Review Game Frostpunk: Looking for warmth

11 bit Studios ?, how many of you have ever heard the name of this one indie studio? Not knowing the name of this studio is certainly something that is very understandable, given its popularity basically built on the foundation of one name - This War of Mine. Approach offered 11 bit Studios in the project is counted brilliant, where they try to photograph the condition of war in factual.

Unlike many games that just make war a "playground", This War of Mine shows so many problems and negative consequences that he was born. Making moral choices in a variety of situations so reliable, This War of Mine earns so much praise and appreciation. Now, 11 bit Studios is back with a new game with a similar survival approach, but with a much different gameplay. That's right, we're talking about Frostpunk.

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No longer a matter of war, this one studio is trying to play a supposition scenario where people have to deal with an earth that is no longer friendly. A scenario where a prolonged winter emerges and makes all the supporters of human life, from food and boards no longer able to meet existing needs.

Everything is transformed with in a city simulation game with a thick element of survival in it. After it was announced about two years ago, the chance to try out Frostpunk directly came up. As can be predicted, the quality itself can not be underestimated.

Frostpunk takes all the alternate timelines. Like his name, the word "punk" in it also implies a Steampunk theme for a world different from what we know. A technology based steam engine but with an implementation that has touched the word futuristik itself. A world that has also loaded automatons in it, a technology that we have not even achieved with today's technological variety.

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Broadly speaking, Frostpunk took the setting in 1886 "Steampunk", where the world was suddenly attacked by a prolonged winter without any sign of going to subside. With the sunshine that does not help much and the temperature that makes so many things freeze, humans are faced with the worst situation ever.

Foodstuffs die and are no longer able to meet existing needs, cold makes some places no longer ideal for occupancy, with cattle that are also experiencing the same conditions. For some people, the best way to survive is to begin the exploration process to find a safer and more comfortable place. And that's what you will do.

Frostpunk does not work like any other city development simulation game. Rather than doing it freely, it will contain three different scenarios that you can play with one clear key goal.

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One scenario takes you to the figurative business of people who are looking for and creating a new city, others make you act as a group of researchers who are trying to build an ideal facility to keep plant seeds from extinction, while others ask you to play "slaves" trying run away and survive in winter from his master's pursuit. Each of these scenarios will offer different challenges, situations, and missions.

So, how severe this winter? What solutions do you need to develop to ensure your people survive? What mission do you need to pursue? You should certainly play this Frostpunk to get answers to this question.

So, what is Frostpunk? The best way to explain it is to call it a city simulation game like Sim City or Skyline, but melt it with a thicker element of survival. That's different from the city's wake-up simulation game that just throws you guidelines a lot more than just suggestions to help you have a mission line to follow, Frostpunk makes it a threat and a solution to be solved quickly.

Why? Because these various problems can lead to various consequences that will ultimately destroy your city or make you face the Game Over screen so quickly. The persistent problem is the "appeal" and the source of the difficulty of Frostpunk itself.

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So like other city-building simulation games, the core of the game still revolves around three things: gathering the necessary resources with your own workforce, building the necessary facilities to solve various problems, and expanding whenever possible.

Frostpunk provides a variety of basic buildings from a variety of categories intended to provide housing, to collect basic materials such as iron, coal, or wood, to entertainment to ensure that your people's morale remains positive. If you talk about other city simulation games, you might be able to build all these facilities randomly and survive. But for Frostpunk, there is always a more pressing need.

This is where the Frostpunk survival element appears. You are provided with a limited amount of labor divided into three categories: workers, scientists, and children. You need them to collect resources to build facilities, but on the other hand, also employ them in the facility to stay active. Dividing how many workers to do one thing and everything else becomes essential.

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As an example? Building a hospital, for example. The hospital can only be filled by "scientists" alone to keep it effective, while the working class and children can not inhabit it. Unlike the cooking place aka "Cookhouse" that can be filled by children as workers. With such a limited amount of resources, it is important to share them into the various areas or facilities that you think need to be a priority.

But the biggest threat of this game, of course cold. As a threat that is consistently present, cold is your main enemy in Frostpunk. Why? Because excessive cold will generate many new threats. Facilities that are too cold will not work, cold-affected workers will get sick and experience a life-threatening Frostbite, cold also makes some aspects of resource collection to be problematic.

More bad news? With a dynamic weather system that can change from one day to another, the cold can get worse. Through a clear indicator that shows the weather from day to day, you can predict how bad a temperature drop may occur in at least the next few days. Remember, the cooler your city is, the more problems arise.

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Then it becomes essential to keep your city warm with a variety of methods. Every city you build, regardless of any scenario, will always have one reactor in the center as a source of energy and warming. By using coal as the main fuel, this reactor is your key to survival.

