Frostpunk (Game)

[muppetts]

https://www.gog.com/game/frostpunk

Just finished the first scenario of this strat game based on a London/victorian steampunk theme. Really well done, very atmospheric and bug free (for me) the game is great at not just testing your power to balance out choices but if you have a knack for roleplay it will test your moral compass too!

I put children to work in my cities attempts to save itself from a world ending storm in about 2 seconds, then started pumping out soup to stretch my food and Moonshine to keep people from getting to bitchy about it but soon people started to moan so I set up some laws to let them have duels in the streets and added hookers as a service in the pub. Somewhere along the line I got religious and before you know it people where dragged out into the main square for a whipping and good old fashioned repenting (amen).

The systems are complex but not silly and intuitive enough that with 3 restarts you should be good to go for a game on the hard level which puts up a challenge. There will be additional content coming as the game sold 250K units in the first 60 hours and the devs are very happy peeps.

It does miss a whole level of, well you care less and less about the individual as time goes on, the have little bios for everyone but you click on one and probably that is it, so you don't really get to care about the people beyond what they can give you, not always, forcing a bunch of kids out into the snow on their own with a map was a low point.

Anyway I think this is worth a whirl if you like city builders and is a touch different.

[Morkonan]

How's the "end game" or, rather, the "long game?" Are there enough mechanics in the game to keep it interesting long-term?

The game looks interesting and I would probably like it, but only if there were enough fiddly-bits in there to keep me entertained with "new things" popping up during play.

All-too-often, games like this start off strong and then stumble in the late game, with boring repetition the key to play once you pass a certain point. That's something I detest.

"OK, I'm doing awesome! I've got this great thing I've tweaked and tweaked and got running. LOOK AT ALL MY AWESOME! So, what's the next challenge?"

"Keep doing that until the timer runs out."

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[muppetts]

The late game is hard as you are rushing against time and the elements to get set before the storm hits, you have to deal with social, religious and resources management and it tends to be touch and go if your going to make it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1ES12y ... 9f2oHvlAlK

Chris Odd is my goto playthrough Utuber and you can get the gist from either watching the first or last of his series.

it is shorter (12-13 hours) but you have 2 other different scenarios with different challenges.

If you get just play on Hard as that is where you get the meat from decisions and the need to balance.

[silentWitness]

The difficulty is that the game judges you for your choices.

I chose to safe guard humanities future by ensuring the seed banks and their population would stand the test of time... The game hated me for the only logical choice.

Same with my choice to ensure people survived over some sentimental religious claptrap.

Otherwise very fun.

[muppetts]

Yeah I let Sheffield die too but in the end I realise I could have saved them, especially since the seed bank is no use if all the humans are dead! I never went full religious conversion but I could see the use of setting up a fake diety at the end of the world to keep people together.

The refugees scenario is really hard, only saved 140 so far.

The game indulges my inner OCD, so I obsess about getting it all efficient!