“Frostpunk wants you to confront what you’re willing to sacrifice...”

April 26, 2018 2:18 PM

Frostpunk is a game about suffering on an industrial scale [Polygon] “Frostpunk, the latest offering from 11 bit Studios (known for This War of Mine and the Anomaly series), is a colony simulation game with a twist. You’re not just building a city, say the developers. Instead, you’re forming a culture. 11 bit goes so far as to call its newest product the world’s first “society survival game,” and that may be laying it on a bit thick. In truth, it’s an amazingly well-realized, thematic narrative experience bolted on top of a skillfully crafted city simulation. [...] Frostpunk is just as dark as This War of Mine, but it manages to produce that same queasy feeling on an industrial scale.” [YouTube][Game Trailer]

• Frostpunk: the politics of survival [Metro]

“Doing the right thing has never been made more difficult in a video game, and certainly not in a strategy title like this. But playing Frostpunk you gain a fascinating insight into how real political decisions are made. The situation in the game is exaggerated to an impossible extreme, of course, but the way you constantly have to balance pragmatism, populism, and humanitarism is fascinating and horrible. Part city builder, part survival game, and part political thriller, Frostpunk is a strange but hugely successful combination of influences. It may tackle similar themes to This War Of Mine but in gameplay terms this is a much more compelling game, and an almost frightening insight into how humanity governs itself. ‘Was this city worth it?’ the game asks of its players, but the answer to that is never an easy one.”

• Frostpunk: Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't [Gamespot]

“One of your citizens approaches you: "Children should be put to work. We're all in this together, and we need help right now." Then, you're shuffled over to a rough-hewn book of laws for your band. There you can, with a click, start putting the kids to work. Or you could build child shelters to house the kids and keep them healthy and safe from the cold. The citizens didn't present you with that second option--and why would they, they can only see what's immediately in front of them? Frostpunk itself, in the tutorial, notes that the people you serve are always looking for a solution, but not necessarily the best one. What's ultimately best depends on the emergent challenges you face. Do you have a mysterious illness spreading wildly through the camp? Are you struggling to find coal, forcing you to char firewood and construction materials to keep the generator going? These questions are constant and agonizing throughout. Frostpunk drips cynicism and bleakness. And yet it is that hopelessness, that fundamental need of human beings to persist in spite of everything that Frostpunk seeks to embody most. You become the bulwark against fear--even as you look across the land and internalize just how hard this fight will be.”

• Frostpunk: Urban planning at the end of the world [Ars Technica]

“One part survival game and one part city builder, Frostpunk doesn’t give you time to play around. The citizens of this frozen, alternate-history England are cold, hungry, restless, and despairing. Your job is to manage these four societal factors—though not necessarily fix them. Nobody is ever really happy in the world of Frostpunk. The world has already come to an icy end, after all. This reality is reflected in a series of political and technological upgrade trees that usually trade one pro for another con. Ordering the cookhouses to liquefy food rations into soup will feed more people, for instance, but it will also raise discontent. Another option is to cut the gruel with sawdust, though that might make residents (aka potential workers) sick. That latter option won’t seem so clever, either, when those sick workers can’t collect the coal that fuels the city generator that keeps everyone from freezing to death or the wood and steel needed to build new structures. Loyal, placated citizens are a resource just like anything else in this grim take on the usual city-management simulation.”

• ‘Frostpunk:’ The stressful thrill of being a leader in tough times [The Washington Post]

“Actually, I should have sensed that things would get inexorably worse since “Frostpunk” is the latest creation of 11 bit studios, the Warsaw-based video game development company responsible for “This War of Mine,” a moving game about shepherding a tiny flock of civilians through the depravations of war. Like its predecessor, “Frostpunk” is a game built around resource management systems that inspire moral and ethical trade-offs — should you allocate extra food rations to the sick to help them recover faster or hoard what you have as a future safeguard? Both titles highlight the fallacy that people play video games only to relax. Here, the notion of eustress or “good stress” is helpful to think about. Eustress can occur when one feels a bit overwhelmed by a task but pursues it anyway with an eye toward a larger goal. In that sense, 11 bit studios’ games could be classified as clever engines for recreational stress. At least that’s the thought that flashed through my head when I found myself barking, “work, damn you!” to the people on my computer monitor.”

