Frostpunk
Released: April 24, 2018
Game Length: 10 Hours
Grade: A+
Expectations: There was a time a couple years ago I tried to get Frostpunk to work on my computer. Because of some sort of technical glitch, I could never get it going. Now with popularity soaring over the release of their final expansion in August, The Frostpunk Board Game reaching their $200,000 goal within one hour in October (which ended up raising ten times the amount they asked), and releasing a stability patch in November, how could I say no to trying to boot up this game again? I mean, it is from the creators of This War of Mine.
There is one problem that I'm kind of worried about that's not related to the technical glitch. There are some die-hard players who were able to "finish" the game within the first day of release. There are Youtube playthrough videos that are less than 5 hours long. There has since been more releases, but the reports of played hours for the game does not reassure me one bit for a decent base-building game. As a comparison, Starcraft took 25 Hours to beat. The gameplay trailer and official trailer doesn't really show you how long you will be playing each session. How many different levels can there be in Frostpunk?
Reality: Apparently a lot has changed since 2018. There are a total of three scenarios in the base edition of Frostpunk: A New Home, The Arks, and The Refugees. Another scenario was later added into the game free of charge with Patch 1.2: The Fall of Winterhome. Two more scenarios were added later on purchase: On The Edge (1.5) and The Last Autumn (1.6). Those two and - with the new endless mode in Patch 1.3 - "Rifts" could be purchased individually or offered with the Season Pass. What else did they add? They came out with the no-pause/no-save Survivor Mode in Patch 1.1, rename people and automatons in Patch 1.1.2, of all things A Christmas Carol Endless Mode Setting in Patch 1.3.2, and (because everyone is doing it) photo mode in Patch 1.3.3.
$50 might seem like a lot for The Game of the Year Edition, but I most certainly got my money's worth. Being completely oblivious of the game's mechanics, the medium difficulty gave me the right amount of challenge for an engaging experience. The music isn't very long but is very well done. The game sets up "scenarios" where you are constantly questioning what is going to happen next. The stories evolve as the days progress, whether you complete certain tasks or not, and keep you on your toes as you adapt to the people's needs whenever unknown external forces influence your decisions.
The First Hours (2 Hours): Frostpunk isn't your typical Real-Time Strategy base-building game. If you are like me, it will take some time getting used to learning all the new mechanics. There are two essential things you must always focus on: scouts and research. Not only do scouts bring back hefty sums of resources, but they can also find steam cores required for half the things you build. You do not need to bring them back home after every location. It might be wise to keep them mobile until you find something worth the trip back. Without researching something every day, your city is dead. As long as you have the engineers, building three to five workshops or beyond isn't as ridiculous as it sounds. There will always be something that comes your way that will require something you need researched.
Besides the two listed above, one other major thing that ruined my first playthrough was not paying attention to heat levels. Just because you can send your people to pick up resources laying around doesn't mean you should. Building a gathering post near the resources lessens the work load, makes them gather faster, and prevents them from freezing in the cold. It is alright to have all your buildings a little "chilly" just as long as they don't go into "cold" status. That's when your people will start complaining about having the flu. Don't you dare have any location that is freezing for more than a few seconds. Your population will dwindle faster than you can react. Don't be afraid to dismantle buildings if you don't need them. There is a red dismantle street button too when you need extra room. You can get 100% back before they are fully built or 90% (including the cost of steam cores) afterwards. The only requirement is to have some workers available to move their sorry butts over and tear it down.
Scenario - A New Home (15 Hours): This is the main campaign. I had to pause and read every tool-tip, check out every option in the research trees, glance over what sort of laws I could pass, identify what buildings were offered to me, and make sure I didn't skimp over anything important. I made sure to save my game every day in case my mistakes ruined the rest of my playthrough. I was not about to start over again. Some of these mistakes were trivial enough - built too many things without checking if I had enough engineers, upgraded things that were completely unnecessary at the time, prolonged updating my resource facilities, not realizing you can "upgrade" buildings (with a reduction in price too), and trying to construct buildings without any workers available.
There are a lot of little nuances deep within the gaming mechanics that I haven't quite figured out. For example, I only wanted five kids to help work out at the cookhouse during the day, but a lady was yelling "Kids should be learning!" at me. And who will teach the kids if everyone is working! Make sure a sudden drop in temperature doesn't "break your promise" and cause issues. More often than not, I just ignore their demands as long as I access the issue in my own due course. For some stupid reason, I could never live up to promising "livable" housing for a couple days. It is also important to plan out your day and night phases. If by some chance you pull workers out of the hunting huts and try to reassign them elsewhere, the notation "need to rest after hunt" is added to their work activity. There doesn't seem to be an issue having your people build things late into the night and then go straight to work in the morning.
