Frostpunk 2 is leaving its biggest selling point out in the cold

A recent deep dive into Frostpunk 2’s gameplay has given players a much better idea of what the game will look like, and while the level of polish looks incredible, there are a few things that give me pause for thought.

My fear is the “frost” part of Frostpunk, the part of the game that made it stand out in the crowded city-builder market, has become more of an aesthetic than a mechanic. The ever-present thermostat that defined the first game has been replaced with more traditional metrics: food, laws, and approval ratings. Strip away the gorgeous HUD and steampunk painting art style, and you could be looking at a Victorian version of Democracy 3.

As game director Jakub Stokalski said in the deep dive: “You will find out that the external enemy of cold and storms is not the biggest threat to the city. The internal enemy is.” The snow is still there, sure, but its impact on day-to-day gameplay seems to have been significantly reduced.

Except day-to-day gameplay no longer seems to exist. In the first game, time moves at a crawl, with one day lasting as long as ten minutes. Weather patterns, resource stockpiles, and the speed of scouts were all measured in the short term, and the breakdown of work schedules versus free time each day was a vital part of your calculations. Your future was only ever a handful of hours.

In Frostpunk 2, days pass by as seconds, and your future is measured in months and years. During the deep dive, we see a piece of legislation that takes ten weeks to be passed into law. In that same timeframe, you could fit the entire campaign of the first game, twice (A New Home takes 30-40 in-game days).

In the original, you were lucky if your city had more than 200 people in it by the end of the storm. In the sequel, we see a city with north of 50,000 residents. Frostpunk’s citizens had names, and because you had so few of them, each one was meaningful. When an engineer fell ill and had to leave the workshop, it had a tangible effect on productivity for the whole game. What would the impact of losing one resident out of tens of thousands be? Do the residents even have names?

The personal investment seems diminished. You are no longer one of a few dozen survivors, taking each day as it comes. You are a shepherd of thousands, making plans that stretch years into the future. The small emergent narratives of the first game, like an amputee committing suicide or a poet writing out against authoritarianism, seem much further away.

These changes are intentional — the team has made it clear that “we don’t really believe in making ‘just a sequel’, it’s never satisfied us, and we don’t really believe it would satisfy you.” They are very clearly trying to make a different kind of game, and have succeeded in that. But it’s hard not to feel like the quiet storytelling moments may have been traded out for more standard city-building elements.

The team at 11 Bit Studios has more than earned my trust, and whatever form it takes, Frostpunk 2 looks like it will be a great city builder. But it will be different. I just hope it’s not too warm.