Frostpunk

"I got my propaganda
I got revisionism
I got my violence in high-def ultra-realism"

Nine Inch Nails - Survivalism


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Spoiler alert: about Frostpunk's end-game (second screenshot) though as it's a strategy game most may not care.
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So let's talk about a little city sim called Frostpunk. Think of it as Banished with a chance of flurries. Long story short: buy it!

Welcome to Niflheim.

Population: l'etat. Which is moi.
Plus a few hundred random schmucks who exist solely to sing my praises. If they don't, I'm sitting pretty up in the high tower with my thumb on the thermostat.
Plus a steam powered mecha workforce because why not.

Post-apocalyptic fiction has made a slow comeback this past decade, after petering out after the end of the Cold War back in the '90s. One might blame the near-collapse of Western economies in 2008 for such pessimism but the truth is the wall has simply accumulated so much writing that even hoi semi-literate polloi can get the gist of the message. Our world is overpopulated and under-regulated, overheating through its latest mass extinction. AK-47s are more popular than i-phones, nukes just as prolific and under less control than ever and millions of displaced superstitious hillbillies are displacing the politely self-destructive population of Europe. Our society's aping the beginning of the twentieth century from foppish prissiness to fascism right down to the fad for patent medicines and investment crises. So whether by invasion or infection, by fire, flood, famine or fallout, we know the end is coming. We know that if we live through the next few decades at all (unlikely) we'll likely find ourselves starving around campfires out in the wilderness telling our half feral, flea bitten grandchildren tales about the Before Times.

So survival games have multiplied and survival themes have colored other genres. In addition to this angle, Frostpunk shares Banished or Surviving Mars' much more coherent thematic focus than we expect from the game industry. Both its artistic flair and conservation of detail would earn welcome nods from Poe and Chekov. From the very first frame zooming in through the windblown snow to your citizens' hopeless, Oliver Twisted faces to the sight of a city full of smokestacks roaring through the darkest, coldest nights as massive automatons gingerly tiptoe among the industrial-age dwellings, immersion never slackens.

Even the town grid feeds into this central survivalist aesthetic. Does that panorama above look a little fish-eyed to you? No, it's not a special camera angle. In a highly inspired move, buildings are placed not on the usual Cartesian plane of most city simulators but on a polar (get it, Polar?) grid surrounding your central lifeline, the coal-powered generator, at 0,0. More than any other strategy game town hall or command center, more than even Homeworld's Mothership, the generator in Frostpunk embodies the hopes and fears of your populace. All habitable buildings are oriented toward it, half your industrial effort goes toward keeping it stuffed with coal and straying from it can mean death for your citizens.

Some may not enjoy having their playing style tied down to such an alpha and omega central structure, and may also feel restricted by Frostpunk's [lack of randomization. Unlike other, usually sandboxy city simulators or base building games, Frostpunk is limited to pre-fabbed scenarios with scripted events and timelines.] edit 2022/03/01- this is no longer the case as of a couple of years ago, though the new randomized scenarios are still relatively limited.

While tempted to bemoan this, I'm reminded of my own comments vis-a-vis Sir, You Are Being Hunted: sufficiently testing randomness to see that it truly works might have eaten up much more development time than simply creating individual scenarios.

As it stands, each of Frostpunk's scenarios is a joy the first time through and provides enough variation via citizen deaths and whatnot for at least a second and third run. After all, it's not so much a game about the events affecting you as about your own actions:

As the leader of your stalwart band of refugees, you must do whatever it takes to ensure your colony's continued survival.
Whatever. It. Takes.
The design of the technology trees with their gradual slip from keeping the peace to overcompensation to outright tyranny charts a beautiful slippery slope. When the time comes to take that final plunge into sadistic despotism you'll probably realize, belatedly, that this is what you've been doing all along. It's better writing than you'll find in all but a few cRPGs or maybe Alpha Centauri, and your technology path is as much a matter of roleplaying as of sheer necessity.

Just how much of a control-freak oppressive bastard are you willing to become?