Frostpunk

I've spent 250 hours playing this game so far. Bought it when it only had 3 scenarios and played them to death, trying to get all the achievements. Then left the game because... well, the scenarios are pretty linear. When the endless mode update came out, followed by fall of winterhome, I got back into it. Endless mode is great fun - 4 different map types, each with its own pros and cons, and the usual difficulty levels - mean hours of play and experimentation. I'm hoping for one more update - the end of the cold. You find out what happened and why and get to fix it. I'd love for that to happen.

I've really enjoyed playing this game, and I have lots of praise for it. But then, there are some game mechanics that put me off. And so much so that they kill the entertainment. Let's have a look at "The Londoners". The way to handle it is to make sure that the Hope metric is increased again. I had trouble dealing with raising and keeping hope, so I googled it to get some hints. Turns out that the only really successful tactic that people seem to favor is... brace yourselves... to KNOW that this element is coming into play and purposefully _not_ fulfill hope-raising tasks/quests that the game asks you to do until after the event is triggered. The measures I could employ at that point in my game were nowhere near enough. I had an almost full Hope-meter before, but it dropped to almost 0 when this happens. There are almost no means to build it back up again, but I managed to slow down their recruitment. And then... it gets colder. Which makes my promise to keep tents heated broken, because the heat went below acceptable parameters for __a few seconds __ before I cranked up the generator. And what's the result of this? The hope-meter dives to almost zero again. And this basically means that I'm screwed, as there doesn't seem to be much I can do to recover at this point. Where's the realism in this? "OH NO, THEY RESPONDED TO THE DROPPING TEMPERATURE BY INCREASING THE GENERATOR OUTPUT A FEW SECONDS TOO LATE! WE ARE ALL DOOOOMED!!! AND ALSO I WAS AT WORK, SO I DIDN'T EVEN NOTICE. BUT WE'RE STILL DOOOMED! ABANDON ALL HOPE!". It's just ridiculous. By all means, bring the challenge - but make it fair. If you're supposed to deal with seemingly random problems by having plowed hours into the game and failed before only to have to do it all over again... probably only to fall victim to another seemingly random and unrecoverable (yet by the game pre-determined) event like this... well, then the game is broken by design.

I just finished my first playthrough of the game's main scenario. It's good but in the end not the mindblowing masterpiece I was counting on (which kinda captures my feelings about their previous game, This War of Mine). The game acts like it is super hardcore - so consistently, in fact, that some mechanics make no sense (e.g. the inability to undo a law that was introduced during a specific crisis once that crisis is over). I felt like the sole source of difficulty in the game was bad guidance (terrible tutorial, meh UI etc.) and just throwing unpredictable stuff at the player for the sake of it. But take this away and you're left with a rather simplistic and easy city builder. The only trouble I had resulted from stuff that can only be described as unfair and contrary to the game's management core (and I think never got close to losing). And sadly they did almost everything they could to make a second playthrough of the main scenario undesirable. There's no randomised maps, no AI opponents or anything like that, not even a high score table or something that would motivate me to get even better results next time and there's not enough options to try fundamentally different approaches to designing the city. And for a single playthrough the game is a good bit too short (which is probably why there's a few extra scenarios and an endless mode by now which I haven't tried yet). That said, the experience I had with the game was amazing nonetheless. It's gorgeous, the setting is imaginative, building the city is satisfying and it's hard not to care about the stuff your citizens do to each other. It's one post-apocalyptic experience that is worth going through. I would love to see a "bigger" sequel that gives you more time and space and a lot more depth.

An excellent city manager that provides constant challenges for survival. The setting has been given allot of attention. The game conveys in every possible way the sheer cold of the artic and the struggle for survival. Choices to make, hard ones, that might come to haunt you later. It's your choice if you wish to creatr a society in the snow that clings to survival by iron hand or belief in a better tomorrow. Sadly it doesn't really manage to stay interesting. With currently 3 scenarios there is very little ACTUAL content. Whilst it is narratively varying from scenario to scenario, the game doesn't really vary the gameplay. Yes the new objectives in each scenario will keep you on your toes but after you've seen it once you know exactly when it will happen. There seems to be no variation at all. You will always be managing your resources whilst completing objectives in the same way. Building the same optimal set up to complete the objectives as best as possible before time runs out. Currently there is no way to play enflessly until your resources run out or open a random event playthrough. The game thus has very little replay value unless you are interested in optimizing your strategy for a specific scenario. Rather than getting the feeling of building a city that can last till the promised spring you are just busy checking boxes according to the script of the scenario. The game initially launched with 3 scenarios and has now added a fourth. If they add an openen ended survival map or a random events version of the scenarios I would give it 5/5. However I still recommend buying it if you like city managers. I say managers specifically because it's not so much about building and growing as it is about managing spaces.

I can't recommend this game until devs fix FPS bug. Just google "frostpunk low fps". I have i7-4790 with 3.6 Ghz, 16 GB RAM and otherwise acceptable hardware and playing with 0-3 FPS isn't enjoyable. Sometimes game works without problems (hours, maybe even couple days), then for unknown reason starts having low fps again. Even animation (intros) at start run with less than 5 fps, from that you already know game isn't gonna run any better. For some reason got game working for couple days disabling Nvidia Shadow Play, but now it doesn't make any difference anymore. Almost thought I'd have found the fix to problem, but no cigar. No playing game either. Without fps problems I might give 2-3 stars, idea and execution is ok. World map is quite small and game mechanics are quite simple.