What I must also mention is that this isn’t a review of the game or gameplay in a strict sense, but rather a short analysis of an experience that I have had with it. How effective and ineffective is it when trying to deliver these issues narratively through its gameplay.
Having played it for a few hours, I’ve had various moments of emotional and rational quandary around the game.
#Frostpunk gameplay manual#
Do you choose “safe” manual labour or do you choose the route of apprenticeships, a more educational form of labour really at that point in time? Either one helps survival, but one is the more long-term.Īnd its this representation of moral storytelling and I wanted to explore. As the short parable at the start illustrated, you are quickly met with the conundrum of the Industrial Revolutions question around child labour. But what makes this one different are the moral decision you must make in order to survive. Your basic city builder simulation in that sense. You build around it, creating dwellings, food huts, public houses, medical stations and research areas. As the title suggests, it’s a frozen, frost-encrusted steampunk world, somewhere at the end of the British Industrial Revolution, at the cusp between the Victorian and Edwardian periods.Īt the core of the city and the gameplay, is an enormous coal powered generator, the heart of the city and the one thing you must keep going if you want your colony to survive. You make your decision…įrostpunk is the latest game from Polish developer 11bit Studios, where you are the leader of a small colony of survivors known as New London, in a post-apocalyptic world that was hit by a severe ice age. You hand hovers over the two laws, contemplating the pros and cons of survival and what the cost of that survival is. Once you pass that law, there’s no going back. And you are faced with the problem of not having enough people to work and the grave dilemma of passing a law to put children to work and increase the colonies chance of survival or creating a shelter for the children and hopefully, one day educate them. The new home of the survivors of London in this ice age, post-apocalyptic world. You survey your tiny colony in the frozen, snow white wasteland.