Review by Leemo
Have you ever wanted to play a city-building survival game set within a global ice age, having free rein of a civilization which you must build from the ground up? Then Frostpunk is built exactly for you.
Starting off with basic resources you must build your city around a giant furnace in a dark and bitterly cold world. Your objective is to survive. A huge snow-storm is coming bringing with it more death and destruction. It’s up to you as the mayor of this last refuge to make sure that your people survive.
You will face seemingly insurmountable odds, challenges within the world and discontent citizens. Not only will you look after the city to make sure it is kept warm but you will also have to keep your people well-fed, and happy. The more you expand your city the more infrastructure you will need.
The very first few moments of the game are the most important. You will collect some basic resources and with these build some basic shelters for your people to stay in. Your next step is to build a hunters hut, assigning people here will periodically send hunters out to collect food. The next step is to work on building a workshop.
A workshop allows you to begin research into new and powerful abilities, buildings and upgrades. Which brings me to the last part of a fresh game. Research the heaters. Heaters are almost as important as the central furnace, as you progress further into the game these will become instrumental in a successful city.
The rest is experimental, do what feels right. It’s your city so do what you like, however, if the people get too angry with you then say hello to a steamy ending.
Whilst in the middle of this hellscape you need to be mining, mine for coal is essentially the most important part of the game. You will need coal to fire up the furnace. Without it, everyone will die and it will be game over.
Eventually, you will gain new research options allowing for faster resource gathering and coal mining. While other research options are available this will be huge importance as the longer you last the colder it will get meaning you will need to use more coal to keep warm.
Along the way you will unlock new laws that will help you, these laws range from anywhere from having a cemetery to child labour. Yep, that’s right you can make them good for ’nuffings earn that bowl of gruel. Or on a different side to the same law, you can put them in schools where they can train to become apprentices, doing this will give you a bit of a bump towards faster research or quicker healing. Either way, you go it is again all your choice.
The final bit of advice if you’re willing to take it is to build a beacon. Building the beacon will allow you to send out explorers, these guys are great they will scour the surrounding area finding new sources of coal, food or wood if you are lucky you may even find something a bit unexpected and very, very welcome.
As a pc original ported to consoles Frostpunk delivers gorgeous visuals, though you won’t see much colour what you do see will be clear and crisp, fine details are easily made out even when you zoom in.
Review wise Frostpunk is all aces, even though its a city building game at its core it feels fresh, new and unique. Its core visuals are beautiful its gameplay is brilliant. However, if you don’t have the patience it can get irritating.
Overall I’m happy to give Frostpunk a really good 8.5/10 you can pick it up from steam XBL or PS4 for a very reasonable price of just £24.99
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