Frostpunk

I haven't played any game of this genre in a while, but I believe Frostpunk is incredibly well balanced between difficulty and fun. Most games like this scare people (me) off by having too much information to handle. It is easy to learn and kinda dangerous to play it, because I played the main campaing nonstop in a single 10 hour sitting.

I had high hopes for this game. It has potentials but not as it is. The short duration of the game destroyed my good opinion. Survive the first wave of bad weather and after that the end. It tries to mix city building, resource gathering and exploration but at the end it is very swallow. I wanted to spend many hours playing the game but after 4/26 i never played it again. Perhaps an update will correct the situation but as it is now, i wouldn't spend money to buy it.

Frostpunk is an awesome game, tho there is some wasted potential... but it wss made by a small Dev Team so I can not blame them. The game puts you in the role of the leader of a settlement in the middle of a ice desert and it is your job to keep your people alive. The environment and other events do their best to make you fail and you have to deal with the cold, reactor fuel/overheat, food and the people. In order to keep your peoples faith and hope up, you can either go for a way of religion (prayers and curches forced by faithkeepers) or a kinda "kommunism" system (collective social system forced by discipline and control). If you like a mix of survival and townbuilding you will like this one! The missed potential I mentioned is the missing depth of the building system and ressource system. There are too less ways of building up your town and some technology&things are too overpowered. I do not want to spoiler, therefore no example given :-/ But once you find out what works best that will be the solution for all scenarios and in my second playthrough of the main campeign/scenario I ended up having more ressources than I could ever use, even in the most dire times. Also stuff like trading with other settlements and such and especially more other scenarios to play would have been realy nice. All in all I really enjoyed the game and most likely I would buy an addon/dlc (given it features a giod price/content ratio and maybe some additions to the games depth). I recommend it, especially when on sale, else you may be a bit disappointed by the missed potential.

Frostpunk is the best example I know of how a game can use its gameplay elements, along with good pacing, to build tension and tell an incredibly captivating story. At first, I wasn't drawn to it's gameplay, and even now as I am playing it, it doesn't make sense that I've become so addicted to it. Don't get me wrong, the gameplay is not only great, but it's been finely tuned for balance and pacing; the scale progresses linearly (along with the tension), and every building and law has its purpose, and its pros and cons. Nothing is overpowered, nothing is useless. However, what really got me hooked was after I completed the main story scenario. As a pitch, it doesn't sound all that interesting, but playing through it, being hit with very well flushed out story conflicts and obstacles, having just enough time to recuperate and take a breather, before being thrown an epic end-game event, along with its incredible music and visuals that match this game so well, gave me one of the best experieces in gaming that I've had in a long long long while. This game is one of those "play it to believe it" games. As a concept, it isn't all that interesting, but it is in how it has been masterfully crafted to absolute perfection for the genre, setting, story, and platform it is in. It is with all that being said that you would benefit greately from having a powerful computer with a good graphics card (I'm using a 6700K with 16GB RAM and RTX2060), a good big hi-res monitor (I'm using a 32-inch 1440p 75Hz Freesync VA monitor), and a killer audio solution (I'm using the JBL LSR305 studio monitors with an external DAC). If you don't have a decent "gamer" or "enthusiast" setup, then your enjoyment of this game may vary, but I would highly encourage you save up the money to upgrade your system if you can, because experiences like what Frostpunk can give you are worth the dollars for anyone who is serious enough of a gamer that they would read the reviews of a game on GOG.

I completed The New Home scenario and I fall in love with the game. Why I'm giving 1 star is because there is a game crashing bug for the New Ark scenario when finishing the Automaton Project, the game crashes... It is reported on multiple forums for weeks now but developers haven't do any yet. As soon as they fix the bug, I'll change my rating but until then the game is almost unplayable :(