Frostpunk

Overall idea is actually decent and interesting enough that it has kept me hooked for some hours. However, the more I play this game, the more frustrated I get that I absolutely have no way to play this game the way I want to. It has to be played the way the devs envisioned it and there is literally no way to customize the experience. The entirey of this game revolves around racing against the weather by upgrading your buildings to be able to keep your citizens warm. That's the only "true" mode that this game has, you just get to pick the flavors. ---- - [Mods] This game has none, and it's because the game is a "closed" type that cannot be modified in any way without the use of external tools such as trainers. You cannot edit a config file to, say, increase the food production, reduce the coal consumption etc. - [Maps / Map editor] You can count the maps that this game has on one hand, two if you buy the DLCs. The maps are tiny and unimpressive, your crater is the only place you'll look at for the rest of the game. No map editor whatsoever. - [Customization] In a game that has so many systems like this one, you're allowed to customize 5 things, or 3, depending on game mode. You can only adjust how severe the weather is, how fast you gain resources, how "calm" your citizens are and how often they get sick. There is also a survival mode but that just disables saving and pausing the game. - [Multiplayer modes] There are none. Overall, I'd give this game 3 out of 5 stars, but I rated it as 2 out of 5 because of the way in-game ads are implemented. The very first thing you see by starting this game is an advert for the sequel, Frostpunk 2. In the menus, the game will show you game modes that you can select and customize, but when you try to play, it will redirect you to a page that asks you to buy season pass or DLCs. Left a bad taste in my mouth, have to say.

It's a good enough game with nice visuals and sound, but the need for constant micromanagement plus a perfect start, combined with horrible UI(from over function) really drag this down. It feels like a console port or "mobile game". Way too few keybinding options, especially missing for important tasks, and every UI interaction leads to annoying animation delays. The UI is also too big, obviously designed for a TV or phone screen situation.

Really want to love this game and it has brought me back a few times but there are two major flaws for me. FIrstly the good. Solid graphics for this type of game, very immersive art style and great music and soundscape. It definitely feels well thought out on concept and style and high quality. The basic mechanics are easy to get to grips with and the tutorial elements are supportive without being excessive. The first issue however is the replayability with it being the same linear story with the same events. You know exactly what will happen when you go to the gloomy cave and its an a or b choice, even worse sometimes you get a single choice and no option. You have to feel it was a missed opportunity not to add further story branching or maybe more random order of events to keep it feeling fresh. You do certainly feel for the plight but at times it can get depressing with bad event after bad event. The second issue is something that seems to plague modern builders, the difficulty curve means that sometimes all logic is thrown out of the window. A coal mine, that was previously producing in abundance, suddenly fails to generate enough even though you haven't altered anything, a bountiful supply of coal suddenly and mysteriously vanishes and the generator turns off. Its hard to call these bugs as they seem more designed to facilitate story events (e.g. the Londoners) and so it seems to glitch whereby you suddenly find everything failing at once. It was the main issue with a recent attempt to revive a classic hospital themed sim builder game or a recent big franchise star exploration game whereby developers just seem to struggle to hit the difficulty curve like they used to and the game ends up doing strange things. I don't get a lot of time for games and as I feel like time has been stolen the last two times I have played this I probably won't go back and that was after optimistically buying the expansions. Definitely seems like a missed opportunity.

Finished the main campaign, will do the other scenarios too. Seems very polished as well, didn't notice any bugs or crashes. The game is excellent and has a lot of potential for expansions and different iterations.

This game has great inspiration from Banished. If you played it, you will recognize, the resource gathering and structure building system. On the other hand, even if it is also a city builder/survival game, the atmosphere is way darker. You will have to face some of the challenges by managing Hope and Discontent by fulfilling citizens requests or by applying law. The law system is the greatest feature of this game. Indeed, you will have to choose laws and rules, that are sometimes helpful and often controversial. This will influence greatly your gameplay and how you will manage the needs of the citizens. There are, for the moment, 3 scenarios. Even in medium, you will have to replay them at least a second time. This game is not easy and you can get entangled way to your defeat due to bad management. The issue is that there is no randomness in the scenarios, meaning that the first time, it is hard. The second time, you will normally succeed. The 3rd and 4th time, will just be a re-do without any changed. (the weather, the events are scripted and happened always in the same order at the same time). To pump up the life of the game, you could play the first scenario by altering the way of the Faith or of the Order. Even if there are few differences, the impact on the gameplay is fairly similar. Also, the maps are alway the same (resources and layout is the same, again no random). I would love to see in an update where the resources and the weather modification occurs differently even if the doomsday is fixed. Where if you survive the deadlines of each scenario, a score can be attributed to you depending on your descisions, left resources, difficulty and helps provided to other colonies. This could come with new scenarios. For the price and the potential of this game I would totally recommend if to city builder and survival sim lovers.