• New City-Building Game Frostpunk Is Great For Those Of Us Who Love The Cold [Kotaku]

“More than the game’s details of warmth, I love the details of cold. I love the snow piled on roofs and streets, the paths my citizens tread each day to the sawmills and coal mines so far from the generator’s hum. I love the limits snow creates on the world, how desperately my town glows amid it. This is a city-builder you’re meant to play more than once, crafting a town and a society in the hopes it won’t fail. But failure does come. The game’s regular cold spells have been run-ending disasters in my Frostpunk attempts, my screen going icy at the edges when I’m the least prepared. I despaired for my virtual city, but I enjoyed the crackling sound effects of ice forming. Cold is your enemy, but it’s also the element that makes the whole game exist. Its limits are the space within which your city and all the game’s tense possibilities thrive. In one of my Frostpunk games, hope dipped too low and I couldn’t turn things around. I got deposed as leader and sent to die in the snow. Most citizens were impassive or glad to be rid of me, reflecting that at least I’d die quickly in the tundra. After a game spent constantly falling behind, solving one problem only to cause another, a quiet death in the ice didn’t feel entirely like a failure. It seemed peaceful and a lovely, a fitting acknowledgement of my favorite part of the game.”

posted by Fizz (32 comments total)

This game keeps popping up in my feeds, but the Ars review linked above convinced me to wait till they release a few patches to tweak it. It still looks interesting and pushes many new buttons for me.
posted by msbutah at 2:29 PM on April 26, 2018

I have far too many simulation/survival games in my library, and money is tight this month. But damn, I really want to give this a go. Maybe when it hits a Steam sale. It looks really interesting. Like a more ethical quandary based Civilization game. Infusing some guilt/ethics into the choices you make as you build a civilization.
posted by Fizz at 2:36 PM on April 26, 2018 [3 favorites]

Given the twinges of guilt I get about forgetting my Stardew Valley neighbours' birthdays, I think this probably isn't for me. Which is a shame because it looks good.

I'd really like an Ankh-Morpork city simulator. Lots of machinations and moral choices but in a comedic palette.
posted by howfar at 2:46 PM on April 26, 2018 [11 favorites]

I suppose one might also argue that there's something a bit strange about presenting the cruelties of a dictatorial regime as inevitable responses to perilous conditions. In the real world, our rulers aren't making tough choices to eke out the little we have, they're just using that as a cover story for plundering a bountiful world while others starve.
posted by howfar at 2:53 PM on April 26, 2018 [15 favorites]

I'm intrigued by this, and started watching a Let's Play, but I'm not sure it's having the intended impact as far the decision making goes - decisions about child labour or amputations for the sick are being made on the basis of viewer whims, and there's a kind of "hur hur, this is funny because we can be cruel" vibe.

On a larger scale, eventually these kinds of games get broken down by the "strategy experts" who can show the best paths for various outcomes, which makes the decisions just mechanical exercises.

Maybe I'm just too cynical today. It's been a hard one.
posted by nubs at 2:55 PM on April 26, 2018 [8 favorites]

Nifty. A bit of a city builder Snowpiercer, eh?
posted by chainlinkspiral at 3:02 PM on April 26, 2018 [3 favorites]

decisions about child labour or amputations for the sick are being made on the basis of viewer whims, and there's a kind of "hur hur, this is funny because we can be cruel" vibe.

That wasn’t Quill18 by chance, was it? A super nice Canadian guy who enjoys the dark absurdity of games like this (e.g. Rim World and Dwarf Fortress) — which, if I’m not in the mood, or real life news is too dark, can be exceedingly unfun.
posted by Celsius1414 at 3:14 PM on April 26, 2018

On a larger scale, eventually these kinds of games get broken down by the "strategy experts" who can show the best paths for various outcomes, which makes the decisions just mechanical exercises.

Just like real world capitalism does, huzzah....no wait.
posted by Fizz at 3:23 PM on April 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

I love the idea of expanding the palette of video games so that they can explore real issues and not just be adolescent power fantasies.

But I am prone to situational depression and I really don't think I can handle being forced to okay child labor right now.
posted by lumpenprole at 3:29 PM on April 26, 2018 [2 favorites]

Luckily, there are lots of cheats now... so noone has to face the Kobyashi Maru.
posted by Docrailgun at 3:39 PM on April 26, 2018

But I am prone to situational depression and I really don't think I can handle being forced to okay child labor right now.

You can also send the children to apprentice in the medical tents or research workshops instead of toiling away in the mines. There were a couple situations in This War of Mine (11 bit's previous game) where the "immoral" choice was the better choice to win the game. That doesn't seem to be as big of an issue in Frostpunk.
posted by nathan_teske at 3:57 PM on April 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

The citizens of this frozen, alternate-history England are cold, hungry, restless, and despairing.

