The icy grip tightens again, this time not with a brutal constriction, but with a masterful evolution. Frostpunk 2 is the highly anticipated sequel from 11 bit studios that throws out the blueprints and rewrites the rules of survival. You’ll spend hours braving the elements, managing resources, and leading people on a desperate odyssey of survival. Frostpunk 2 is a breathtaking experience that surpasses its predecessor in nearly every way, giving you chilling choices to make and never any time to thaw out.
Frostpunk 2 takes place 30 years after the apocalyptic blizzard storm of the first game, and the Earth continues to experience an endless extreme winter. Frostpunk was the first society survival game that then spawned a genre, Frostpunk 2 goes deeper on every aspect from gameplay to survival to politics. Now in New London, you are a steward that’s stepped up after the death of the campaign to become the leader of a newfound metropolis that looks to its leader to survive its harsh new world.
The prologue serves as a tutorial to teach you how to rebuild efficiently, but it being a tutorial doesn’t mean it will be easy. There are four difficulties to choose from, going from easy to hard: Citizen, Officer, Steward, and Captain – even as a veteran of the first game, I found myself needing to go all the way down to Citizen in order to progress through the games five chapters and ten or so hours to complete the story. Starting off, you’ll need to deploy heavy equipment for frostbreaking to clear space to essential resources or other civilizations in order to have a chance to prosper. Building up a city demands extractors, food districts, and housing districts. In order to store food for whiteout events, you’ll need to build food depots. Along the way you’ll have a gauge as to your progress in preparation, and if things aren’t happening fast enough you may have to tighten belts limiting the food intake of your people and enforcing emergency shifts so workers are able to produce in time. Cities are no longer made from concentric circles, and is reimagined to to be made however you can.
Frostpunk was hard, but Frostpunk 2 is harder. The core tenets of Frostpunk – the ever-present threat of the environment, the delicate balance between worker productivity and societal well-being, the gnawing anxiety of resource scarcity – remain firmly in place, and Frostpunk 2 builds upon them with precision. Every choice carries the weight of potential catastrophe. Will you exploit child labor for a short-term resource boost, or invest in healthcare and education for a sustainable future? Pushing your people to the brink may yield immediate results, but at what cost to long-term stability? Frostpunk 2 excels in throwing players into these ethical dilemmas, forcing them to confront the brutal realities of a world desperate for resources and warmth. The constant need to balance immediate needs with long-term goals creates a pressure cooker environment that keeps players engaged for hours on end. However, this isn’t just about survival; it’s about forging a society that can define what it means to be human in the face of unimaginable hardship. The choices you make not only shape the physical landscape but also the moral compass of your people.
A significant addition to Frostpunk 2‘s formula is the introduction of the advisers. These enigmatic figures all possess unique skills and are harboring their own agendas. Advisers are complex characters with their own goals, forcing players to consider the political landscape alongside the environmental challenges. This creates a sense of paranoia and a constant need to weigh potential benefits against the risk of manipulation. The narrative stakes are raised significantly, as players must not only survive the environment but also navigate the complex web of human ambitions. The Overcoats become a constant source of both potential aid and potential treachery, adding a whole new dimension to the decision-making process.
At any point, there will be an event or situation that will be presented. You will often be presented with an impossible decision to respond to, or not respond at all. You’ll have to check your morals at the door, because anything you know about wrong or right does not apply here. Frostpunk 2 will have you needing to make the best decision with the information you have available to you, and when surviving is paramount, doesn’t mean your decision will be the popular one. It’s hard to grasp how often you’ll need to make decisions that you yourself would never make.
Managing the affinity of factions plays a significant role here. The Machinists, Foragers, Thinkers, Technocrats, and the new Icebloods all have a part to play. The largest of decisions require voting, which means everyone will gather and discuss the issues in-depth. A neat feature that only some will tap into, is the Twitch integration where viewers can weigh-in on these decisions as well.
Unlike the first game where it was included in a DLC, there’s now an Endless Mode available from release called “Utopia Builder”. It lets you thrive as long as you can survive, and not confined by a story. Because as good as the story is, once that’s over things are done for your colony, and I want to be able to take things as far as possible, and endless mode allows for that. I also hope to see more scenarios in a future DLC as well, because it feels there’s so much more to do with the new systems and world.
Out-of-the-box, Frostpunk 2 has mod support, through both Steam Workshop and Mod.io. While there’s not a lot at the moment, there’s some quality of life ones where you get more information on colonies, and ones that give you access to more resources. It’ll be interesting to see what the community creates over the next few months.
Frostpunk 2 is a visual and auditory masterpiece. The landscapes are rendered with stunning detail through Unreal Engine 5, effectively conveying the harsh reality of the unforgiving environment. Blizzard-ravaged plains with skeletal trees reach towards a perpetually grey sky; colossal, rusting industrial ruins serve as grim reminders of a bygone era. These visuals are as breathtaking as they are despair-inducing. The incessant howling of the wind and the haunting score, a blend of melancholic melodies and industrial percussion, perfectly complement the visuals, creating a deeply immersive and oppressive atmosphere. It’s a game that supports TSR, FSR, XeSS, and DLSS, and I found it to be necessary as with it off only was getting 50fps, and with DLSS + Frame Gen, achieved 70fps. It’s not the most optimized game, but it does look very good at all times.
My PC Specs:
– Microsoft Windows 11 Pro
– Intel Core i9 13900K @ 5.8GHz
– ASUS ROG RYUJIN II 360 ARGB AIO Liquid CPU Cooler
– G.SKILL TRIDENT Z5 6000MHZ 64GB (32×2) DDR5 RAM
– ASUS ROG Strix GeForce RTX 4080 16GB GDDR6X
– WD_BLACK SN850X M.2 (4 TB)
– LG UltraGear 34GP950B-G (21:9 Ultrawide @ 3440×1440)
Frostpunk 2 builds upon the original by throwing everything out and starting over. The stakes are high with Frostpunk 2, and it’s not afraid to kill you. Though you do learn from this in order to retry and do better until you get that “a-ha moment” for the satisfaction of overcoming the odds for success. Unlike the inhabitants of my colonies, we’re eating good with the release of Frostpunk 2, as it’s an excellent survival game that despite its weather, has no chill.
A Steam code was provided by the publisher for review purposes
