Frostpunk

Frostpunk is a city building game that imposes harsh conditions and strict time limits. This gives it almost a puzzle sort of feel, very unlike the pure sandbox style of others of its genre. For players like me that find the sandbox style directionless, pointless, and boring, this works out very well. I found it very fun to figure out ways to satisfy the needs of the colony and prepare for coming disasters while keeping everyone happy enough to not get thrown out. However, the city building mechanics are somewhat simplified to accomodate this different direction. While it works very well in the context of a first playthrough, it does limit the long-term appeal. Given the time pressures, there are only a few "correct" ways to play the game. Once you've cleared all the scenarios and fully explored the Faith and Order laws, there is very little reason to come back. This is not a game you're likely to sink hundreds of hours into, but it is still well worth the asking price.

Good game but has some crash bugs. P.lease fix it.

Pretty graphics, but gameplay is neither fun nor intuitive.

Frostpunk plays out like a survival Sim City with harsh conditions of feeding both your people and the furnace that pushes back the deadly cold constantly threatening to kill your people. The graphics and atmosphere are gorgeous. They convey a sense of horrendous cold on par with the train scene in Doctor Zhivago. The Sim City stuff seems great...at first. I had a blast for the first 3 hours but then started losing interest. First, the game is entirely scripted and every playthrough will play out the exact same way. It doesn't take long to figure out the trick, and once you do there's no challenge for all future plays. You're looking at an atmosphere heavy Sim City game with a lifespan of 5-7 hours and no replay value beyond that. Up to you if you think that's worth $30, but be warned. The difficulty curve is also a parabola in that the beginning is easy (as it should be), the mid game is ROUGH as you struggle with constantly running out of resources, then the final third of the game is fast forwarding on auto-pilot. Late game you just horde your abundance of resources for an hour (the biggest challenge is spamming depots to store it all) then more fast forwarding as you wait out a huge blizzard that shuts down your city and all you can do is watch your resources numbers count down. Reach the end of the blizzard before they hit 0 and you win! Fun? The work schedule and day/night cycle gets annoying, demanding unfun micromanagement (toggle job switches and longer shifts at just the right second every day). Why couldn't this be abstracted? It also leads to the silly scenario where your town transforms into the Warhammer 40k imperial inquisition in just 2 weeks. If they had just abstracted the work schedule, they would have cut down on tedious micromanagement AND used a more fitting time scale. So yeah, a flawed but fun 3-7 hours for $30. Choice is yours.

Gorgeous and difficult, really conveys the struggle to survive in a new ice age. If you like difficult but open ended strategy and city building, try it out. It's incredibly well crafted.