Frostpunk

I’m a little hesitant to spend time talking about a video game, but I think that given how much time I have spent playing this game recently, and the amount of time I have spent thinking about the game, it is only right that I dedicate a post to the game. The game of which I am speaking is Frostpunk, a strategy game released in 2018 by developer 11-bit studios.

Frostpunk is a strategy game and a city-building game. There are already many games in this genre, and I have played some very good city-building games over the years. What drew me to this game was that it is a very different style than most city-building games. In fact, in some ways it could be classified as a survival game. In Frostpunk, the player must build a city which can survive in a frozen wasteland which becomes gradually colder over time. As the temperature falls, the citizens of the city need to continue to stay warm at home and at work, in addition to being able to eat. In order to make that happen, resources needed to be gathered, research must be done, buildings must be built, and choices must be made.

I have really been enjoying this game, but that is not a surprise since I enjoy most strategy games. Strategy games give me the ability to be in control of something with a global view of the situation, instead of simply controlling one character. These games also don’t typically require expensive gaming computers, which is convenient. What’s fun about strategy games for me is being the one in charge, and making every decision. In such a position, I can put my own personal touch on new buildings and the city. I can organize the city in the way that I like. For example, in a typical city-building game, I can create a nice grid layout which satisfies me, organized by type of building. Oddly enough, organizing things is a big part of the fun for me.

Frostpunk is different. First of all, it is set during the the late nineteenth century, in a fictional setting in which extreme climate events have entered the Earth into a period of extreme cold. There are no modern technologies, and the city-building doesn’t involve setting up a university or subway system. Next, the city is organized around a generator, in a circular shape, instead of the typical grid. That alone is a big change. Streets still need to be created, but they are simple wooden walkways. Like many strategy games, resources need to be collected, but in this scenario coal must be collected for heat, wood and steel for construction and research, and finally food to keep people alive.

Frostpunk also mixes in exploration, by demanding the player to organize scouts to go out beyond the city and find resources or other survivors and even cities. These become a big part of the strategy as well as the story as scouts discover what is happening outside the city. Ultimately the main differene between Frostpunk and a normal city-building game is that it uses the increasing cold as the factor which drives the story and game forward. The temperature must decrease in order to continually challenge the player to keep all citizens alive and in good health, while also advancing on other frontiers.

For me, strategy games like Frostpunk aren’t just an enjoyable way to spend time. At its most basic level, the game is a game of resource management. The player starts out with nothing but some people, and based on how the player uses their citizens’ time, the player either succeeds or fails. The order in which things are done is very important. Often, a short-term goal must be reached in order to survive, but long-term goals must also be balanced in order to be prepared for future challenges, such as a further drop in temperature, or a need for an increase in the production of a certain resource, or the need for a certain advanced type of research to be completed.

This is the same type of thinking which we employ in real life. We have short term goals, but we also have long term plans, and we have to keep those in mind as well. Based on what I’ve learned from games such as Frostpunk, I usally prioritize long-term plans, and I rarely go for the easier option which requires less effort or resources. At work, it’s important to immediately realize a new feature or fix a bug immediately, but I also highly value moving towards long-term goals such as fixes the global architecture of the application, or implementing some best practice. Achieving the long-term goals makes the short-term issues easier to resolve. Ideally all short-term goals would fit into the long-term picture, but sometimes in life, as in Frostpunk, that isn’t the case.