Building a City in the Ice Age
Frostpunk is an apocalyptic city-builder set in an alternate 1887, where everything is steam-powered, computers have been invented, and an ice age has struck earth. You play as the leader of a city somewhere far north of the British Islands, tasked with steering it from doom by the crippling cold.
Upon launching the game, you are greeted by a start screen, which leads you into a depressing main menu where somber and melancholic music starts playing. Along with the snowfall and gloomy crowd in the background, the game is setting the stage for you to make questionable moral choices, cruel sacrifices, and do whatever it takes, to survive.
Backstory and Lore
Charles Babbage is a mathematician who in 1822, conceived a calculating machine capable of computing tables of numbers. This project, which was funded by the British government, failed in our timeline. Resulting in funding being cut and the project going nowhere. But in the universe of Frostpunk, Babbage successfully invented what is known as a difference engine, capable of solving polynomial functions. Seeing the success of the project, the British government increased funding, allowing him to make an analytical engine, a mechanical general-purpose computer. Through improvements over the years by other scientists, the machine shrinks in size and is able to perform increasingly complex tasks.
Some years later, a device called Steam Core was invented by a fictional Professor Hawkins. It’s a more streamlined and efficient form of steam engine that’d later be a rare and valuable resource in the game. Sometime after, an enormous robot named Automatons powered by an advanced clockwork mechanism, Babbage’s improved engine, and Steam Core, was invented. The robot is capable of doing complicated jobs that previously were impossible to automate. It became an invaluable asset to the British government, who sold it to many across the globe, propelling them to become the world’s first superpower.
In the summer of 1886, what later will be called The Great Frost began. It started out as an anomalous weather pattern, such as severe snowstorm in the northern countries, endless rainstorm in the Sahara, and a worldwide temperature decrease. The United Kingdom and other countries conducted expeditions to the north to investigate the source of these anomalies.
But as time went on, the pattern continued and became so much more prevalent that even the most resilient crops started to fail. Starvation due to failed harvest became increasingly common among the people of Britain and other nations, deteriorating public order and sparking riots. To avoid the increasingly cold climates and starvation, many seek refuge to the southern hemisphere, which traditionally has a warmer climate. However, many southern nations have neither the willingness nor the ability to handle such a massive influx of refugees, leading them back to square one with starvation and riots.
As the situation worsened dramatically, the British government crafted 2 evacuation plans. The first plan is sending refugees to its southern colonies, such as Australia and India, where it was warmer. The second plan is sending refugees using massive icebreakers and land dreadnought to the coal-rich far north, where heat-producing generators will be built as the center of future settlements.
Unfortunately, an apocalyptic ice storm starting from the south severed all communications between Britain and its colonies, forcing the government to adopt the second plan. After bankrupting itself by spending all of its manpower and resources building heat-producing generators to ensure the survival of future settlements in the north, the British government began the evacuation.
Only a small fraction of people can be evacuated, many of whom are the wealthy upper-class. For most of the populations, their journey ends here.
But you are the lucky few, and your struggle has only begun.
And you will probably fail in your first try, even in normal difficulty. So let’s pause for a moment and learn how to run a city first, before you starve your people, blow up the generator, or get executed for being incompetent. Alternatively, if you’re a veteran and have seen it all, skip ahead to the opinion section. Feel free to scroll through this long review.
This review only contains some minor spoilers. Skip the story section if you want to go in absolutely blind.
Climate Changed
The freezing environments directly affect the destiny of your city. The game reminds you of the debilitating climate by providing a big temperature indicator, sitting pretty on the top center. As such, the Generator built to fight it, and coal, which fuels the Generator, is crucial to the city’s survival. The Generator is a round and tall tower, somewhat similar in shape to the Pisa tower if it was upright and made of metal.
When turned on, it will generate heat zones around it in the shape of a circle, where the temperature is raised above the environment. By how much it is raised depends on what steam level you enable on your generator. Higher steam level can be unlocked through research (more on that later) and costs you more coal per minute. The size of the heat zones depends on the range settings you chose. Bigger zone costs, you guessed it, more coal.
