Frostpunk

This is a fantasticly atmospheric survival game from the same dev that created This War of Mine. The setting is a mysterious frozen Great Britain. Your small band of survivors have decided to chance their luck by leaving London and heading to the North. Eventually you have to found a city and this is where your start for survival begins. The tone of the game is quite depressing and desperate, and it works fantastically. If you have played This War of Mine (and you should!), this has a similar feel of hopelessness. The graphics, sounds and art direction are brilliant. The Steam punk theme works really well. Town planning requires a bit more thought if you want to create the perfect layout. However this is a double edged sword, as it can be easy to misjudge where you build a street, or where you place a building, which can cause gaps. If you are a perfectionist, this WILL frustrate you. The gameplay is solid and interesting. The pace is leisurely with peaks of tension. The game hands out events regularly which keeps you focused and often throws a spanner in the works. The story is intruiging. The UI really helps to keep track of things without hand holding too much. The game is by no means perfect. It needs a sandbox mode with lots of options. It needs a better way to plan the town. It needs some options to allow me to tailor notifications and when the time auto-slows. It also feels like it needs a few more things to do. I am a few hours in, but there have already been periods of a few minutes where I had nothing to do but fast forward time and wait. My concern is around longevity and whether on multiple playthroughs the events change enough to make it worthwhile. Resources feel like they need a bit of balancing, as I quickly went from barely surviving, to thriving for a long period - and it was only a major event that tipped the balance back toward survival. Finally, it may be a trivial thing, but I really don't like the name Frost Punk!

Any game where I lose the tutorial is good enough for me.

Big picture first: This game is an amazing undertaking for a small studio, and if you're into games like Tropico, well... this is on the other end of the spectrum, with a dystopian, wintery setting and much less funny things. That being said, this games is gorgeous and it has really great stories, that are really hard, due to what is the sole issue I find with it: The learning cure is insanely hard. The game has some interactive tutorials and prompts you to do certain things, however, it will be about your 3rd or 4th play attempt until you actually start to get your feet wet into all that this game offers and the planning for the cold. It's a buy for anyone that likes the genre and would love a dystopian twist to it. Anyone else, see some videos of it and be wary, this game is hard.

Dark and depressive; a game that leaves you with virtual frostbite. A super Steampunk City managing game, that gives you plenty fun for your money!

Great game! Looks lovely, great sound effects, and a pretty and functional UI. It'll keep you coming back again and again to master. Unfortunately, it doesn't have much replay value. The first time you complete the main story will pretty much be the last time you play that. There are additional scenarios to play, but likewise once mastered, there's no value to retrying them either. The RNG of scouting events might make it easier or harder on another playthrough, but it's not going to affect the outcome, coming down to an ultimate absolute win or absolute loss (for example, losing a scenario where you have to gather 8000 coal by a certain date, and the game failing as a loss and you all dying because you only collected 7950 by that date). Once you've achieved the win, there's not a lot to keep you coming back to get that same win again. For the price, I'd want to see a much longer campaign, and hope to see future expansions of this title to keep the interest levels up!