Summary
- The Fall of Winterhome connects to the main story, suitable for experienced players.
- The Arks is one of Frostpunk's hardest scenarios, focusing on life preservation.
- The Last Autumn DLC offers a prequel setting, showcasing lore, and a different challenge.
Frostpunk is a notoriously difficult game. With a sequel that appears to be just as uncompromising in its challenge now on the shelves, it's a great time for gamers to see if they can withstand the bitter cold and tough decisions that come with governing the last city on earth.
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However, the challenge does not end with one playthrough alone. Like other post-apocalyptic base-building games, there is a host of ways to tweak and alter the challenge set forth to the player, and in Frostpunk this appears through scenarios. Here are some of the most compelling, gameplay-altering scenarios available in Frostpunk.
4 The Fall Of Winterhome
This City Comes Premade But With Many Faults
This stark and harrowing scenario links up with the main story scenario, A New Home, in a number of interesting ways. As far as scenarios go, this one is suitable for players who have tried their hand at Frostpunk before and are decently familiar with the mechanics and intricacies of the title as a whole, but players aren't expected to be, say, hardened veterans in order to make playing through this title work. Frostpunk's harrowing themes about surviving a winter apocalypse involve players trying to make the best city they can to survive the wastes - but what if instead a city in disarray falls into their hands?
This scenario sees the player take control of Winterhome after the gross mismanagement of its former leader. While Winterhome's presence as a ruin in A New Home, and the presence of survivors in a nearby cave not so far from Winterhome, tell the player how events may have canonically gone down, this interesting scenario is filled with a variety of options for the city's fate, some of which are quite dark, although this is indicative of the genre overall.
3 The Arks
Life Is A More Precious Resource Than Ever In This Scenario
Known as one of the hardest scenarios in Frostpunk, especially where the base game is concerned, The Arks sees the player take control of a city where the central goal is the preservation of life, but beyond human life, the preservation of four Seedling Arks that contain vegetation essential to one day repopulating greenery on earth is of equal importance, and if these buildings reach beyond chilly temperature, the player risks the Seedling Arks dying, and with them, any chance of humanity one day restoring itself.
While some scenarios and modes in Frostpunk are fit for beginners, The Arks is not one of them, with no additional population coming to the players' city besides one event-based refugee. The player will need to make do with the host of engineers and workers they're given at the beginning, using them to build automatons that will ceaselessly accrue resources while the humans become free to explore beyond the wastes, finding essential resources beyond the minimal deposits found in the starting area.
2 The Last Autumn
A Fascinating Look At The World Before Catastrophe
The Last Autumn is a DLC scenario, focused on providing an overview of the lore that comes to define the Frostpunk series as a whole. It contains an entirely different challenge in a world still functioning, albeit on the brink of collapse, and is a prequel to the other titular stories that have come to define the Frostpunk universe. Like many games with good DLC practices, The Last Autumn and the lore it bestows aren't essential to Frostpunk gameplay, but it rewards players who have a love of this title's world and wish to explore more of it in detail. Maintaining the generator at Site 113 and receiving deadlines from the IEC is an entirely different way to play.
Hope is not a problem in a world still holding together, but motivation determines similar factors and will decide how productive the players' workers are as they go about building the first working generator that will one day be the sole means of life-preservation in the world. There's a lot to love here for fans of Frostpunk's lore, and the DLC scenario has so many little details, especially about the fates of other countries and the nuances of this alternate 1880s, that it will only further immerse players as they strive to meet the dubious IEC's continued deadlines.
1 A New Home
It's Hard To Beat The Classic
The original scenario available to players in Frostpunk, before DLC or the twenty-day survival mark allows for any others, A New Home is the main storyline in this title. The complexity of this city-builder, alongside the emotional turmoil and survivalist hardship it's meant to invoke, is all on full display in this story. Dealing with refugees, friction between factions, and the need to accrue resources are all also covered in other scenarios, but not to the same extent as the titular main campaign.
Deciding between order and faith, tyranny or benevolence, life and death is such a powerful part of Frostpunk. More than what any additional challenge can throw players' way, A New Home sets an excellent tone for what the creators of this title were trying to achieve. There's an intimacy to the individual citizens not seen in most city-builders, a uniquely small scale that the other scenarios, while fantastic, do tend to lose sight of with their gameplay-altering challenges or contexts. There's a reason why A New Home is the default way to play, and this is a scenario players can come back to time and time again.
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OpenCritic Reviews
- Top Critic Avg: 86 /100 Critics Rec: 92%
- Released
- April 24, 2018
- ESRB
- M For Mature 17+ due to Blood, Mild Sexual Themes, Mild Violence, Strong Language
- Developer(s)
- 11 Bit Studios
- Publisher(s)
- 11 Bit Studios
- Engine
- Liquid Engine
- Franchise
- Frostpunk
WHERE TO PLAY
- Platform(s)
- PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5
- Genre(s)
- City Builder, Survival