How do you obtain coal to feed the Generator? There are several ways to gather coal, but only 2 of them are accessible in the early game. You can gather them from piles that are provided early in the game. If you’ve depleted them, you can make coal piles using coal thumper. But this is inefficient because you’ll need to employ people for the coal thumper and for gathering the piles. Alternatively, you could build coal mines in the designated mining site. While this takes much less manpower, it doesn’t output as much coal. And a steam core, which isn’t easy to come by, is required to build the mine. Other methods that are unlocked later are burning wood to charcoal and building coal outposts (more on this later).
What if you don’t have enough coal but the cold has come? Fear not, because you can overdrive your Generator. Enabling overdrive will raise the temperature of heat zones even higher without consuming more coal. However, use of overdrive gradually increases the Generator’s stress level. If the stress level reaches 100%, the Generator will explode.
And your game will be over.
As the temperature gradually declines to extreme levels, you’ll have to somehow provide more and more coal to fight the cold and keep your people warm. Otherwise, citizens living in a freezing environment will get sick easily. The longer they are sick, the more likely they’ll die. That’s why the cold, and by extension the Generator, should be the first thing to keep in mind.
Building in Circles
The building arrangement in this game is unique. Unlike other games that use a boring rectangular grid or let you position buildings arbitrarily, Frostpunk uses a circular grid, similar to the polar coordinate system, with concentric circles and the towering Generator as the center.
The Will of the People
To be able to govern, you need the consent of the governed. If people don’t have confidence in the authority, they won’t obey and do as they’re ordered, making the authority meaningless. Same goes with your city. However, public opinions in the real world are very hard to gauge and most of the time, can only be measured qualitatively. The game simplified it and made it an easy-to-grasp mechanic, where they are measured quantitatively with the bar on the bottom center. There are 2 bars, one blue and one red. The blue one measures hope while the red one measures discontent.
In addition, there’s another way for your citizens to voice their opinion, which is an in-game event. The most common are people protesting various grievances, such as starvation, sickness, cold homes, and then demanding remedies for those grievances. You can promise to fulfill those demands, or not. There are also times when your citizens will ask you to pass certain laws. Aside from those 2, the rest of in-game events are scripted. They range from an engineer asking permission for doing personal research, to a group of drunk men harassing people in the street.
Because hope and discontent are quantitative metrics, their rise and fall are predictable, largely depending directly on the actions that you took. Passage of unpopular laws, arbitrary arrest, and breaking of promises will cause discontent. But they are also affected by the material condition of the citizen. If they live in a cold home, eating bland soup, and being ill, of course they’re not gonna be content with your rule. Conversely, being protected by guards, able to pray in churches, and going to the pub with their friends, will make them feel hopeful and confident of your authority. The material conditions of the citizens and your various actions that affected the citizen’s hope and discontent are displayed clearly if you hover over the bar.
Without the consent of the governed and the approval of the public, people wouldn’t want to live under your rule. If you reach maximum discontent, citizens will give you a chance to make it right. You’ll be given a quest to lower discontent below 75% within 2 days. If you fail, your rule is over. Depending on the actions you’ve taken, you’ll either be banished or executed.
So be a good ruler, because you’re not unaccountable to your citizens.
One Man Legislature
As the leader of the city, you’re the only one that can pass laws. These laws are pre-made by the game, but you’re the one that chooses to enact them or not. They’re presented neatly in the Book of Laws.
After passing one law, you’d have to wait a certain duration (depends on the law and the difficulty) before passing another. Passage of a certain law will open the path for one and close access to another. Some laws are a choice, you can choose to either overcrowd the hospital or unlock ability that gives sick people extra ration, but not both. So while they’re “law”, they are more akin to a tech tree.
Each law has its own positive and negative effect once passed. Some of them, such as hope and discontent increase, instantaneously happen once the law is passed, and some of them, such as 30% of gravely ill people being radically treated ending up as an amputee, are an everlasting disability. Many of them will trigger an event sometime after their enactment.
The Book of Laws are split into 2 sections. One is adaptation laws, these are socioeconomic policies that helps your city adapt to the dire condition, such as child labour, prostitution, care house for the amputee, etc. The other is purpose laws, they keep your people from being hopeless and coincidentally, allows you to gradually seize more power. This is where the fun starts. If adaptation laws were the country club, purpose laws would be the night club.
