Usually, when I think of city builders, my first thought isn’t that I will be managing the very survival of a society of displaced citizens in a dystopian future on the brink of destruction from a natural disaster. Frostpunk 2 by 11 Bit Studios challenges players to do just that, prepare for the worst, the risk of an entire wipeout by a massive global freeze.

While it typically isn’t what would be considered a “good time”, Frostpunk 2, now released on PlayStation 5 after the PC release (2024), takes the typical city-builder formula and mixes it with survival strategy. It may be bleak, but it asks the big questions about humanity in a way that’s engaging and really prompts the urge to keep on keeping on.

Frostpunk 2 picks up 30 years after the first game, continuing in New London around an alternate timeline of 1916, where you, the Steward, take on the mantle of leader after the Captain’s passing. The overall vibe of the original game is there, but the follow-up delves much deeper with more complex systems and on a much bigger scale. For fans of city-builders, you would be familiar with the basic premise of building up infrastructure from the ground up and managing a city’s everyday commerce and resources.

Frostpunk 2 at surface levels follows this formula: expanding a settlement, managing resource distribution, output, and everyday operations. At its core, there is a lot more at play. Players are tasked with managing the very survival of their people, which is far more complex than simply dividing labour and providing food sources. The bigger implications centre on major moral and ethical decisions, where there is usually some form of sacrifice, regardless of the choice made.

Preparing for White Outs, blizzard-like periods of sub-zero temperatures (we’re talking over -40• and below) is a massive undertaking. Even more than that, the ultimate game-over – the Great Storm, which, if not adequately prepared for, will lead to global freezeover and the destruction of the settlement. Preparation is the key to survival in Frostpunk 2, and to build the settlement and keep society running, time-sensitive decisions are crucial. As a starting point, it all seems pretty straightforward. Building housing districts and gathering resources from the surrounding area to fuel the generator for heating and support the settlers quickly becomes chaotic.

The balancing act between managing society’s needs and the best option for survival is tough. There are big decisions to be made, often requiring a sacrifice elsewhere. Frostpunk 2 really sets itself apart from other city-builders thanks to its survival element. The focus is on the impact on humanity rather than just industrial expansion and supply-chain management. Often, settlement growth involves reallocation of heat or other resources, enforcing harsh working conditions or even, as I experienced, a choice to implement child labour or sacrifice the elderly. Sometimes there is no “right” ethical decision. Almost every choice I encounter has a consequence; even choosing to do nothing is a choice. Run-on effects of a choice can spell the end long before the storm hits.

On top of ethics, politics comes into play. Passing laws in council is actually a fairly democratic process, requiring a majority in favour, making it all the more important to satisfy citizens. Where it gets dicey is with multiple factions, each with its own political agendas and ethical codes, often at odds with one another. As the old saying goes, “you can’t please ‘em all”, and even decisions I considered “no-brainers” like researching medical facilities upset a faction and may lead to revolts. The number of tough decisions and the need to very quickly adjust strategy made Frostpunk 2 a lot more challenging than your average city-builder, especially given that it deals with life and death.

Frostpunk 2 is an incredibly mechanic-heavy game. The prologue alone is just the tip of the iceberg, focusing on the basics of survival; it isn’t until the chapters proper that large-scale settlements and build options are on offer. The prologue doesn’t hold your hand, and in the prologue alone, I spent plenty of time attempting to adequately prepare for the weather events. While there are tooltips and an extensive tutorial menu, Frostpunk 2 isn’t a set-and-forget type of situation, and with the extensive mechanics, it can be easily overwhelming. But hey, if you’re into upping the ante, apart from the campaign, Utopia Mode provides additional maps with varying degrees of challenges.

On PlayStation 5, one of my biggest early barriers was adjusting to the user interface. The user interface had icons for resources that were hard to distinguish and sub-menus that were not immediately obvious, which hindered my early experience. UI navigation on the PS5 DualSense was an adjustment, with cycling between Build menus with L2/R2 and some menus, such as the faction and command menus, not being immediately obvious.

Whereas on PC, a simple point-and-click can make navigation a breeze. I learned by doing, and eventually most actions became second nature, which may be too inconvenient for some gamers.

Accessibility and barriers to progression are one fatal flaw that may prevent some players from continuing. I would have liked some accessibility modifiers to tailor the experience to my preferences. At times, the game feels made for the most hardcore and patient gamers, in a way that’s somewhat jarring. The PlayStation 5 port is quite strong once I got past my initial struggles with the UI. I had a few performance drops during some events and minor instances of slow texture load-in, but nothing too intense.

From what you can gather, the outlook of Frostpunk 2 is bleak, but the visuals and audio are the exact opposite. Gritty cutscenes with incredible narration, albeit fairly gloomy, were surprisingly beautiful in their own way. The industrial-revolution-esque, dystopian settlements in the middle of a pristine, frozen wasteland are surprisingly pretty, and watching the colony grow and zooming in to see settlers go about their days is surprisingly charming.

The hustle and bustle at the base is even more engaging when there are the sounds of civilians chattering and overhead announcements, along with the clunks of machinery or the grinding of gears as they operate. Frostpunk 2 is the epitome of atmosphere, using sound cues to indicate key changes in dynamics and conditions, like a few musical chords signalling a cold snap or an event to draw your attention to. The crowning glory for me was some of the most hauntingly beautiful and heart-wrenching orchestrations I’ve ever heard in a game. Composer   Piotr Musiał’s use of string instruments to indicate snowstorms and brass instruments during tense times all fuses flawlessly with the gameplay.

Frostpunk 2 stands out amongst both city-builders and survival games by making players question what they would do as a leader to ensure their citizens’ survival. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, and Frostpunk 2 makes that run-on effect toward disaster an important matter to ponder.

Surviving the tundra is an exercise in perseverance, but if you do, there aren’t many more incredibly deep and meaningful games in quite the way Frostpunk 2 is.

Written by: Yasmin Noble