• Developer: 11 Bit Studios
• System Reviewed on: PC
• Similar Games: Frostpunk, Tropico

What is Frostpunk 2?

Frostpunk 2 is an engaging survival city builder game set in a post-apocalyptic world blanketed in ice and snow. In this challenging environment, players take on the role of a steward whose goal is to lead the city of New London. The main objective of the game is to change New London into a thriving and sustainable community that is capable of withstanding the brutal climate. As you navigate the challenges of governing, resource management, and the wellbeing of your citizens, you must make difficult decisions that can (and will) determine the fate of your city and its inhabitants.

The Good

Impactful Choices:

You are offered many choices within Frostpunk 2 that vary greatly on the impact that they'll have on you during your playthrough. While many of these decisions felt impactful, some seemed overly dramatic considering the context of the situation. For example, one of the choices made that was 24 weeks before the whiteout (essentially a strong blizzard that could potentially wipe out your civilisation if you're not prepared), involved deciding whether the elderly should sacrifice themselves to decrease the necessary stockpile of food or to eliminate a remaining colony of seals that was potentially the last colony on Earth. Given that the stockpile would have been full in just four weeks, I found this option to be quite extreme.

Outside of that particular overly dramatic one however, many of the choices seemed to have a lot more impact and made much more sense given the situation. An example of this would be when I enacted a law to only allow productive citizens into New London to not waste resources, and I was told that I split a young girls family apart and I had to make the decision whether to allow the families back together or maintain the law that I had decided on.

The Politics:

In Frostpunk 2 there are various factions with varying ideologies, overall there are 4 main factions that you will be governing throughout the game. Some believe that the generator should be worshiped whilst others believe we need to prioritize survival in case the generator fails. Each of these factions will support different methods of playing and different laws that they'll support.

I found that you'll for the most part find it rare to be able to convince everyone of the laws that you feel will best benefit your society so sometimes you need to do a little negotiating to get their vote. In my experience, there is nothing more satisfying in political games than when you convince a faction that you intend to fulfil promises you have no intention of keeping. This manipulation allows you to secure their votes on laws that ultimately give you greater influence in future decisions.

The Resource Management:

Whilst I struggled a bit with resource management in my city (especially toward the end of Frostpunk 2), I found the overall system to be fun and engaging. One of the main highlights for me was expanding my city by establishing new settlements linked to New London. Balancing the resources of my city with those of the new settlements that I developed definitely kept me on my toes throughout the entire second half of the game. Some tasks were rather simple and straightforward, like importing oil from the dreadnought to New London (only because the Dreadnought is where the prologue takes place, so I was a little more familiar with that area), whilst others presented more significant challenges. 

For example, I had a lot of trouble when I needed to export some of the population from New London to a settlement plagued by illness, which required infrastructure to combat that issue which required a healthy workforce, I needed to keep repeating the process because all the fresh workers that I had sent over kept dying before finishing all the work that they needed to do so it was a fair bit of management on my side. Whilst I did find this process challenging, I would definitely say that managing the resources was one of the more rewarding aspects of the game.

The Bad

Tutorial:

I found the tutorial for certain aspects of Frostpunk 2 to be somewhat lacking. While it effectively explained important elements like heat management and food stockpiling, I felt that after the prologue, the game expanded too quickly with minimal guidance on many core mechanics. If all the game's mechanics had been explained more thoroughly, I believe the overall difficulty would have been significantly reduced. Some of these things that the tutorial didn't really cover is how to acquire certain resources or use particular buildings that ended up being really important towards the functionality of the city.

Conclusion

Overall, I had a positive experience with Frostpunk 2. Whilst I found the game quite challenging to complete, I believe much of that difficulty stemmed from a subpar tutorial. Given the complexity of the game and the numerous mechanics it offers, a more comprehensive tutorial is definitely required.

In saying that, I thoroughly enjoyed the political elements and the city building survival aspects that are a core part of what the game is about. Although I wouldn't say the game completely blew me away, I would certainly recommend Frostpunk 2 to anyone interested in this genre as I do feel it stands out quite a bit.

Frostpunk 2 was reviewed on PC, and the code was kindly provided to Gamer Social Club. Frostpunk 2 will be releasing on September 20th 2024 for Playstation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.