Purpose laws have 2 possible paths, faith and order. Once chosen, you can’t change it. Choosing faith will unlock laws that embrace religion to keep your people content and hopeful. Among many, the laws in there will allow you to build churches, unlock a certain ability that boosts hopes, etc. Choosing order will unlock laws that push for collective identities to keep your people content and hopeful. Among many, the laws in there will allow you to build a guard station, conduct morning gatherings, etc.
“Well, clearly the Faith path is the morally correct one,” you may have thought. Notice how in the previous paragraph I barely change the sentence structure to describe both paths. That’s because they are 2 sides of the same coin. As I’ve mentioned previously, the Book of Laws are more akin to a tech tree. At first, both paths do diverge from one another. But as you progress through the “tech tree” of either path, they start to converge. The Order path has Guards while Faith path has Faith Keepers as your iron fist. They can be utilized to quell protest, catch criminals, and other more nefarious purposes. The Order path has Pledge of Loyalty while the Faith path has Righteous Denunciation as a way to “rehabilitate” criminals. Since you made the rules, “criminals” is really just any citizen you don’t like.
By the end of both paths, you will have the same power. Hope will stay at a maximum, never to be a concern anymore and your city will have a place for public execution. You will either be a Fascist or a Theocrat. Different pretext, same results, your choice.
“But I want to be neither,” you said with strong conviction. Remember, the choice is in your hands on whether or not you want to enact the laws the game gave you. But be sure to have a strong moral principle if you want to be idealistic, because when push comes to shove, most people will do unspeakable deeds.
Healthcare is (not) a Human Right
Your citizens are humans, and humans fall ill. The primary cause of their sickness is, obviously, the frigid weather. Sick citizens will have to be treated in a Medical Post, Infirmary, or House of Healing. With the exception of the House of Healing, health facilities only employ engineers, workers & children can’t heal people. The facilities operate 24/7 to treat the ill, whom when treated, would be absent from their assigned duties. If an ill citizen can’t get treated in time due to lack of hospital beds, they’ll turn to a gravely ill citizen, who’ll die if not treated. The gravely ill can’t be treated in Medical Posts under normal circumstances and the other 2 more advanced health facilities can only be unlocked later. So, if you don’t want your citizens to die, make sure you have enough healthcare capacity.
Cold homes and workplaces will increase the chance of being sick. That’s why it’s very important to keep your city warm. Otherwise, the number of ill people will increase drastically. Since they can’t go to work, efficiency will go down across the board. If you’re not careful, this will be the start of a downward spiral you can hardly climb out of. Fortunately, the game provides you with an easy way out from this spiral. Signing the Triage law will immediately cure 60% of the sick people. Sounds too good to be true? It is. Like the name suggests, it’s a triage, not a get-out-of-jail-free card. Where do they get the resources to immediately heal the majority of the patient? By sacrificing those who are severely ill, 25% of the patient to be precise, and focusing the healthcare resources available to those more likely to be cured. That’s right, you will have the nightmare of socialized healthcare, death panels.
Follow the Science
Aside from the Book of Law that looks and acts like a tech tree, Frostpunk has an actual tech tree. They are accessible once you’ve built a workshop, which is a building where you employ engineers (and only engineers, workers need not apply) to conduct research. The more workshops you have, the more engineers you can employ to do research, the faster you can advance technologies. To conduct a research, you’ll need a workshop with engineers employed in it (obviously) and to pay the research’s cost, which is some wood and steel. The farther you go down the tech tree, the more expensive the cost would be.
There are a wide range of advancements you can make, from higher steam level for the generator, to more efficient medical posts. As the population of your city grows and the temperature decreases, technological advancements will not only be beneficial, but also necessary for survival. Thus, always follow the science and don’t be a luddite.
It’s the Economy, Stupid
Scarcity is the first law of economy, and while all 6 of the resources in Frostpunk, which are coal, wood, steel, steam core, raw food, and food rations, are theoretically infinite, you can only produce them at a finite rate. A coal mine can only produce so much coal in one minute, same goes for other resource-producing buildings. To highlight the importance of this, Frostpunk provides you with a very helpful economy tab, where you can keep track of every resource’s net gain (or loss) per day.