FTFT.
posted by howfar at 4:24 PM on April 26, 2018 [2 favorites]

This looks amazing. I could never finish This War of Mine, because it was just too realistic. :( I think I could get through this though. (Any estimates on the chances of this coming to a Humble Bundle monthly sometime soon?)
posted by longdaysjourney at 4:44 PM on April 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

Several days after, I found a woman kneeling in the snow clutching the frozen hand of her dead husband whose body she was forced to pass each day on the way to work at the sawmill. She pleaded with me to allow me to bury him, but to do so would have made the my other citizens spiteful. For the good of the city I forced her suffering to go on indefinitely.

so ... this isn't a good choice for Monster Factory, is what I'm hearing
posted by Countess Elena at 4:50 PM on April 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

How much fibre supplement would you need to add to pass an entire human?
posted by biffa at 5:00 PM on April 26, 2018

That wasn’t Quill18 by chance, was it? A super nice Canadian guy who enjoys the dark absurdity of games like this

Yeah, it was Quill - whom I normally quite enjoy, even on games like Rimworld, but it just rubbed me the wrong way last night on this game.
posted by nubs at 5:17 PM on April 26, 2018

This sounds fantastic. I loved This War of Mine and am still considering picking up the boardgame, although it's a bit too component-y for me.

Also, Fizz, I just want to say that your comprehensive roundups, particularly of video games, are one of the highlights of Metafilter for me. So, thanks!
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:22 PM on April 26, 2018 [2 favorites]

I, too, have been a little bothered by Quill18’s Frostpunk videos so far. I’ve enjoyed other series of his and was surprised. These were the first livestream videos of his I’ve watched, though, and I wonder if that’s the difference. It seemed like a lot of the blasé dismissal of cruelty originated with his viewers when he asked for their opinions about game-play decisions. He just rolled with it – not that that made it any less distasteful.
posted by SirNovember at 5:34 PM on April 26, 2018

SirNovember, I've watched other livestreams and not had the same reaction; then again, in other livestreams he isn't asking the subscribers about authorizing child labour. It is maybe the mix of the game, the stream, and some dark absurdity.
posted by nubs at 6:43 PM on April 26, 2018

I don't want to sit here and swear at someone, but $#%!@#$ you for finding a reason for me to hand over $29.99.
posted by Nanukthedog at 7:51 PM on April 26, 2018 [2 favorites]

so ... this isn't a good choice for Monster Factory, is what I'm hearing

Perhaps it is, and it turns out that the real Monster was actually the player.
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:27 PM on April 26, 2018 [2 favorites]

> $#%!@#$ you for finding a reason for me to hand over $29.99.

Battletech is $39.99 not $29.99.
posted by glonous keming at 9:12 PM on April 26, 2018 [3 favorites]

So far it feels viable to play this light-sided...using too many bad things tends to raise discontentment. Going darksided you risk losing the support of the people unless you have the means to quash it with might/propaganda or make quick amends with good laws, it's a high-risk strategy. The ideal play involves acting quickly and avoiding resource bottlenecks. Keeping your people warm, fed, and healthy keeps them happy.
posted by JauntyFedora at 12:33 AM on April 27, 2018

Turbid dahlia, get the board game of This War of Mine, it’s amazing and not as componenty as you would think. It’s really an example of games as art/literature.
I empathize with the comments above as to how people play though. As I was playing TWoM BG with friends an acquaintance of mine, a nice young man, doctor, came past and just casually said “oh, you should shoot him, you get the stuff anyway and you don’t have to feed him”. I don’t really think of him the same way anymore.
posted by Iteki at 12:42 AM on April 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

Thanks, Fizz! I'm the lead writer on Frostpunk, so all the bad writing in this game can be pinned squarely on me.
As to the other failings of it, I'd like to point out that what makes oppression the only choice is not the way the world is built, but the string of previously made choices - some of which might have seemed logical or even kind at the moment of making them. In other words, one can win without robbing the elderly couple becoming a dictator.
posted by hat_eater at 1:28 AM on April 27, 2018 [19 favorites]

Battletech is $39.99 not $29.99.
posted by glonous keming at 12:12 AM on April 27

Oh I saw that... went 'Oh they've re-released Mech Commander... the decisions - the horrors!'
Then I remembered we just got a puppy and my wife said the budget is tight until the end of the month... So I made the budget conscious decision and bought the cheaper of the two... I think of my single purchase of FrostPunk as the equivalent of her weekly Kombucha consumption...

Plus, with this game I've learned that I can cut my food with sawdust which means I can stretch our meals at home a little farther... Kids... I hope you like the taste of pine!
posted by Nanukthedog at 7:21 AM on April 27, 2018 [4 favorites]

“Frostpunk wants you to confront what you’re willing to sacrifice...”

