewhere – I quickly learned how to work with the spinning plate approach to crisis management. . After half a dozen attempts I was deftly clearing ice fields for coal mining and housing construction without a second glance at the tutorial, freeing up my personal mental deck to experiment with research goals and the inevitable politics involved in getting anything done .

Of course, that does not apply to the decisions you make Frostpunk 2 stick to the macro level. Every step, from general city planning to addressing the random problems of a single citizen, is treated with equal importance. Big or small, your choices carry a weight that sends ripples through time and space.

My advisor provided three possible scenarios in response to the mother’s request. I could change the law to allow healthy parents to quarantine with their sick children, stick to the original word of the edict, or end the divorce process altogether. The final choice was out of the question, as the quarantine was the only thing that gave my city a chance to fight against diseases, leaving me to think about the consequences of the first two. Frostpunk 2 hides very little information from the player, so hovering over my options gave me a quick overview of how the immediate future would play out if I made each decision.

The consequences of both choices concerned my relationship with a semi-progressive faction known as the Technocrats, who organized themselves in opposition to my policies. Allowing healthy parents to stay with their sick children would worsen my already strained relationship with the city council’s technocratic bloc, while enforcing a strict quarantine would stabilize our dealings somewhat, as they respected my initial decision. I’d like to say I struggled between the two options, but with technocrat-organized protests threatening to close down a key food-producing district and colder temperatures on the horizon, I couldn’t risk upsetting them further. Unfortunately for the mother separated from her sick daughter and for countless families like her, the strict quarantine remained in place.

Image: 11 bit studios

Such butterfly effect style moments are the cornerstone of Frostpunk 2. The frigid society you rule is much like our own, with human cogs and cogs similarly relying on each other to advance the great beast of civilization. Small mistakes often spiral out of control if left unattended, resulting in total societal collapse if you lose the public’s trust. I often asked people to settle for less heat or meager rations so they could free up workers to fill gaps elsewhere. Sometimes all you can do is callously carve out the city itself, eliminating vital neighborhoods in favor of energy for others, hoping to find healthy tissue underneath. A scenario like the one I described above could have been avoided by something as simple as searching a region that I knew months ago had plenty of wildlife, but instead my fear of an impending cold snap caused me to use my limited seized stock. of explorers finding generator fuel. The interplay of resource gathering and industry, research and political maneuvering creates a gameplay loop that is as immersive as it is maddening.

Oh, and one last piece of advice if you’re planning on doing some Frostpunking this summer: make it your top priority to keep the city’s youth engaged in something, whether it concerns apprenticeships (yes, child labor!) or compulsory education. Without enacting at least one of these laws, the petty thugs become roving gangs of wild street urchins faster than you can say “Oliver Twist,” sometimes culminating in crime-inducing rumblings between baby-faced gangs that leave several children dead and their parents angry. I look to you for answers. But if you’ve already organized harvest funerals and all those mutilated bodies can be used to reduce disease and accelerate research, then public confidence in your leadership be damned. Such is life when the greed and short-sightedness of previous generations condemned the planet to a new ice age. The city must not fall.

Frostpunk 2 will be released on July 25 for PlayStation 5, Windows PC and Xbox Series X. It will also be available for Xbox Game Pass at launch.