You can keep it working by continuing to "eat" coal as material, choosing to turn it off at certain hours if you want to save money for example, or use the Workshop to make it more efficient, more effective, with a wider range. With the same process, you can build small reactors called "Steam Hub" to warm up areas that are not covered by the main reactor.

But remember, its effectiveness will only occur in certain cold temperatures only. As the weather gets worse and the temperature decreases dramatically, further prevention steps need to be implemented, such as by installing extra heater for example in each home and existing facilities

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Fighting consistently against cold that will not even leave you and continue to be a problem is just one layer of complexity that you must face in Frostpunk. Ensuring your city remains the foundation for other activities, from collecting resources, hunting to ensure food continues to exist, and continuing to develop more technology to make things more effective.

Effective to the stage you can build a robot called Automaton to perform the process of collecting resources automatically without the need for more human labor. Effectively up to the stage you can also start building a variety of special facilities to mine, care for the sick and amputated, to just provide extra new food. Quite effective until you can get a resource named "Steam Cores" which becomes the raw material for a new facility that is even, more essential to survive.

Your game over indicator revolves around three different indicators. First, of course the number of citizens. You will be counted as a failed leader, if your residents are all dead. Secondly, from an indicator called "Discontent" that represents the resentment of the population towards you as a leader. If the red line is over full, you will be branded a failed leader and will be kicked out of town to die of cold.

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An indicator when blue is named "Hope" which is opposite to Discontent, it can not be empty at all. Just like Discontent, if Hope tipped empty, then you will also count as a failed leader and end game over. There are many things that can affect the motion of Discontent and Hope, including how well the needs of these populations are met. From home, feeling warm, food, sick facilities, entertainment facilities, to the policies you take. One step? So this is what you have to deal with.

There is one extra thing you should consider also in Frostpunk, and it is "working time". This game includes a day-night system and it directly affects the game. The residents you ask for as a workforce will only work on certain variants of the hour, and will rest at night without doing any activity, without being intrusive unless the conditions are so bad that they force them "overtime".

So, what are the consequences? During the break process, means the resource collection process is not running. While to make their sleep process comfortable and healthy, you have to sacrifice certain resources such as eating or burning stones to continue burning existing heaters for example. Thinking about whether your fuel can last over a period of rest like this is also something to think about.

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As the game progresses, the city you build is not the only thing you should consider. By developing a new technology called Beacon, you can form a separate team named "Scout" that you can ask to explore the world of snow outside your own city. Through them, you can find a variety of interesting locations that can usually contain Survivor (power), resources (fuel / raw), to new technologies such as Steam Cores or Automaton are rare.

Unique, however, when collected, all of these resources will still be brought by your Scout until you bring them back to your city. You can take a high risk by asking him to continue to explore from one place to another with shorter mileage. But if the situation deteriorates and they end up dead, this means all your loot will also vanish

Frostpunk also provides so many other extra options to make your gaming experience comfortable. There is a button to speed up progress so you do not have to wait long to wait for the resource collection process or wait for the research bar for example. There is a special tutorial session that will teach you what indicators to consider. There's clue in a simple user-interface that will help you move to build a healthy and minimal community of problems.

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You are also provided with so many save slots to make sure you do not have to repeat everything from scratch if your town ends up being junk. You are also given the opportunity to organize various indicators as well as difficulty levels if you feel "Normal" is, too difficult. One that is certain, what we have written above, is only half the complexity that Frostpunk offers.

Practical or Idealist?

As they can offer in This War of Mine, Frostpunk will also be flooded with many opportunities to choose which option will also affect the gameplay movement like what you will get. There are many situations that will pop up and ask you to choose one of the options. While it does not feel as personal as what this War of Mine offers given the scale of the larger survival gameplay and involves hundreds of inhabitants that eventually end up just numbers without requiring your attention at all, it still tickles the value of your values.

Because in the end, the situation will require you to choose one between two opposite positions - be a practical leader or become an ideal leader.

Practical means being prepared to pursue a variety of ways, ethically or unethically, to achieve the goals. While the idealists on the other hand, think of various things that do not directly reach the goal as a matter of consideration, such as about ethics, welfare, or even the needs of the people who live in it. Frostpunk will present the dilemmas consistently, from start to finish.

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From super simple things like your residents who will consistently complain and ask you to do certain activities. Instead of asking for additional hospitals, ask for extra food for the sick, asking you to build a more comfortable home. You can fulfill and promise it with "Discontent" and "Hope" as a bet.

But you always have the option to refuse and silence if you feel unable to fulfill it. The bad news? This sense of discontent could end with their future comeback, but with even more troublesome and great demand. Some other requests, for example, will try to knock on the door of your heart, such as asking you to provide a "holiday" for child labor because their parents feel you've hired them too hard.

