FrostpunkThe 2018 post-apocalyptic city-builder dominated my waking thoughts when I first started playing it – at this point I’d sunk nearly 90 hours into the game. But after 15 hours into the sequel, I have to say I’m disappointed. Frostpunk 2 does not hit in the same way.
In FrostpunkEvery decision you make has swift and tangible consequences. After all, you work every day to ensure your city survives the falling temperatures and dwindling resources. Not enough coal to keep the heat on at night? People are dying. Not enough food to feed your citizens? People are dying. While this is still the case in Frostpunk 2In order to advance the storyline and not just make a “Frostpunk 1.5”, developer 11 bit studios opted for a more macro approach for the sequel. This is, in part, the game’s downfall.
Frostpunk 2 takes place 30 years after the original. The city has survived and is growing rapidly – think thousands of people, not just hundreds. Because of this, the citizens have been divided into factions to express their hopes for the future. It is the player’s job to navigate these different factions and their ideas to ensure that people survive and are happy – or risk being banished.
The new macro approach brings about major changes. Frostpunk 2The council system allows representatives from each faction to vote for or against laws the player proposes, depending on how closely aligned they are with their ideology. The player can also negotiate with factions to secure their vote by promising them something they want. Compare this to Frostpunkwhere players could sign laws without public input.
There is also more room for this sequel. In Frostpunk 2the player works over a period of weeks rather than individual days to show how these decisions affect the city on a broader scale. Instead of placing individual buildings and assigning workers to them as you would in FrostpunkPlayers with enough resources and labor can build districts that automatically collect resources.
In FrostpunkA small red icon in the center of the UI tells players how many sick citizens they have — including how many are critical — and how many are currently being treated in hospitals. Players can deal with the growing number of sick people in a number of ways, depending on what might be causing them: for example, by increasing the generator’s heat range, making sure everyone gets fed, or building more hospitals to meet the demand for capacity. When a citizen dies, discontent often immediately rises and hope drops slightly. Each individual death affects the player in some way.
Compare that to this example of Frostpunk 2: The player has added a few hospitals to various residential areas, but despite this there is a scrolling pop-up in the bottom right corner of the screen. 109 people died — and then again, a few seconds later, and again. It’s not always clear Why these people die (is it the lack of food? the cold? a combination? something else?) or how it affects the city – both in terms of staff and citizen happiness. It’s something that happens, but because the player is focused on the macro and time passes quickly, it’s hard to really care.
The weight of choice is lost in how much there is to do and how to keep track of it all. Frostpunk 2‘s complex user interface. In Frostpunkplayers are regularly confronted with moral and ethical dilemmas — dilemmas that really make them question who they are and what they are willing to do to ensure the survival of the city. There are elements of that in Frostpunk 2but when you look at the size of the game, they are scarce.
The first moral dilemma I faced in Frostpunk 2 was in the prologue (essentially the tutorial), and it immediately gave me the Frostpunk flashbacks I was looking for. Should I slaughter all the seals in a nearby colony or let the elders die to ensure we had enough food to survive the impending whiteout? Sadly, this was the first and last time a decision made me second guess myself. In Chapter 1, I could have chosen to send children to work in the mines—and that could have had consequences later—but I just didn’t care that much because it didn’t make much difference either way. Decisions just don’t seem to carry that much weight Frostpunk 2.
Is Frostpunk 2 beautiful? Yes. Is it worth playing? Definitely. Does it have its flaws? Definitely. I think my deep love for Frostpunk disappointed me here (not that the game was perfect, mind you). Or maybe it’s the fact that politics is a big part of Frostpunk 2 and I just don’t want to deal with it in the game right now with everything going on in the world. It could also be my current aversion to games that make me keep an eye on every little detail, across multiple screens, and how my changes might affect other elements later. Complexity is beyond my brain at the moment; maybe that’s why I only put 14 hours into it Old Ring. Frostpunk 2 also doesn’t give me the satisfaction of clicking individual buildings into place around the generator rings or filling a ring perfectly – something my brain loves.
That being said, the grittier art style in Frostpunk 2 is beautiful and because I built the game on the Unreal Engine, it’s so polished that I wish I could see the original the same way. Frostpunk 2 was built on Unreal, partly because 11 bit studios wanted to enable modding for the game. And honestly, that might be the saving grace.
I want to see what players do when they are given free rein. I want to see Frostpunk but as colonies on other planets, or as a floating steampunk society, or with dinosaurs (as the mod’s announcement trailer shows). Basically just solve the problems with Frostpunk 2 and place it in unique settings, with scenarios and moral decisions based on them. Until then, I’ll go back and spend another day or two delving into the original.
Frostpunk 2 releases September 20 on PC, macOS, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S. The game was reviewed on PC using a pre-release download code from 11 bit studios. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. While these do not influence editorial content, Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. More information about Polygon’s ethics policy can be found here.