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Summary
WithFrostpunk 2’s upcoming release in July, 11 Bit Studios publishes its first sequel in over a decade. The former would have been 2013’s Anomaly 2, the follow-up to their reverse-tower-defense franchise. Frostpunk 2 is a city-builder, same as before, but tweaks and broadens elements of its predecessor’s game’s mechanics, broadening the scope and introducing a new governance system, where the player now shapes their city alongside the will of its people.
In our recent preview, we foundFrostpunk 2’s changes to be admittedly jarring, but its Council mechanics were novel, threading their way into the functions and fulfilling the intent of the experience. The sequel sees the player as the Steward of its frozen cities, broadening an empire expanding past mere survival and onward to a democratic idealism, tested by the increasing number of factions that develop among the populace.
Frostpunk 2 Is The Epitome Of A Divisive Sequel & It Could Be The Best Because Of It: Preview
Frostpunk 2 streamlines some of its city-building to introduce expanded social mechanics, but don’t let that scare you from this expansive sequel.
During our preview, we had the opportunity to speak with Game Director Jakub Stokalski in Warsaw about the new developments in the upcoming game. We found him to be quite ready for the critiques ofFrostpunk 2’s marked differences, and enthusiastic about the transformed simulation which nevertheless incorporates the systems found in the original. The yet-unseen elements - most specifically, the game’s new detailed Twitch integration, which sees stream attendees able to steer votes on Council matters - are hinted at, but we’ll have to wait until July comes to see the completeFrostpunk 2experience in action.
Democracy and Survival in Frostpunk 2
A Dream For A Future in the Frozen Post-Apocalypse
Screen Rant: The stuff that’s been simplified inFrostpunk 2is quite interesting, as opposed to what’s become more complicated.
For instance, where did the idea for the Councils originally come from? When I first saw the trailer, I thought it would end up as a bonus feature, kind of an extra, but it’s actually a huge part of the game now.
Jakub Stokalski: This is really a very core thing to the way we approached the sequel as a whole. Because, at 11 Bit Studios, when we made Frostpunk 1, we always knew we wanted to have a world in which we could build and set different games. But it was never 100% that we would do a sequel, [let alone] a sequel to Frostpunk.
We have this policy internally that every game we do, sequel or not, needs to have its own thing. It needs to have something to say that isn’t just, let’s do [version] one-and-a-half, with fifteen new buildings, two new scenarios, and done. If Frostpunk 1 was a game about surviving the apocalypse, how could we top that? How could we meaningfully build on top of that? We say, okay, bigger storms? Temps less than -150 degrees? That’s already pushing it, right? So, okay, that’s not the way.
But then, we were thinking about how this was a game took part in the apocalypse. What now?You’ve got these people who survived this terrible event that shaped them in different ways, and now they’re not only trying to survive, still, but are trying to build a better future for themselves. And if you imagine this convenient excuse for the player’s role in Frostpunk 1 – where you have to do this or we’re all going to die – is gone, these people might want a say in how the city is being shaped. Especially since it’s no longer 100% necessary to do this or that, there are different ways of tackling the problems. And now, the differences between the communities can start playing a role.
This is what we wanted to say in the game, that Frostpunk 1 was about nature, surviving nature. Frostpunk 2 is surviving human nature and its diverging ambitions. And the best way to represent that as a game system – because it’s not just about saying all of this, it’s about playing it – has to be in the mechanics. It [needed] a system like the Council. And that’s the way the Council came to be.
I want to correct something you said: you absolutely can still starve to death, still freeze to death.
Jakub Stokalski: That is true.
So, don’t act like, oh, we’ve won, so now we get to have the Council and explore the social construct. It’s more a matter of combining both aspects.
But I feel like that does say something interesting. I almost feel like the commentary being made is that we get used to struggling for survival, we just create new norms. There’s a Council in this game world, even though everybody is still at risk of freezing to death, because they’ve been surviving for so long.
