Frostpunk 2

Endure a blizzard of tough choices and lasting consequences in the survival city builder sequel

- CHRISTOPHER LIVINGSTON

CITIZENS OF NEW LONDON: As you prepare to banish us from the city forever, we hope you understand that we always had good intentions. We never meant to run out of food, let hundreds of you perish from cold, or have the streets patrolled by giant fascist robots who stomp entire buildings flat while trying to prevent a single starving child from stealing a chocolate bar. Things just got out of hand.

Thirty years after the events of the original, the world is still freezing cold and society is still a hot mess. Frostpunk 2 is much bigger than the first game—in Frostpunk you finish the campaign with a city of maybe 800 citizens, while now you start with a population 10 times that. This increase in scale isn’t entirely successful; as a city builder, Frostpunk 2 is far more abstract than the original, and we never felt much of a connection to, or interest in, our city as a physical place. As a society management sim, however, Frostpunk 2 is as effective as the original. It’s packed wall-to-wall with torturous choices, agonizing consequences, and a sliding scale of morality that’s as slippery as ice.

Once again, you’re in charge of New London, decades after it was founded and built in the original game. The breaking news isn’t great: Coal, which has kept the city’s generator burning for 30 years, is dwindling. It’s time to expand the borders and harvest more materials from the frozen ground outside the city, while restlessly searching the distant frigid wastelands for new resources, such as oil, to keep your people alive and warm.