(Spoilers) I thought this setting would be over after I found another settlement. I was so wrong. A New Home scenario is actually composed of three different Acts. The First Act of the campaign would be surviving the harsh climate while searching for Winterhome. Ironically, I did not know you had 15 days to find the place. I found it on the 14th day. The Second Act involves a giant feud that occurs in your ranks when people start losing out hope. Your populace will start joining a group called "The Londoners" that think its better to return home than it is to remain out in the frozen north. You are given 15 days to resolve the matter through the use of order or faith. I decided to introduce religion to the mass, but the extensiveness of how far you will go depends on the number of laws passed. I got as far as developing "faith keepers" when I realized that my people were nuts. There was one cutscene where people were parading through the streets with large sticks and relics. It even influences the guy who shouts out the time. I should have chosen order to create guards, prisons, and stuff.
(Spoilers) The Third Act can make or break your game with a series of massive critical situations that occur. You will have a chance to deal with three waves of Refugees. This will test your limits of housing and food output. I had to build so many medical facilities and hunters to counterbalance the influx of people into my city. My scouts were too far out to escort them to my city. They just had to come in palely sick, gravely sick, or frozen to the bone. Afterwards, you are given word of an impending storm. I waited 3 days to research the Stereoscopic Lens before finding out how long I had before the impending wall of doom reached my tiny hole in the ground - a total of 4 days. I had 18 Hunter Hangars to get 3570 Food Rations for 663 people. Day 37 the storm hit and nothing was safe. I refused to send volunteers into the mines reducing my coal output by 80%. 4 days later and everything was freezing. My reactor was stressing out into overdrive and struggling with mere hours left. I don't know how but I managed to see the sun with 1 hour left on my reactor.
Scenario - The Arks (6 Hours): What can you do with 45 Engineers keeping four buildings with all kinds of seeds heated and an army of automatons? Well, a lot. This scenario went a lot smoother than the previous one simply because there was less logistics to worry about. I constantly let the seeds freeze a little one day and then use steam hubs with heaters to warm them up the next. Considering I didn't use hothouses or automatons in my last scenario, I found this one to be quite fun.
(Spoilers) Then things got really interesting as soon as you found New Mancester around the 15th day. Not only do you discover that you have 15 days to prepare your little excursion, but you also must send a lot of supplies to the starving city down the road - 600 steel, 600 wood, 2000 food rations, 6000 coal, and 7 automatons on top of the 8000 coal and 500 food rations for your own people. I had to build 6 hothouses with 4 days remaining and 8 charcoal kins with 2 days remaining. I never thought I'd be able to make 12,000 coal in just a couple of days. At least you will only need to build 5 Houses. Unfortunately just as things were getting good, the campaign suddenly ends the moment the storm rolls up.
Scenario - The Refugees (6 Hours + 6 Hours): This is perhaps the worst of the three simply because it is a nightmare to micromanage with hundreds upon hundreds of people complaining about being hungry, sick, cold, and angry about their lot in life. There is very little room for error as you try to build-up your city from scratch. There are walkthroughs just to get things going in the first five days. I spent a good 6 hours trying to salvage what I had, but ultimately failed when I neglected my coal distribution. Enacting controversial laws, using all available abilities, and preparing proper zoning for all the bunkhouses was so important that I just couldn't keep up with demand. My second playthrough went a lot smoother that I ended up spending another 6 hours on top of the 6 hours from the first attempt. I knew I should have put those 60 kids to work!
Scenario - The Fall of Winterhome (8 Hours):
Watching 81 people die is never a good sign at the beginning of a
campaign. I don't think I cared for this scenario as much as I hoped
for. The people leave you in charge to clean up the mess of the
ridiculous construction job the last leader did and clear half of all
the buildings that burned up when the generator exploded in some
massive riot. For about 10 days, you will have to reassure people by
clearing out ruins, heating up homes, and bringing around order to a
disorganized city. Because of how the scenario plays, you will already
have a good set of laws in place, about half of the things in the
technology tree researched, and full-fledged city with around 500
people.
(Spoilers) The sad part is tearing down your hard-earned work to the city when the scientists find out there is no saving the reactor. I had thousands of resources ready to go for the evacuation on the Dreadnought when, yet again, I was bottle-necked by the amount of steel I could produce. There is absolutely no way you can survive assigning the 35 engineers on site between generator duty, curing the sick, and research. So you will be better off grabbing the scientists from the other sites if you can. I managed to save 500 people, but I wish my scout party would have told me if they ever found something from the road going south. Oh well.
Endless Mode - Crags (3 Hours): Endless Mode has 3 settings: Endurance, The Builders, and Serenity. After the devastating, down-heartened disaster Refugees scenario played on my soul, I decided to pick the easiest difficulty. There are also maps based on the campaigns like "Hanging Rock" for Winterhome, "Snowdrifts" for Refugees, and "Frozen Grove" for The Arks. For the purpose of experimentation, I decided on "Crags" for both the unique look and larger area. I especially liked how making any additional adjustments gave a "Warning: Playing on harder difficulties may lead to the Serenity's mode not being so serene after all" notification at the bottom. After trying the random name generator a few times, it finally popped out with the best name for my city: Chillville. For this experiment, I was going to try all the positive laws, no purpose laws, no manual pausing, and no saving.
