One of the most emotionally compelling games I've played in a long time. The storyline is suitably dark and desperate, starting you off immediately with a dead reactor and a critical need to get it burning again before your people start freezing to death. The city building is a constant struggle, swapping short term needs for long term imperatives, trying to keep people comfortable and happy, but not at the cost of their future survival. The story pops in from time to time, redirecting the narrative and introducing new challenges to overcome. At times you feel like you have things pretty much under control, only to have a small tweak in the storyline let you know how tenuous that feeling of comfort was. In the struggle to survive you have to levy laws to your people, making decisions like whether to put children to work, what to do with the disabled, and whether to invest in a cemetery for the dead. As the final confrontation arrives, the music swells, the pace quickens, and you find out just how far you'll go to ensure some part of your colony survives and at what cost. At the end of the first scenario, all I do was just sit there saying "Wow" several times. What an amazing game.
