Frostpunk

[Hamilton321]

Hello it is I, everyone's favorite full-time lurker and occasional thread killer. I have been quite sad about the nature of new games for awhile. I find that to put it mildly I dislike many of the games released during the 2010s, however 2018 has seen the release of several new games that I find absolutely exhilarating.

So let us begin: I will devote this thread to discussing my favourite new game of 2018 which is quite easily Frostpunk, published by 11-bit studios. This game takes place in a steampunk world which for some reason has completely frozen over. In this game the player must lead a group of refugees from London and establish
a new city to protect the refugees from the cold. If that were not hard enough the people are not the passive, obedient people that city-simulators usually feature, they are despairing, short-sighted and doubt your ability to keep them safe through the storms.

In order to survive the leader must make sure that the houses and workplaces are adequately heated, the people are adequately fed. Meanwhile keeping discontent low and finding innovative ways to raise hope. While establishing the city there will be a group of people known as the Londoners who desire to leave your city and return to London. How many leave depends largely on your decisions and success in raising hope or using force to restrain the Londoners. After this, one will have to prepare for a severe storm, during which temperatures will get ridiculously low and it will be very hard to gather any significant resources. Therefore one will need to gather significant reserves of coal reserves and food rations so that the people are not cold and hungry during the storm.

If this was not enough there are 3 DLCs at absolutely no cost! The first is the arks where one leads a group of engineers to protect arks containing many seedlings from the cold and build a city to support them. The second is the refugees where one is taking in refugees from the outside world and finding innovative ways to deal with them. The third is the Fall of Winterhome. It was released about 6 weeks ago but very sadly I have not had time to complete a play-through of it because my schedule has been quite full.

I will tell you about the Fall of Winterhome when I have completed my play-through of it. So far it is very fun and challenging.

 

[sherbz]

Ive just recently got this. But not played much. My initial impression was that it doesnt do a great job in explaining the mechanics of the game. That's not to say of course that it isnt a good game. Just that it gave me a bad initial impression thats all.

 

[axx]

Yes the interface can be confusing. Browsing through the UI you'll be able to access all the info you need, but it will take you some time to get used to it. Even once you've mastered it, the game can still be a bit overwhelming on times, especially as it keeps throwing events you have to deal with. Just zooming out and observing the spaghetti mess of buildings...it's one of those games I have to pause and collect my thoughts for a few seconds and just grasp the whole situation before moving on. What the game, at least for me, is missing is a simplified view of different buildings where you can manage things a bit easier, then switch back to normal view and unpause...
I've watched Marbozirs LP and Fall of Winterhome was the first scenario where he had to replay a few times, it's quite challenging compared to scenarios in the base game.
I'm also glad for the developer this was a success. Their games strike me as somewhat different compared to other indies which stick to low pixelization low variety and just saturate the market. Can't wait to see what they'll come up with for the endless mode.

 

[sherbz]

Yes 8 bit studios are some of the good guys in gaming. I was genuinely quite touched that one of their DLCs for This War of mine (great game btw) was just a means to donate money to the victims of war. It was a really nice touch.

 

[Socrates99]

Kind of a necro, sorry. I picked this up last fall during a sale and kinda shelved it. Just started playing it a few days ago. Loving it. It's a fun but punishing survival city builder. Learning as I go. Great graphics for an indie game. Really well made, well done mechanics. The tutorial is decent because of how you're fed information piecemeal rather than blasted with all of it up front. It just often lacked really useful information.

Took me a couple restarts to get in a good groove. They make coal seem like such a top priority but as long as your supply is steady it seems like wood and food are paramount in the early game. The quest steers you towards beacons first which may be the right path but I almost wish I'd gone lumbermills first because once I got one rolling the game really started to progress and I didn't have to stress the limited supply quite as much.

Gathering posts are a must. You can collect more resources with fewer workers. They can be scrapped out later when piles are depleted but it's worth leaving a couple that are close together to place a coal thumper nearby. This was something the tutorial fell short on. My first couple playthroughs I dumped 15 workers on piles I needed collected. No indication of how much more efficient gathering posts were. They only take 10 workers and give you plenty of resources from any pile in range.