The real scarcity you’ll face in Frostpunk is not with the resources, it’s with manpower. Yes, there is an infinite amount of coal in the ground, but how would you extract them? You’ll build a coal mine, but someone has to run it. And that someone is finite, at least for the duration of any scenario in the game. Don’t forget that each and all of those “someone” need healthcare, food, and warm homes.
And the economic planning doesn’t stop at resources, it extends to all of the game’s mechanics. To understand this, let’s imagine that the temperature just dropped. What can you do?
First approach, you tune up the generator to keep your people warm, preventing them from getting ill. Of course, you’d need more coal, so you build another coal mine. But everybody is already employed, so you accepted this batch of immigrants to work on the coal mine. The problem is, you looked at your economy tab and food rations are now in the red because those extra workers need food. You currently have no hungry or starving people, so it’s going to take a while until people are going hungry, you decide to kick that can down the road.
Second approach, you upgrade people’s houses so that they are better insulated. You’ll need wood and steel. However, because your coal production relies heavily on burning wood to charcoal, you barely make any wood per day. So you shut them down to gain more wood, but now you’re hemorrhaging coal, something that can bite you in the future.
Third approach, you realized that you can’t provide them warm homes because your manpower and resources are currently spread thin. Knowing cold homes lead to illness, you signed the Overcrowding law, which doubles the capacity of all medical facilities, to anticipate spikes in the number of sick people. However, signing the law causes rise in discontent and people who are sick can’t go to work so workplaces efficiency would go down across the board.
These 3 possible approaches show how Frostpunk’s economy truly follows scarcity, that there is never enough (of something) to satisfy all conceivable human wants. You can’t have it all and you’ll have to make sacrifices, especially on harder difficulties. For the greater good, as they say. But which sacrifice is the less harmful and the most benevolent? The options are endless and they are for you to decide as an economic planner in Frostpunk.
It’s Cold(er) Outside
Outside the safety and warmth of the Generator, lies a vast and desolate environment. It’s white, as far as the eye can see. This is (uncreatively named) Frostland. You’ll have to explore it for more resources and manpower. Build a Beacon, where you can recruit scout teams to explore various (but sometimes empty) locations which stand out among the snow.
The Beacon, a balloon with lamps acting as a guide for your scout
Some locations have resources that you can extract. Build an Outpost Depot to recruit outpost teams and “import” resources from those locations.
The Outpost Depot where you can recruit outpost teams to build resource outpost in Frostland
As mentioned previously, you’ll need more helping hands to extract more resources as the climate worsens. Like most western countries nowadays, the only way you can grow your population is through immigration. In some places, you’ll find camps and settlements filled with people. The choice is yours to bring them to your city for more workforce or leave them in the cold if your city is on the edge.
Now that we’re on the same page, let’s go through the scenarios that you’ll experience.
A New Home
After traversing the Frostland, you finally arrived at your destination, an almost perfectly round and massive crater where you’ll start a settlement named New London. In the middle, you’ll find the monumental Generator, the heart of your city.
Along the grueling journey to the crater, there were some people left behind, many of whom are the families of your citizens. So as you start building your city, they ask you to build a Beacon, enabling exploration of the Frostland to find their friends and relatives lost in the journey.
Not only that, your citizens are also curious about the conditions of Winterhome. It’s the pilot project of this evacuation plan, a nearby city just like New London with heat-producing generators, but populated a year prior. Because of that, they were given much more resources and manpower at their disposal. As such, the city was able to build monumental landmarks around Frostland, from a weather station to a bridge that crosses over a deep ravine. Your citizens wanted to know if this new style of civilization is rock solid or not.
As your scouts explore Frostland and find the people that were left behind, they also came across the landmarks that Winterhome built. However, the bridge was deserted, there was only a lone automaton there. So was the weather station, it was completely empty.
What happened to Winterhome?
The Arks
You command a team of scientists tasked by the British government to preserve the seedlings of numerous plants, in the hope that when the climate becomes warm again, the barren earth can be replanted, restoring it to its former glory.