I don't know, my SimCity games can get pretty dark at times.
posted by FJT at 8:50 AM on April 27, 2018

This game, and studio, are simply fascinating. Given they're based in Warsaw, is there a point being made about the current Polish government and how Poland ended up veering hard toward autocracy/totalitarianism/censorship/etc in recent years? From what I can tell, the current government was elected fairly and democratically, and has many genuine supporters who believe they're doing what's necessary to fix some major issues. Seems to fit into what hat_eater is saying about how seemingly inevitable dictatorship in the game is the result of previous choices that seemed logical or kind at the time. I think that's a far more nuanced and realistic view of autocracy in the post-Brexit/post-Trump era than the too-simplistic (for me) "rulers are just using that as a cover story to plunder a bountiful world while others starve". We can see all too easily looking at the current world how a response to 9/11 took us down a dark path over the past few decades; some of that was just a cover story from deliberate manipulators, absolutely, but just as much was coming from politicians, journalists, commentators, and our own friends and family who genuinely, in good faith, thought at the time that we needed to make necessary changes to combat terrorism, monitor threats, enact regime change, etc.
posted by naju at 9:54 AM on April 27, 2018 [2 favorites]

Help guide Abbie aboard a flotation device and escape a doomed landscape and FTP!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Di-qMtNw6Bk&t=20s
posted by zippercollider at 11:51 AM on April 27, 2018

is there a point being made about the current Polish government and how Poland ended up veering hard toward autocracy/totalitarianism/censorship/etc in recent years?

Making Frostpunk, we wanted to return to the question of moral responsibility for choices made under extreme stress we explored in This War of Mine, this time on a bigger scale, of a society. So we asked again "what would you do to survive?", but with the stakes raised to the survival of a whole community, possibly the whole human civilization. In such conditions the decision of enforcing order by any means necessary can emerge quite naturally, and even an unwilling ruler might end up as a despot.

Poland has had enough experiences with autocratic and totalitarian rulers during the last two centuries to give us plenty of perspective - I lived the first two decades of my life under a decaying authoritarian regime. As far as I know nobody on the team intended Frostpunk to serve as a commentary on the current political situation in Poland. To what degree it becomes one depends mostly on whether our administration stays the course.

Speaking strictly for myself now, of course I couldn't help seeing parallels, although we are still very far from a totalitarian state.
posted by hat_eater at 12:37 PM on April 27, 2018 [9 favorites]

I think that's a far more nuanced and realistic view of autocracy in the post-Brexit/post-Trump era than the too-simplistic (for me) "rulers are just using that as a cover story to plunder a bountiful world while others starve".

There are, of course, good leaders who make bad decisions. But framing autocracy as something that emerges out of a general struggle for survival, rather than narrow interests competing for dominance is still troubling to me. A good example of the sort of decision that really leads to autocracy is Comey's behaviour during the 2016 presidential election. He didn't want to throw the election to Trump, but he equally didn't make the choices he made for the good of society. He made them to protect his own position, and to secure the image of the FBI as not beholden to Clinton in order to maintain its power in the inevitable shitshow of investigation that a Clinton administration would have been beset by. Those are the sorts of bad decisions made by clever people that lead us into autocracy, not the decisions that people make genuinely trying to preserve peace, prosperity and freedom for all.

just as much was coming from politicians, journalists, commentators, and our own friends and family who genuinely, in good faith, thought at the time that we needed to make necessary changes to combat terrorism, monitor threats, enact regime change, etc

The thing about this is that they were demonstrably wrong at the time. I simply don't accept that anyone who understood the situation even roughly, and who looked dispassionately at the facts as they were known, could have (for example) believed that the invasion of Iraq was likely to be anything but a fucking disaster. It didn't seem like a good or kind idea, people just wanted to delude themselves into the belief that it was; they did this for a multitude of reasons, none of them good.

None of which is to say that governing is easy, or that we just need people to be better. It's to say that autocracy does not come from honest mistakes, or a failure to appreciate the consequences of one's actions; it comes from people allowing the interests of one group to be placed ahead of of the collective interests of sentient beings. If you resist that temptation, you won't create an autocracy, no matter how tough times may get.
posted by howfar at 12:40 PM on April 27, 2018

A little belated, but I am finding this game gorgeous and really challenging--and also it is trying to actually melt my older computer. Holy crap, was I not expecting that part. It's, uh, a bit ironic. It's not unworkable, I'm just saving a lot and only playing for 20-30 minutes at a time now because it creeps up rather than just immediately going nuclear, but I was having a really good run of days the first time it shut down abruptly. I've never had a survival game where part of the things I had to manage was my CPU temp.

I don't really blame the game, the machine really is aging, but what a game to discover that on.
posted by Sequence at 8:25 PM on April 30, 2018