Giving holiday is ethical and can make your inhabitants happier, but on the other hand, it creates injustice in society and makes you lose your workfor a certain time. Which do you choose?

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Sometimes, the choice comes from outside your city. Along with your city's growing progress and the ability to survive more qualified, there will be many refugees who come from various directions outside the city to ask your permission to stay settled there. Allowing means getting you extra workforce that can be optimized, but on the other hand, means providing food and board needs to ensure they are healthy and comfortable.

More bad news? Not infrequently you will be faced with situations where you the refugees also come with the composition of more children or even, the sick until dying. Do you want to receive them? Or would you have to reject anyone who ends up being a burden to your city? It is this moral choice that you must take.

Frostpunk also implements a new system called "Book of Law". As a leader, you will be asked to choose and enforce new laws or regulations to serve as the basis for handling and solutions to specific problems. Part of this side of the Book of Law will help you open new facilities, while others will change how your city works.

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As an example? For the problem of handling the sick, for example. You can for example highlight your humanitarian side by signing a law that allows sick people who are in care to get more food portions, which incidentally spend more resources. Or you could be satanic and just sign a rule whereby every hospital now has to accommodate more sick people and make them sleep together, to increase their capacity even though the healing time is longer.

Other situations simply erode morale, such as choosing to make children work as a group to increase city productivity or make them a facility to provide care and teaching. Or related to those who are injured while working for example, where you can choose to let them continue to survive in the hospital ward or forcibly amputate them regardless of what they want.

If people end up dead, for example, you can build a decent cemetery or just make a hole and throw their bodies like animals. Your decision when choosing a cool time-based Book of Law for every decision you make will determine what your playing style or what development priority you should think about.

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In one of the game scenarios, for example, the Book of Law will continue to grow, evolve, and adapt according to the conditions of your own population. Sometimes you are dealing with a scripted event that instantly encourages you to develop different strategies. As an example? In the scenario "New Home" for example that asks you to build a new city in the middle of nowhere. After hearing the news (event scripted) that all the cities ended up dead due to the cold that got worse and no one survived, the morale of the population dropped drastically and fell.

As a leader, the only way to awaken morals is to give them hope and purpose to survive and work together. The Book of Law ends by asking you to choose one method: building a strong legal system (Law & Order) or building a new religious system with you as a focus (Religion).

Depending on the method you choose, you will influence the city's situation, development priorities, social problem solutions, to what kind of building can be constructed. As an example? Law & Order lets you build a Watchtower with each of 5 workers to maintain security, resulting in a more conducive city situation. While if you choose Religion, you can build a new prayer venue in various locations to foster hope.

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Of course, as more buildings you can racik, you will also end up having to reconsider the design of your city. Why? Because different from other city simulation games that usually give you almost absolute freedom of design, Frostpunk demands you to build the city in a circular shape.

Not just build, facilities can also be prepared only on the edge of the road that you have provided before using the tree as the main resource. Some facilities based on the Book of Law will be effective if placed in certain places. As an example? If you choose Religion, you can build a food cafeteria to offer warmth, which is of course more effective if you place it in a mine, factory, and the like.

Conflict with technology also happens often. Developing Automaton series technology to automate processes across multiple facilities will greatly simplify your journey and eliminate a sense of dependence on a demanding human workforce. But Automaton itself, not perfect.

Their large forms sometimes end up harming humans, making them sick or even dead. Not infrequently, the Automaton ends up trapped in a unique situation such as a foot that cuffs for example, and must turn off the facility where it is placed to be repaired and working properly. You sometimes also have to end up taking the option to side with human or robot workers when such a situation occurs.

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Conclusion

Unfortunately, Frostpunk is certainly not perfect. If you have to choose two shortcomings worthy of note are the gameplay countless "closed" and the loss of phenomenal personal touch from This War of Mine. The first complaint comes from the fact that in order to deal with a specific specific problem, there are not many alternative solutions you can take. As an example? Cold problem.

The only way is to prepare the warmer, make it more effective, and prepare enough fuel. There is no option for example, to make these residents take more extreme solutions, such as creating their own fire, creating firewood, burning books / papers or the like. They really can only survive, if you offer a solution. While the second complaint comes from the fact that there is no importance you should know and understand every resident there is. In the end, despite the fact that they have names and character models in the city, they are nothing more than the "numbers" you have to distribute and make sure their lives survive. There is no emotional connection there.

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But apart from these shortcomings, Frostpunk comes with a charm that deserves thumbs up, especially if you love city-building simulation games with specific issues to be solved. That satisfaction does not come from enjoying your creative design, but rather how effectively you make your city solve any problems or potential problems that can arise. With a very affordable price on Steam, there's no reason not to glance at it.

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