Hello again Gamer’s! Today I have a bit of a late review but a good one! I played and reviewed (you guessed it!) ‘Frost Punk’; developed and published by 11 bit studios. Frost Punk is a current take on classic style of gaming, the strategic city-building survival game (like a sim city or a age of empires). Without giving too much a way too early, I’ll start by saying I really liked this game. The plot is something that captures me, Frost Punk is set “In an alternative timeline in 1886, snowstorms and frost led to failing crops and the death of millions. This event roughly lines up with the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, a volcanic event that led to global cooling. The player is the leader of a group of explorers who fled the cold and the hunger of London in an expedition to find supposed massive coal reserves in the North. Instead, the group gets separated from the main expeditionary party and discovers a massive heat generator in a giant sheltered crater. The player’s task is to manage the explorers in order to fire up the generator and build a city, which should cover their basic needs.” That being said, this game pulls no punches in its sense of urgency to setup a colony and protect yourselves from the harsh winter storms ahead. Admittedly I dived into this game without playing a tutorial only because I am quite familiar with games like this but I would recommend new players run the tutorial. Why do I say that ? Well even on medium difficulty, this game is still quite hard because there are multiple areas where you can fail and you have to be doing well at all the areas to win. The areas I am referring to are:

• Resources
• Heating
• Hunger
• Hope
• Discontent 
• Sickness/injury/death  
• Technology

If you thought to yourself “that’s a lot of things to focus on” you’re right, as a result in too high of discontent and too low of hope will result in you being exiled out of your own city. I’m not saying Frost Punk is hopeless but rather the difficulty drives the narrative that times are tough, and your decisions as the “creator” (I think that’s what they call you) impacts the development of the city. If you want to see what I mean, check out my attempts at surviving: Since recording the play through above, I actually have survived the storm and it is a challenge. Whats next ? You can play the same scenario over again but differently to try and survive or you can play two other available scenarios which are very different from one another but after three playable scenarios, you’ll have to wait for DLC. Frost Punk isn’t a short game so get yourself ready to sit down for an hour or two before actually having something that resembles a thriving city. So lets recap and summarize:

• Story: Frost punk has a captivating story to me, the thought of a post apocalyptic world due to a failing weather system supportive of life is actually frightening, and the game consistently hits you with realistic scenarios within the developing city, such as sickness, rebellion, death, and even exile
• Graphics: Games of this type aren’t typically known to deliver the most dynamic graphics you’ll see. I didn’t think frost punk disappointed in this estimation, the shadowing from day to night on the storm hit crater colony looks amazing; blinding storms and howling winds really set the ambiance of a people under turmoil
• Controls: Strategy games like this would have to try really hard to mess up the controls; so that being said, I thought the controls are easy to learn, remember and adjust once you get the hang of the game
• Replay: I’ve logged quite a bit of time already and have survived the main scenario once (out of how many times) and played the other scenarios once each.

The next question, I would imagine is “how much and is it worth is?” Here in Canada, this game retails for $33.99 and in my opinion if you are either fan if this genre of game or are curious about trying this game in particular; for the cost of admission it’s worth every penny, pick it up!