Frostpunk 2 review: building a city during the apocalypse

The world has been frozen over for half a century. It’s 1916 in this parallel timeline. Humanity is eternally battling the constant cold, but has largely come to terms with it. In the first Frostpunk, I was still building a city with a handful of people. By now, I’m a step further. As the newly elected mayor of New London, it’s up to me to make the right decisions and lead the city into the future so that humanity survives and, in the luckiest case, even flourishes. Tough snowstorms, epidemics, air pollution and other disasters demand everything from me and my people.

More macro, less micro

Compared to its predecessor, Frostpunk 2 has zoomed out a bit. Both literally and figuratively. The camera’s no longer as close to the action. I can’t see individual citizens scurrying around between houses, but entire neighbourhoods. Instead of drawing individual paths, I plan entire blocks on hexagonal fields, clearing them of ice and snow beforehand. Micromanagement has given way to grander plans, which I appreciate. Different quarters serve different purposes. Citizens live in the Housing District, but work in the Industrial or Food District. Small map icons show me where I should build what. Various upgrades allow me to pimp my buildings and extract raw materials such as coal, oil, wood or food quicker, explore my surroundings more efficiently or lighten the mood in the city.

I have to keep the people happy, otherwise I’ll be voted out of office quicker than Rishi Sunak. Still, the most important thing is the generator in the centre of the city, which provides heat. Initially, it burns fossil fuels such as coal, polluting the air. Later on, other options come along. If the generator isn’t running, the mood immediately sinks and my grip on power begins to loosen. In a new addition, a parliament now decides on the laws that are passed and therefore the direction that I take. Several factions and communities can still rebel and oppose me. While the Stalwarts are fully committed to law and order, the Pilgrims are religious anarcho-traditionalists who see human equality as the highest good. I can’t satisfy each group, some of them always hold opposing views. At least I can see how the groups will react to new laws or technologies that have been passed and react accordingly.

Before the Council passes a law, I can influence it with promises. As an example, I persuade the New Londoners to approve the admission of foreigners by promising to build a recycling plant. If I build the factory, the faction is happy. If I don’t keep my promise, the faction increasingly turns against me, which can lead to riots across neighbourhoods. It’s a balancing act – one that often leads to laws being passed or technologies being researched that I don’t really want. It takes me out of my comfort zone, in a good way. I have to be creative in finding solutions since things often turn out differently than expected.

Death in the eternal ice

Story mode first introduces me to the mechanics across several acts, then lets me fight for survival. No spoilers, but New London will soon be too small, and the resources are running out. It’s why I keep sending out scouting parties. Outposts provide urgently needed raw materials and tell the sometimes very dark story. Survivors are rare in the icy desert, often there’s just abandoned ruins lined with corpses. Death and illness are omnipresent in Frostpunk 2.

The question’s not whether, but how many people will die. On expeditions, when mining raw materials, from disease. A short pop-up window at the bottom right informs you how many people have just died at regular intervals. This isn’t easy to digest at first. At some point, though, I become indifferent and see people as just another resource. Whether I find a camp with 3,000 units of food or a camp with 3,000 survivors – I don’t care, they’re all consumables.

In this respect, Frostpunk 2 requires the appropriate constitution. The world is cold and merciless, death and misery are a fact of life. Even if I do everything right, I’m always lagging behind somewhere. Sometimes there’s not enough wood to maintain my buildings, then I don’t have any beds or coal for the generator runs out. This is typical of strategy building games, but it bothers me less in Anno or Tropico. In the dystopia of Frostpunk 2, the constant lack of food makes me feel particularly miserable. Little stories in the margins, illustrated with dark artwork recounting ruin, but also small joys among my populace, contribute to this.

Action, reaction

What I particularly like is that I can make various decisions during the campaign which have a noticeable influence on the further course of my game. I can’t decide what’s right or wrong, and it’s often a choice between plague and cholera. Should I leave a mass grave alone, but risk the death of dozens of researchers since I can’t get to the resources underneath it? My decision to clear the mass grave would come back to haunt me later in the game.

Small decisions often have a big impact. Whenever I think I’ve slowly got everything under control, everything collapses like a house of cards. This can detract from the fun of the game. I had to pull myself together several times to manoeuvre my population out of a seemingly hopeless situation. Speaking of getting yourself together: in addition to the campaign, which takes around 15 hours to complete, there’s only a sandbox mode called Utopia with seven possible maps. It’s rather meagre in terms of content. The developers are also adding mod support with the release. Community content shouldn’t be too far away.

Whiteout instead of dark mode

Technically, the game’s stylised and calm. White dominates, naturally, so the game isn’t for fans of dark mode. The surroundings and buildings stand out from the white soup and are designed in detail. But I don’t have time to study them anyway. The interface looks tidy and is mostly self-explanatory. Only selecting individual buildings is sometimes confusing, since possible building types always appear in a different order in a bar at the bottom of the screen. There are also bugs that may still be ironed out. Sometimes I had a few frame drops, which shouldn’t happen in a building strategy game. The German translation wasn’t quite perfect in the review version, but developer 11-Bit has assured us this’ll improve at launch.

Frostpunk 2 will be released on 20 September on PC, Mac, PS5 and X Box. The test version was provided to us by the developer.