This week I’m going to ramble about a game I enjoy. For some reason or another (probably getting older) I have been enjoying city-building/strategy games. A couple months back it started when I played a few games of Sim City which I found on this neat 120 in 1 SNES cart I bought off of Amazon. It has its fair share of stinkers but there are some gems in the rough on there as well as some forgotten titles. Kind of makes me want one of those FXPAK pro carts but those are a little out of my budget for the time being. Anyways, I’m not talking about the SNES, so back to the topic at hand.
So I played some SimCity for a bit, then I remembered I had Cities: Skylines! I went back to my PC and fired it up, had fun for a good minute and progressed quite a bit with some strategy advice from different sources. Both are great games if you enjoy being the Mayor of a city and planning a city, designing a city, etc. Surviving Mars I believe is by the same devs as Cities and is quite enjoyable as well. Maybe someday I’ll get back into that one. Okay, let’s get to the game I originally was getting to.
The game is one of my favorite modern titles. I’m stuck in between retro and modern games at the moment. I would get into why, but I’ll save that for another time. The game I really have been enjoying lately is a city-building survival game by 11Bit Studios that released on Windows in 2018 and PS4/XboxOne in 2019. The name of the game: Frost Punk.
Frost Punk is one of those games I like to fire up and play when the weather here in the great state of Minnesota, USA gets below zero degrees Fahrenheit. That crispy frost sound it makes when the temp drops really puts that chill in your bones as you play. The aspect of surviving the cold is only one of the challenges of this game though. There are many decisions you will have to make as the Captain of your new settlement.
Before I get into the game any further, I just would like to say that 11Bit is one of those studios that makes games I enjoy for some reason. I have another game by 11Bit, This War of Mine, and if anything, 11Bit does a great job of pulling your emotional strings by the end of the game. The decisions you make in the game will come back to haunt you by the end if you survive. It really makes you wonder what it would come to if an apocalyptic situation like Frost Punk really were to happen. This War of Mine on the other hand, was based upon an actual conflict of the past: The Siege of Sarajevo.
In Frost Punk you can play several different scenarios, the main one being A New Home. You play as a group of Londoners leaving England to escape the Deep Frost. You start near a huge coal-powered steam generator. The generator provides much needed warmth to your people and will be essential for your survival. Round up some coal and fire it up. Your people will thank you.
Along the way you will be presented with different challenges such as feeding your people and providing them with healthcare. Each decision you make will raise or lower hope and/or discontent among your people. If your discontent gets too high, or your hope too low, your people will give you an ultimatum. Guess what happens if you don’t meet that ultimatum. I won’t spoil it for you here.
Late in the game (if you can survive that long) the decisions get tougher as the temperatures get lower. Towards the end of A New Home, the temperature drops to an insane low. If you don’t prepare properly, you’ll perish. If you do, you will survive, likely with a cost. You have survived, but was it worth it?
That’s my ramble for the week. I just wanted to highlight a game I enjoy. Frost Punk is definitely a challenge to survive but it seems like it has just that right amount of challenge that won’t make you rage quit. Well, that’s enough rambling for the week. Join me next week for another Weekly Ramble!
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