Winter is coming! First off, I've been playing games like Sim City and Cities: Skyline for as long as I've known how to move the mouse. Those games are more like chilled out metropolitan city simulators, so Frostpunk being a survival small city-builder set in an alternate Victorian-era universe stood out as I checked Steam's trending over the weekend. The blend of steampunk aesthetics over harsh blizzard looks both fitting and intriguing to say the least.

Developed by 11 bit studios, Frostpunk's premise is simple: winter doomsday is here, and you have to survive against all odds in a frozen hellhole, with nothing but a heat generator, a resource depot, and a small band of people to begin with. You are mankind's last hope.

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Well-crafted, engaging gameplay.

The main currency of Frostpunk is heat. The lack of it will cause sickness. However, resources are limited so it's impossible to provide the highest level of warmth all around the city so you'd have to prioritise. Improperly managed, the entire city could spiral into death from civil unrest and the lack of manpower, amongst various other elements. For heat to sustain the community, a continuous supply of coal is required. The other equally important resources that needs to be taken of are wood, metal, and food.

Building out radially from the core of the heat generator, you will need to do some city-planning and micromanage resource pipelines in order to achieve outcomes that are less worse than the next. Yes, it's always desperate times in Frostpunk, so you'd most likely pause the game to make hard decisions every couple of minutes.

But that's not all, the game also pits you into sometimes ethically-challenging lawmaking decisions to keep your society ahead of the worsening blizzard. Add sawdust into food rations to make people feel less hungry? Make the children work? Only save the healthy folks and kill off the critically-conditioned? Focus on order and discipline, or faith and spirituality? Do we allow doomsayers and dissenters going all around town shaking up the mood of your city? 24-hour emergency shifts with no heater on? There is definitely a plethora of interesting conundrums worth discovering as the game unfolds.

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A great audiovisual treat.

Frostpunk looks and sounds stunning with all its smoke, snow, wind, and ratchet-like contraptions. Just put it up on a big pair of speakers and screen. The heightened sense of immersion is unmistakable. The city is also well simulated: everybody can be tracked and observed going about their daily routines in winterland, even as they slowly trudge through the freezing, thick snow to salvage resources at the periphery.

The orchestral soundtrack is phenomenal as well. It builds up with intensity in each passing day as "the big one" approaches to plunge your entire city into total panic and disarray. It's magnificent. Feel the plight and hardship in your bones.

I also felt really cold during my entire playthrough, so I'm going to call Frostpunk an extreme winter mood simulator as well. This goes to show that small teams can pull off something that matches triple-A titles as long as the game is constrained and its design, well-reasoned. Kudos 11 bit studios. I hope you guys consider making future iterations in the vein of Solarpunk.

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Final verdict.

This comes highly recommended. It's only available for PC at the moment on Steam, GOG, and Humblebundle. The game has already sold 250,000 copies during the first three days and the developers have expressed that they'll continue to improve and expand on the canon. Always happy to see indie developers getting recognised for their great work!

As always, thanks for reading. Stay frosty! ❄️

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_{All images are in-game screenshots during my playthrough.}