There are some differences in terms of mechanics from A New Home. Because you’re a team of scientists, you only have engineers, without any workers or children. Thus, certain laws, like Child Labor, and certain buildings, like Hunter’s Hut, which only employs workers, are not available.
The seedling you’re tasked to preserve is in 4 big silos, all of them will have to be kept above a certain temperature. If any of them fall under it, the seedling’s health will gradually degrade. If it goes to zero due to continuous exposure to cold temperature, you’ll fail the scenario and earth won’t ever recover.
The use of automatons is crucial to the operation of your city. For one, your seedling must survive until the cold ends, whenever that maybe, perhaps long after your team has died. Furthermore, you don’t have much manpower. Your city only consists of 45 engineers without ever increasing because (unlike A New Home) there will be no immigration into the city. As such, there’ll be numerous quests ordering you to automate all industries. Failure to automate will spell certain death.
As you fight the worsening climate to preserve the seedling, a sick and exhausted figure is seen running to your city.
Who could that be?
The Refugees
You are the leader of a group of poor working-class people who seized a Generator meant for the wealthy lords.
In contrast to The Arks, immigrants are very common, even more so than A New Home. At first, the friends and families of your group who were left behind will come to your city. Later on, the lords, whose Generator you seized, will come to your city, demanding you to admit them in since it was really their Generator. Their relatives and childrens will quickly pop up as well, wanting to move into your city.
Surely, nothing could go wrong with 2 groups of people who see each other as parasites and leeches of society living in the same space, right?
Right?
What the Game Does Great
The story is the biggest thing that distinguishes Frostpunk from its genre. Most city-building games have a subpar story, if any. Their “story” mode is usually just a bunch of targets and goals that players must achieve. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because players often imagine their own story behind the city they’re building. In that case, the in-game story will only get in the way of those imaginations.
However, Frostpunk takes a different approach by making a compelling story central to the game. If most city-building games were DOOM, then Frostpunk would be The Last of Us. You’re not building a city for the sake of building a city, you’re building a city because there are conflicts to face and problems to solve, from the crippling cold to a class war. The game has a story to tell and it acts as the main driver for the player to move forward.
That’s why I only talked a little bit about the scenario. It’s better for you to go buy the game and experience it yourself than to hear it from me. Playing TLoU wouldn’t be as satisfying if you’ve watched a playthrough of it, even more so if you’ve read the story in its wikipedia entry. Same goes here, the story is just that good.
But it doesn’t stop there, having a compelling story is one thing, having a compelling story with branching narratives that depends on your action is another. The various events that happen, be it scripted or as a consequence of your action, makes it feel like you’re commanding a real city with real individuals who have their own thoughts and agency.
A prime example of this that isn’t a big spoiler is a small story arc that could happen in any scenario if you have 2 or more automatons. An engineer will ask your permission to be relieved of his duty to do a research that allows him to better understand automaton.
Regardless of your choice, he’ll conduct the research and ask for resources to fund the endeavour. First, he’ll ask for an automaton, which consequently won’t be able to work for a day. If you refuse his request, the project will end and the story ends here.
Later, he’ll ask for a steam core. If you have a steam core you can either give him one or not, in which case the project will end. Alternatively, you can give him steam core later if you don’t have any at the moment.
If you chose the first, his research will continue and bear fruit. The cost of producing automatons will fall by 5% and its ability will be expanded.
This is already a good example but it gets even better. If you had chosen to order him to go back to work when he first asked for a day off but give him steam core later on, this event will happen.
Your refusal to give him time didn’t prevent him from conducting his research. He stayed up until late at night in the workshop conducting his research. Because of that, he would be remiss and the steam core he’s working with will explode, killing him in the process.
The example shows how the decision you make to handle the various events will, directly or not, affect what happens next in a way you may not foresee. The complexities in the arc above also exist in its other side story, such as an event that happens after passing a law, and its main story arc (which I won’t spoil much here) to an even greater degree, which only tells you how nicely written and cleverly designed the branching storylines of Frostpunk is.
