Frostpunk

So yea, I've never played a city builder game and I just spent 5 straight hours finishing the game. Never imagined such a game would hook me so completely. It's still niche so it just isn't for averyone, but if you have even a passing interest, please pick this up and don't be discouraged if it's too difficult!

Oh wow! Where to even begin ... this game is a good starter pack for sociopathic leadership but trust me my hearth was only bleeding with compassion while taking first problematic decisions. After a while you get used to it focusing on your main purpose that is saving your city at all costs taking a path of a fascist child abusing secular regime driven with propaganda or theocratic reign which, under its spiritualized facade is pouring cancerous blinding faith on its lambs. The game is highly addictive and pretty hard even on a normal level with some replay ability. Would love to see more scenarios in the future. Graphics are top notch with high attention to details. Game play is accompanied with beautiful and depressing string instrumented music. I can't recommend Frostpunk more, buy it, play it and you definitely won't regret it! Cheers!

Recently lots of city builders showed up, mostly in Steam's Early Access, and I never thought this kind of games could be so well polished! It presents important information in clear form, so you are able to plan for the long term. Resources are limited to minimum (coal, wood, steel, food), which lets you focus on other (very important) aspects, like heat, tech tree, discontent and hope, scouting or choosing appropriate laws. What is fascinating, that none of those features is excessively overpumped, each plays a significant role in your survival. And, I can't state it enough, it's incredibly well balanced! The scenarios are very well designed, to give us the feeling of incoming doom and warn us in advance. That's also the reason why I don't think there's a room for a Sandbox mode - it just wouldn't work! Random encounters? It would be too RNG, which is not quite the soul of this game. But... scenario editor? Letting fans create the rules and share their vision of Frostpunk apocalypse is imho the next step and correct approach. That would make this game immortal.

Frostpunk is a survival citybuilder, combining the mechanics of game "Banished" and the feeling of the movie "Snowpiercer": The world has frozen over and the only hope of survival for your ragtag group of people is "The city". You have to manage your workforce, mine resouces, build structures, keep your people fed and ensure a steady supply of coal at all times to feed the furnace of the heat-giving generator. In addition, the game provides you with the "Book of Laws" to affect certain aspects of your town: Very quickly, you will have to use it to keep your society intact and going, however threadbare it might turn out to be: You may legislate the use of child labour to make up for a lack of workforce, or sign a law to adress the issue of your terminally ill citizens, which can no longer work, but will still consume rations. This mechanic makes the game really shine, in my opinion. While it does not question your decisions at any point by making them "right" or "wrong", it certainly will remind you of the consequences, often painfully so: Take the child labour law, for example: Some ramifications of this law became apparent early on, such as parents being concerned for the children's wellbeing, demanding double rations or the occasional day off, when the first got hurt during workshift. It was not until later in the game when, during a 24 hour emergency shift, a child dropped dead from exhaustion and I was presented with a new choice: Shut down work at the place for the day and take the loss of resources OR keep everybody working for "the good of the city", with losses/gains on hope and discontent respectively ? As a bare-bones citybuilder, the game is a rather simple affair, but then again, that is not it's core mechanic: Depending on how involved in the game you allow yourself to be, the morality mechanic can affect you quite a lot - I was not very proud of myself at several points and it really stung, even after making it to the end (maybe even more so).

This game starts out like a city buiilder/survival game and does a good job at it, you have to managa resources carefully and plan ahead for your people to survive the harsh cold. I love the steampunk style and gritty atmosphere of the game, you can clearly tell it's an 11 bit game. The other way you can tell it's an 11 bit game is through the focus on ethics and morality. If you really go for it your city can be transformed into either a big religious cult or a police state, with you on top wondering if maybe you want a bit too far. At least your disciples, err, citizens aren't hungry or cold yet, right?