London as the frost gets worse.

I’ve never played This War of Mine, not because I wasn’t attracted to it but because it seemed like one of those games where I’d get too involved (depressed) when I did something wrong and got someone or everyone killed.

That game is more personal, fewer people, Frostpunk puts enough people in that you can distance yourself from getting attached. However it doesn’t exactly make you feel better when, say, someone gets severe frostbite and has to get amputated then contacts you saying “I want to work but I have no arms/legs.” Or learning about children getting hurt because you needed the extra hands to work at a job.

Oceans frozen, London besieged by snow, nothing to do but leave and hope for the best.

Frostpunk is a survival city builder. Taking place during the height of steam power, Earth is turning into a snowball and all of humanity is on the brink extinction. Governments that have survived up until this point of decided they needed to do something to try and give humanity a chance at surviving the Frost. They designed Dreadnoughts, massive land ships (think giant steam train with tank treads) powered by a huge vertical boiler full of resources with volunteers, heading north where coal is the most abundant which hopefully means they can survive. The boilers on the Dreadnoughts are sacrificed and turn into the central point of your city, where you will build out from. It provides endless steam and heat as long as you supply it with enough coal to run.
Upgrading the generator (boiler) means it runs more efficiently, hotter, effects a larger area, but doing so means you use more coal which means you need more people, which means the chance they get sick, hurt, or even killed in the cold.
You start out with barely enough resources for anything so you have to make a choice on what to make. Resources buildings to gather more or houses/food buildings for your people so they don’t get sick as easily? Even if you keep them in the warmth of the generator (or Steam Hubs, smaller local heaters) people can still get sick and will be out of action until they’re taken care of. Keep in mind, all of this is assuming you have max number of people working in there respective places to keep the efficiency at 100% (and of course the people there are themselves working at 100%) or else it’ll take longer and longer to get resources/heal someone.

Send scouts out to other areas to find more people and resources.

Laws help you make everything a bit easier (or harder) depending on what you choose to enact. Signing in “Emergency Shifts” means a building works 24hours straight, you get resources but the people get angry having to do that or choosing “Extended Shifts” means they work 14 hour days instead of 8, once again annoying them. Other laws mean you can make them feel better. Choosing to make a Fighter Arena or Public House (Pub) makes them feel better and gives a positive to Hope and in the case of a the Public house, also choosing to give people Moonshine, offsets another law: Soup. Enacting the Soup law (makes more food rations with fewer raw food) but people HATE soup apparently and will always raise discontent when they eat it, giving them Moonshine decreases this negative. And of course letting Pubs also have the Brothel gives you a permanent Hope positive.
Related to laws, the ones mentioned previously (Book is called Adaptation) are all the first laws you get access to be default. Later, you get access to two different law books (which you must choose one or the other,) Faith and Order. Faith, self explanatory I know, gives your people Hope in a higher power and with access to churches, patrolling squads from the church, etc. that gives people a reason to keep going. Order is access to guard towers, prisons, propaganda center, to keep people in line and following the rules. Both of these can lead (keep in mind, all laws are optional) to an “ultimate” law, called “New Faith/New Order.” This “final” law makes you the ultimate dictator, Hope is never a problem again and anyone that doesn’t like it…well, that’s what the public execution platform is for.

The lots of things to research in the tech trees.

There are three missions, the first is the main story mission which takes awhile to do (especially set to normal difficulty,) the other two are “side” stories. 11 Bit Studios plan on at least one new mission to come in a free update along with an Endurance mode which is endless.

Selecting individual people lets you realize the end of the world sucks especially when you’re alone.

I went into this thinking it was a bit more personal city builder. You’re not just a “Mayor” that builds things and waits for things to work, you have to keep everyone happy, healthy, and safe. I still went into the game with “Mayor” mindset of other city builders but when you are just holding on to anything to keep you alive I went from crisis to crisis every couple minutes it seemed which is my bad. There is no classic Tutorial, you’re thrown into the game with “messages” that explain to you how to do things. If you want to do a classic city builder mode, set everything to easy and you’ll just have to watch out for resources. Set it to normal and keep in mind one minor screw up can end the game. Only once did I do it so badly that I was banished from my city.

Automatons are cool to watch, but they’re not as efficient as people.

All that being said, there are some downsides. As mentioned, if you go into the game thinking it’s just another city builder game you’ll be punished for it. So if you need be, don’t be afraid to use Easy settings for one of the missions.
While the game looks beautiful, when it’s small and a few buildings it run great but as your city expands the frame rate starts to dive. When I had my biggest city I was running around the 30 FPS mark. While not a fast paced game or needing it lightning fast reflexes, it is something to consider. Another annoyance with me is that since the game is naturally slow, when you’re just waiting for something (the next work day or more resources) you naturally turn up the games speed. When something happens (people asking for houses or some other trigger) the game (obviously) pauses so you can answer them with your choice. However when nothing like that happens, such as when the sun starts the rise, the game defaults back to normal speed. This seems to happen whenever it feels like. Which is annoying when you just want to keep going until the next thing you need to do such as build a new building or automaton.
Once the mission is over, it’s over. There is no continuing the mission as a regular city builder. The free Endurance mode to come should solve that but right now there is no way to continue playing at the end of a mission.
One final noteworthy item, the game is heavily scripted so if you’re expecting each playthrough being different (short of different laws you choose of course) it won’t be by much. At certain times, certain things will be triggered with only your choice changing anything.

Heat. Keep everything warm and people won’t get sick as often. Get too cold and buildings won’t even work.

Overall I like this game. It is naturally hard which it should be since if it was just “a city builder at the end of the world” but no different from Cities: Skylines, what would be the point of getting this when I can just get a mod for Skylines?
The steampunk vibe of the game is interesting to see on people, buildings and machines. I like the look of automatons especially since they can work almost anywhere and seeing them walking around the city and “folding up” to connect to the building they’re working on.

Be prepared to feel bad though, you’ll have to chop off peoples limbs because frostbite, get children hurt because you had to put them to work to gather more resources or even decided to dispose of bodies in a mass grave and use there frozen organs to heal your sick faster.

It’s not pretty I know but nothing is in matters of survival.

Dreadnought leading people hopefully to a place to survive.