Frostpunk 2 review: Icy wasteland, frozen indecision

I had failed to stockpile enough food. My people were starving in a frigid world of ice and darkness. I had pushed my food gatherers into overtime, I had enforced rationing, and yet we still starved. My band of wanderers descended into chaos. I had failed my people. I had hit the game over screen before I’d even finished the prologue. I make no allusions about my skill with management games, but this was a colossal embarrassment, even for me. But it spurned me on to be a better leader for my people in Frostpunk 2.

The city will not fall (again)

So I instantly loaded in again and gingerly stepped out onto the frozen shelf that is 11 bit studios’ Frostpunk 2, the sequel to the critically acclaimed Frostpunk. On my second attempt, I was more reserved with my decision-making, more measured with how I handled resource allocation. I made it through the prologue and into the main game which takes place 30 years after the events of the first. I had managed to prove myself and became the Steward of a city centered on a giant generator that provides heat to the citizens.

It’s here that Frostpunk 2 begins to show its chops. Instead of constructing individual buildings, districts are created on a hexagonal tile system. District-specific buildings can be placed within one of these regions after it is manually expanded. But careful consideration on where these districts are placed is critical, as putting an industrial complex beside a housing area could lead to pollution but also less heat demand.

With limited room around the generator and a need for resources, I had to begin breaking up the frozen ground and get to building extraction districts. Meanwhile, the problems of the people started to ring out.

Can’t we all just get along?

Instead of a completely totalitarian rule, Frostpunk 2 introduces various factions that represent a portion of society. Each of these has their own priorities, often in direct competition with each other. In order to actually survive the barren wasteland, you’ll need to decide on laws that govern how your people behave, the sort of equipment you’ll be using, even what you’ll be doing with the deceased.

Frostpunk 2 manages to do something really clever with its progression. It will bombard you with decisions to make that will have a cascading set of consequences that could impact future chapters in the campaign. However, you don’t get to just pick which option you like the best. You’ll need to sway the council.

For me, when people started dying due to the cold, factions demanded I make a decision about what to do with the deceased. One faction wanted to bury the dead while another wanted to harvest what we could from the bodies. In order to get my decision through council, I had to negotiate with other factions, which involves making promises to pass a law they want, research a particular new technology, or even make a specific building.

Once I had swayed enough people to secure the votes needed, I put the motion to the council. The law was passed and we started dealing with the deceased. But I had made promises; promises I needed to deliver on within a certain timeframe or risk upsetting the faction.

Campaign promises

With a promise made to research a particular technology, I closed the council UI and opened up the research tree. I had made an error. I was already researching a new type of building for another faction I was indebted to. I couldn’t cancel that one without jeopardizing the relationship, so I chose to continue researching. When it ended, I realized there wasn’t enough time to research this new technology before the deadline rolled around. I took the hit to faction satisfaction, thinking I might be able to sway them another way.

Frostpunk 2 can really lean into this idea of kicking the can down the road in a bid to solve a crisis happening right now. But sooner or later, I’d glance down the path and see all the cans waiting to be opened. Would they contain worms or a hot meal? I may have lost the idiom there, but Frostpunk 2 had me feeling like an actual politician. I ended up ignoring some factions if they represented a small percentage of my citizens – I thought they wouldn’t really help sway a vote.

But even a small and unpopular group can have dire consequences for the rest of society. A group I never sided with started to gain attention and fervor. They took to the streets and my town descended into civil war. My people were hurting, they were dissatisfied with my handling of the situation, and they were planning a vote of No Confidence with the intent of exiling me.

With all my resources running low, with factions despising me, and with no workers for my factories, I was moments away from disaster. But a few heatstamps into the right hands, a promise to let them have whatever agenda they wanted in the next council meeting, and a bit of research done, the city’s brittle peace was restored. Saving your city from the brink of collapse is exhilarating.

Frozen lakes & knives’ edges

Restoring the citizen’s faith in me started to snowball into more positivity. People were getting happy and they were setting their eyes on the future. It’s at this point Frostpunk 2 started nudging me to explore the surrounding territories.

Exploring these territories ranges from relative safety to almost certain death. You’ll send out a band of scouts to reveal what lies in these tundras, which results in finding deposits of resources or even other locations to settle. So instead of a zoomed-in focus on the city, you can take a macro look at the area.

It’s a neat way to expand from one city to multiple locations. Each settlement will have its own economy and challenges, but it also presents the opportunity to create trade routes. It can be a little difficult to parse the information at first, especially when Frostpunk 2 is so willing to keep the pressure up. Thankfully, there is a robust tutorial screen that is always available.

What Frostpunk 2 excels at is letting you believe you’re doing well before snatching that happiness away. It just goes from bad to worse, in the best way possible. Just when I thought I was getting a hang of things (my stockpiles were bursting and my people were ambivalent toward my existence), I settled in a new area and everything went to ash in my hands. Fights were breaking out in the new settlement. I was bleeding resources. I was constantly sending workers to the new town because the old ones were getting sick or dying. I was panicking. And I was loving it.

You can call me, Stewart

By the end of the campaign, I was standing at my desk, begging the vote to go through or waving my hand as I told my militia to curb the disturbances. Frostpunk 2 made me feel terrifically powerful but also completely useless at the hands of my people. And once the credits rolled, I dove back in to experience Frostpunk 2’s endless mode, the Utopia Builder, in a bid to dig deeper into the laws, the research tree, and even the other factions I might encounter. I had a taste for making decisions and leading people and I wanted more.

Every single decision you make in Frostpunk 2 is like taking a step out onto a frozen lake. You might shift your weight onto a foot, only to see a tiny crack race out ahead of you. Is this the decision that will lead to your downfall? Even something as benign as placing down buildings comes with the weight of resource management, societal impact, and just a little bit more strain on the delicate system you’ve tried to establish. It’s a brilliant sequel that will leave you frozen with indecision as the icy disposition of the factions rivals the chill from a whiteout.

This review is based on a PC code provided by the publisher. Frostpunk 2 is releasing on September 20, 2024 on PC. Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 to arrive later.

Sam Chandler

Guides Editor

Hailing from the land down under, Sam Chandler brings a bit of the southern hemisphere flair to his work. After bouncing round a few universities, securing a bachelor degree, and entering the video game industry, he's found his new family here at Shacknews as a Guides Editor. There's nothing he loves more than crafting a guide that will help someone. If you need help with a guide, or notice something not quite right, you can message him on X: @SamuelChandler