City building survival game Frostpunk 2 will place settlers in the same dangerous conditions as in the first game – in an age of Ice Age, where the environment becomes increasingly bleak. But according to a new gameplay trailer, it looks like it will up the ante on the brutal, dystopian conditions of the original game. The sequel is scheduled to release sometime in the first half of 2024 on PC and debut on Game Pass.
In Frostpunk, you lead a town full of settlers in a town near London during the Industrial Revolution, as they endure a cataclysmic environmental event. Ice storms have ravaged most of humanity; you have to find a way to keep the generators running for heat while assigning workers and making constant trade-offs to keep people fed, housed, and most importantly, alive. The motto of the game was ‘The city must survive’. Your residents believe they are among the last humans alive, and if you fail the generator it means you will freeze to death.
Frostpunk 2, set thirty years after the original, takes these ideas and runs with them – the city has survived so long, its motto now is: ‘The city must not fall.’ It seems that each of the core values of the original game has been given a shine. The city’s top-down design is just as vibrant and picturesque. But the gameplay trailer reveals more advanced UI features in the building’s layout, including what appears to be design elements related to new heating technologies. When Frostpunk 2 was first announced in 2021, the announcement trailer noted that the generator technology was evolving to run on oil – but that these upgrades would come at a price.
In Frostpunk 2players must navigate political conflicts and workers’ uprisings. It seems that employees now have the agency to fight back against the choices of the Steward – that’s you, the player – in the form of voting things down. The gameplay trailer shows the inside of a civic building, where workers vote on equal pay. The trailer also features a number of narrative flashpoint moments, with citizens asking for specific things or voicing specific complaints: at one point, a miner named Ian Mactavish shouts “where are the houses you promised.”
That’s perhaps the scariest part this sequel promises, honestly: being able to give faces and names to the working population. The original game didn’t really give you any good choices: you force people to work 18 hours, feed them sawdust, and try to figure out whether militarism or religion is the best way to enforce compliance. It seems that in the future you will have to face the brutal consequences of your choices.