Jakub Stokalski: Yeah. That is very much true. One of the research areas that we [pursued] when trying to build the lore and the mechanics of the game was … The generation that survived World War I, right? These are people, soldiers, as well as whole societies, really, who had this world before World War I. They had this calamity that changed the whole rule set – and World War II even more so – and now, this is the different world we live in. We are different people.
And, obviously, this being a game and entertainment product, we crank it up a bit to 11, but it’s exactly as you say.It’s the old saying that humans can get used to anything, really, as long as it doesn’t kill them, and this is very much shown here.Like, this is our world now, but we still yearn for normalcy, right? We still want to build the things that give us hope, that try to give us agency over our life or identity.
Frostpunk 2: Release Date, Story & Edition Differences
The release date, story details, editions, and prices for Frostpunk 2 have been officially revealed. Here’s everything you need to know.
Because, in the course of the game, the way that the different factions which then play into the Council emerge, just from the time span, from the culture. Now these new cultures are coming out.
To go back, again, I thought the Council would be, to put it lightly, a bit of a gimmick, if anything. But then as I was playing, and getting more into it, and getting constant alerts about it, I started experimenting with negotiation. And I realized negotiation is secretly a tutorial for the game, because when you click on these interactions, it will give you three ideas that you actually didn’t even think about. And you’re like, oh, that’s a great idea. Wait a minute now, that makes sense.
Jakub Stokalski: “I’m so smart!”
Exactly. That policy was something I actually wanted. So I’m going to say, okay, I agree. And that started taking me down all these other paths within the game.
Jakub Stokalski: It’s great that you’re noticing these things. That’s amazing.
Twitch Integration and Other Changes to the Game
Frostpunk 2’s New Features, And 11 Bit Studios' Choice To Make a Proper Sequel
Obviously, we have no idea yet about how the Twitch integration works. We were chatting while you were doing the presentation, and we were like, okay, the Twitch thing, is it going to be like, now, all of a sudden, the streamer has to negotiate with the council, and with everybody watching the game as well.
Jakub Stokalski: You know, this is actually a very interesting experience. This partly comes from the reception we see at this event, to what people are saying about this integration. And, to me, this is really a unique opportunity in this game, specifically.
Because, if you think about it, all the different Twitch integrations that are in different games, this is a great way to experience and watch your entertainment, right? But if you think about what Frostpunk 2 is about, it’s about you as a leader trying to lead a divergent group of people, trying to get them to agree to something, and then still brave the challenges of survival and what the game throws at you.
So, in a way, we even started thinking about how this is a way to make this game an MMO without it being an MMO. Literally, your audience is the voice of the people you have to play with, right?
The thing that concerns me, and I wonder if you guys worry about it or think about it, regards what you said right at the beginning of this conversation, I know that there are people who are going to be like, “This isn’tFrostpunk1.5, and that’s what I actually wanted.” And, just from the time I’ve spent so far playing it, I think the regular game flow is meaningfully different. It feels like the resource simplification makes the game feel a little broader. You have to keep track of fewer numbers, and so on.
So what would you say to the people who are concerned about that, who are concerned the game is too much of a departure from the original?
Jakub Stokalski: Well, that’s a very fair thing to say. As you rightfully noted, we are thinking about this. But I think there are two things to [consider].
First is, I think making a sequel like that … Maybe if you were making, I don’t know, a game like Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, right? Or Uncharted, Uncharted 2. These are games that use the same language, the same tools, and create an amazing continuation within their very well-defined building blocks. I think if you’re making a game in the strategy genre, it’s a bit damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
If we would have made Frostpunk 1.5 literally, then, obviously, some of the players who love this type of an experience, it would be great [for them]. But how much of our player base would be like, “Well, this feels like a DLC, feels like an expansion. It’s not that meaningfully new, it’s not building on top of the experience enough.“So, that’s one angle to it.
