Frostpunk, the city-builder game about trying to survive in a landscape almost as cold as mid-February Chicago, is getting a sequel, developer 11 Bit Studios announced in a press release today. Itâs calledâbrace yourself, youâll never believe thisâFrostpunk 2
Frostpunk 2 is still fairly early in development, so it doesnât have a release date just yet. The developer said itâs coming to PCâvia Steam, Epic, and GOGâbut didnât mention anything about a console release. (Frostpunk initially came out for PC in 2018 and made the leap to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One a year-and-a-half later.) Gameplay details are also scant.
Hereâs the first trailer for Frostpunk 2. Note that itâs entire cinematic and doesnât show a lick of gameplay:
Yes, yes, all this news is couched in a ton of qualifiers. Still, for fans of city-builder games, the mere unveiling of a Frostpunk sequel is exciting! Frostpunk was an exceptionally cool city-builder, and 11 Bit said that Frostpunk 2 will largely follow in its predecessorâs footsteps, though noted that itâll feature some political mechanics that werenât present in the first game.
Frostpunk features a confluence of horrors: At the apex of the Industrial Revolution, volcanoes erupt and the sun inexplicably dims, killing millions and ushering in a global ice age. Youâre tasked with keeping a small population of survivors alive, meticulously balancing resources like coal, wood, and food. You also have to care for, yâknow, human needs. Make people work too hard, and your citizens will grow discontent. If they donât work enough, you wonât reap enough resources to keep everyone alive.
Whereas popular city-builder games like Cities: Skylines and Surviving Mars allow you to eventually reach a stable resource parity that can sustain sizable populations, Frostpunk does not. At every turn, youâre forced to make difficult choices. And at every turn, you will fail. Youâre constantly scrambling. Itâs a balancing act on a high-beam thatâs too narrow to stand on for long.
In other words, no, Frostpunk ironically has no chill. Itâs awesome.
Frostpunk is free on Steam now through 1 p.m. ET on August 16, after which, 11 Bit says, youâll need to buy the game to keep playing.
Read More: You Should Be Playing The Brutal City Builder Frostpunk
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