Frostpunk 2: first impressions from a series newcomer

I’m early in Frostpunk 2’s campaign, near the end of Chapter 1. I was a bit leery going in: the series has a forbidding reputation. But the more I play, the more it grows on me:

• The city-building presents an engaging challenge;
• The political system has some interesting ideas; and
• The difficulty is manageable (so far!).

What do you do in the game?

Moment to moment, Frostpunk 2 is about managing resources:

• Some are tangible: the city’s workforce, fuel for heat, food, materials, consumer goods, and prefab building parts.
• Others are intangible: the loyalty of the city’s population, and of its political factions. These are the province of the game’s political system.

Free lunches are rare — everything costs upkeep. For example, growing food requires workers, heating, and materials, plus the one-off cost of the prefabs to set up the district. Those workers require housing, which must also be heated. The generator that provides heat runs on coal. The coal miners need food. And so on.

As such, this is a game about scarcity — there is seldom enough for everything at any given time. It is also difficult to achieve equilibrium:

• Resources are finite, so as deposits deplete, it’s necessary to demolish existing districts and replace them elsewhere.
• The city’s population grows automatically, supplemented by one-off events that allow players to bring in more people from outlying settlements. This is both a blessing and a curse. A larger population means a larger workforce — and also more mouths to feed and more bodies to house.

Frostpunk 2’s political system is novel for a city-builder:

• Different groups in the city subscribe to different ideologies: for example, some prefer “adaptation” to the cold, while others prefer brute-force mechanical solutions. As a result, they prefer different technologies, different buildings, and different laws. While building the city is up to the player, getting legislation through the city’s council can require horse trading.
• To keep factions happy or win their support on a vote, the player can promise to research a technology of their choice or let them propose the next law. I like to kill two birds with one stone: I compare the factions’ technology wishlist to those available for research, promise a sensible choice, research it, and receive credit for being a man of my word. So far, a majority of the city supports me and the rest tolerate me, so it seems to be working…

Tonally, this reminds me of Alpha Centauri. A message of both games is that humans will always, always have different opinions about how to organise society and respond to environmental challenges, whether on an alien world (Alpha Centauri) or a ruined Earth (Frostpunk).

How’s the difficulty?

Playing on the easiest difficulty setting, the game is challenging but manageable.

I beat the tutorial/prologue on my first try and achieved the best ending. Planning ahead helped — it became clear early on that I would need to aggressively expand to grow enough food to meet the scenario objectives.

The main campaign is tougher — I never have enough. At the same time, I’ve also managed to avoid outright crises. I’m undoubtedly making rookie mistakes, so a veteran Frostpunk player might find this easier.

Will I keep playing?

Yes. The game has intrigued me: I want to improve on my mistakes and continue growing my city.

The campaign has just introduced a new level of complexity: setting up a daughter colony to send oil back to the main city. So, let’s see how well I can juggle two different settlements, and what comes next.