The "Serenity" setting barely added any difficulty past the occasional one degree drop and the measly storm that came for one whole day every 15 days. Gaining steel, as usual, from the two only available sites was the only thing holding me back from really expanding my 730 people by the 30th Day. Finally able to relax for a bit, I could actually watch my city move around as I built things I've never had before. You can collect 15 relics for The Archives building which is your only means of progression after every storm. You cannot build outposts and the storm resets the randomized sites your scouts might have visited up top. I built a cemetery, public house, fighting arena, care house, street lamps, public squares, and gardens. The Crags map really tested your ability to extend your city outside the perimeter with steam hubs. It was pretty exciting... until about the 3rd hour when I realized nothing was going to happen to my quaint town. I quit after clearing the second storm.
Endless Mode - Rifts (30 minutes): Alright, so I lasted one minute into my first attempt before I realized they started me off in negative 51 degree weather with everything in "cold" status. My second time around with the town of Aurora (since the dice kept suggesting that name to me) didn't last that long either. Forcing you to build bridges across ravines felt like a tacked-on gimmick that every map in endless mode had. I'm sad to say that this scenario under the survivor setting didn't bring anything new to the table.
DLC - The Last Autumn (12 Hours): When thinking of how the developers would create a prequel for Frostpunk before the generator and the snowfall, I would have never guessed they would have the gumshoe to pull off something like this so successfully. You get another huge campaign of assigning workers and engineers to various tasks around the designated site. I made sure 320 people survived the momentum job of building a fully-operational generator over a period of 45 days. A lot of mechanics were obviously adjusted for the warmer climate - there are toxic fumes and work safety conditions that need to be met instead of worrying about temperature drops (most of the time), you get shipments of people through the use of a telegraph and a total of four docks that continuously bring in supplies from London in exchange for your scouts not finding any of these (pending a few exceptions) from the outside world, and there is a wide-range of fun surprises when you have to choose between a worker union and a council of engineers when disgruntled people begin to strike. It was a much easier campaign than I anticipated filled with more random events that help branch out the story behind the steam cores. Although definitely an eventful DLC, I would still be weary of the additional $17 price tag. It all depends on how much you loved the original scenarios available in the base game.
(Spoilers) DLC - On the Edge (8 Hours): Ever wonder what it's like to be one of those outposts constantly delivering goods back to your settlement? This DLC provides that answer with a little twist. Your job is to supply goods to New London and in exchange they keep delivering a steady supply of food. Well gradually they keep altering the deal. When you find steam cores, they demand you deliver two of them along with the original offer of 100 steel. When your delivery runs late, they "kindly" provide you with new laws allowing 24-hour shifts and late shifts. In return of receiving these shipments, you get to request a "favor" in return. Either these favors give you extra supplies or they enact new laws to settle your problems. Eventually, the amount of food in the shipments will come out short and your boss will then abruptly "declare" that they will only send you the supplies when they receive a shipment in return. Of course, the last straw that broke your people was when New London demanded you to send them your newfound food source. I think you can put together what happens after that. The majority of the game then turns into a little Catan when you build-up relations with three different trade-posts. Though I will admit that it is pretty neat to talk to them over the radio. Since they refer to you by the name of your town, it made one conversation with a convict pretty funny when he replied, "What's up, Sunshine? Speak your mind." Help them with all their problems and they will help you when you hear the truth behind the situation from New London after the 30th day.
Miscellaneous Notes: The atmosphere is beautifully crafted in the music, sound effects, and setting. The booming sound the generator makes, the chilling sounds when the wind blows, the way the game ends with a replay of your city being built behind the Frostpunk Theme Song, the need of waiting for people to build things, the variety of models used for each building, that soul-wrenching heart beat whenever an important event happens, and the long list of decisions you can make for a unique experience all contributed to an awesome game.
Although they ironed out many of the bugs inside the numerous intricacies of the game, I still had a few complaints. First off, don't add the sound of a dying smoke detector to the generator. You made me paranoid for a few hours. There is also a slight issue with your people properly being fed when you are super fast forwarding for more than a day. I don't think it had any effect mechanically, but visually it was still weird seeing up to 250 going "hungry" after five days. A few more settings - like heating only at night or a button to find buildings that are "cold" - might have smoothed over some of my problems. Sometimes I will get a lot of people coming in sick and I'll shout "Where's the leak?!" as I scrounge through 100 buildings trying to find the three that aren't getting any heat.
Seeing I spent around 70 Total Hours, I most definitely recommend playing this game. I highly doubt I will be replaying the game any time soon, but I will look back to my experience fondly.
11-24-2020