The other angle to it is, to us, Frostpunk has certain mood and tonal pillars, certain dynamics and choices, and your agency in the game which makes it the Frostpunk experience. And it’s not necessarily tied to whether you see individual people on the screen or not, whether you build roads or not.And so, we are very much hopeful that, as you play Frostpunk 2, this will feel like the world from Frostpunk 1. That it is an experience in this world.
It is a new and meaningful new sentence in this book, right? Rather than saying a similar thing in a similar way.
When you said that, I was thinking how, in the firstFrostpunk, there were a few scenarios in my time playing it now, where something very personal happened. A person’s like, “my kid’s stuck in the mine,” etc. But there was less of that here. Most of the questions were broader, even larger. It was less of the one-on-one engagement.
Seeing Cities From Higher Up in Frostpunk 2
How Society Reckons With A Surplus After The Apocalypse
It’s not even thatFrostpunk 2just feels impersonal, exactly. But it feels less intimate. There’s less of that street-level stuff. Or, inFrostpunk1, even though you didn’t control clutches of people directly, you felt like you did at times. You looked at those guys going off to the wilderness to hunt. And here, you’re probably too high up to even see them, but you’re still sending them off on adventures and missions. So, yeah. There’s a distance.
Jakub Stokalski: I’m not denying that. It comes with the changes of what the game and the story are really about.You’re not trying to [help this] small group of people survive the great storm. You’re trying to manage a metropolis into building a better, brighter future for its own self, seeing the clashes and tensions between groups of people rather than individuals.
And you’ve seen it, right? There are some moments where we show you consequences to the individual. The game, the scale, and the story, the gameplay mechanics, focus more on, let’s say, societal-systemic levels, right?
It is a departure. I would hope that it’s going to be an interesting game and story in and of itself.
I’d note that I do think that those personal moments are happening. The ones that I found just seemed less interactive. I saw a bunch of stuff that prompted little vignettes from an individual here and there. But in Frostpunk 1, there would have been decisions there, and here I was mainly just reading text.
Jakub Stokalski: Well, the consequences of your laws usually come with certain decisions. There are stories and consequences to that, where you still have make a decision. We call them “ghosts,” right? These looks into the thought process of an individual. They are almost always used as a commentary on a situation that you either set up, or a choice that you made, etc. It’s true that they are often not the [decision] moments themselves, they are really just the mirror for them.
You did this. So, this is how an individual thinks of this other choice you made, this situation that led to a change.
I do think that’s there, and I do thinkFrostpunkplayers are looking for that. I think, if that wasn’t there, they’d be like, now you really did something with myFrostpunk, you know what I mean?
Jakub Stokalski: So if you’re low on materials, squalor increases. So, squalor is like a direct result of not being able to update something, which is that, that’s a fascinating mechanic to think about. Because it means you have to stockpile them. You’re not stockpiling them because you need 50 materials to perform a function. You just have to have them. Because people need them to maintain. That was very interesting. I don’t think I’ve seen that in this kind of a sim.
That’s a very interesting observation. Economically speaking, this is one of the things I personally think are cool that we did with the economy itself. That the supply/demand, it’s exactly what you mentioned.If we model a society of this size and city of this size, it’s not about getting five wood to build a tent, right? You constantly need a certain level of stuff for things to keep running.And if you don’t have enough, it’s not that everything falls apart immediately, but problems start accumulating.
Society needs a surplus.
Jakub Stokalski: Exactly.
So, now we’re working in a surplus. That’sFrostpunk 2. We’re experimenting with the surplus.
Frostpunk 2
Frostpunk 2 is the sequel to the critically acclaimed city-building strategy/survival game released in 2018 by 11 bit studios. Players take up leadership over a budding metropolis that has shifted to a resource race for oil, having left coal behind. As human beings begin to settle in their ways, greed and ambition begin to take route, and it’s up to the player to ensure that The City will not fall and society will one day flourish.
