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).