And it’s not just your decision like in the event above that affects the story, but also how you play and how well you play. If your city’s condition is dire enough, it’s possible for cannibalism to be legalized. What laws did you pass? How well did you finish a quest? How hopeful were your people? Did you choose to be a fascist or a theocrat? So on and so forth. It’s a pretty successful attempt in marrying the story and the gameplay, something that many games still fail at.
Thanks to the harrowing and hauntingly beautiful soundtrack that will send chills down your spine, the atmosphere is breathtaking and immersive, much more so than other games of the genre. They fit the incredible story like a glove, for without it, playing Frostpunk would be like watching a horror movie with no sound. A great example of this is when you’re just trying to survive in New London, a dreadful musical composition filled with despair suddenly plays, reminding you as the leader that the city is always on the edge.
So put on a pair of nice headphones when you play to really feel like a central planner in steampunk 1880s, racing against the cold climate, and holding the fate of hundreds. You can give them all a listen here.
The game’s realistic and beautiful graphics also helps you immerse with the story and contrast it further from other games of the genre, since many of them opt for a cartoonish style. You can zoom in to every building with all of its little detail and people walking around in the street, reminding you that the number in the bottom right corner isn’t just a number, but it represents real, living, and breathing humans who each have a life of their own.
Calling Frostpunk as The Last of Us of city-building games wouldn’t be entirely accurate because Frostpunk has a great and interesting gameplay. Again, Frostpunk stands out from its genre here. Unlike a lot of city-building games which has a pretty laid back gameplay, Frostpunk is more hardcore. Without spoiling too much, there’s even a goddamn boss fight in the end of A New Home and The Arks, not many games of the genre have that. If most city-building games were Overwatch, Frostpunk would be ARMA. This is reflected by Steam’s achievement statistics. Less than half of the players finished A New Home, about a quarter completed The Arks, and less than a fifth finished The Refugees.
In other games, making mistakes only means a slap on the wrist, such as losing money, losing a building, etc. In Frostpunk, making mistakes is a cut on your wrist, it could lead to certain death in some situations! This is mainly due to the neverending threat of the bitter cold, but also due to your needy citizens. Forgot to research generator heating level? Your citizens aren’t having warm homes tonight. Forgot to gather steam cores to build that coal mine? You’re out of coal and your citizens are freezing tomorrow. Didn’t sign a law to enable Faith Keepers or Guards? Crimes ravage your city and discontent would spike. The stakes are much higher without a lot of room for mistakes.
What Could Be Improved
The actions you can take in response to your citizens protesting certain grievances aren’t too big of a dilemma, at least in normal difficulty. It’s not really worth it to make a promise to your citizen because the hope you gain by fulfilling them Isn’t enticing enough compared to the discontent you’ll get if you fail. Further, the discontent gained for dismissing their concern are small enough that it’s better to swallow it than risk giving a promise. The payoff is simply too small compared to the risk and the penalty for not betting in the first place is minimal. While this may reflect real-world behavior, it certainly gives you some pass for not playing well, which shouldn’t happen in a game meant to be hard like Frostpunk.
While Frostpunk branching narrative is certainly a cherry on top of its great story, the second time you play a scenario, it will be like following a script. Almost all events in Frostpunk are triggered by a simple ‘if this then that’ logic while the rest are scripted and will happen no matter what you do. When you first play the scenario and something happens as a direct consequence of your actions, be it signing laws or responding to a scripted event, it feels immersive. However, the second time you play, if you do that same action, the exact same event will happen. You’ll then realize that the mechanics aren’t very well thought-out and the game becomes predictable. This could be solved easily if there were an assortment of events that could happen from a single action instead of just one.
Conclusion
Frostpunk is a game that pulled off commonly overlooked aspects by the genre such as atmosphere, music, graphics, and story, above and beyond where most city-builders are willing to go. It also brings new ideas, such as a narrative-driven experience and branching storylines, to a genre that typically has none of them. Combined with the creative gameplay mechanics and challenging difficulty, it treats you to an epic and unique experience unfounded in other games of its type and breaks the established formula of city-building games, just like DOOM did with the first-person shooter genre back in 2016.
firesidedotreviews.wordpress.com 