Developer/publisher 11 Bit Studios

Format PC (tested), PS5, Xbox Series

Release Out now

Back in 2018, Frostpunk showed us how easy it would be to slip into tyranny, asking us to make desperate choices in an alternate history where the world had been plunged into ice. Yet for some, its bitterly difficult survival scenario raised more questions still. You didn’t have to be a tyrant, but you were always an autocrat. Would it have been possible to build something truly good or just in that world? What if the system itself were fundamentally fairer? In Frostpunk 2, the monkey’s paw curls.

Here, 11 Bit puts us back in the biting cold, 30 years after the first game’s climate disaster. New London has grown vastly, no longer a huddle of tents around the leaky warmth of a generator but a city able to support thousands. The captain that led the settlement has passed, and your first move as his steward is to establish a council to give all the communities a representative vote. It’s a new world, with new challenges.

Among the alterations are the types of resources at your disposal and your building methods. You’re no longer responsible for setting down every building, but instead establishing districts over a hex-based map. Extraction districts, for example, are zoned on top of resource tiles for coal, oil, prefabs and materials, while specific buildings specialise each district for output bonuses that turn the tide from desperation to surplus. Not all tiles are available to start with, though, and you have to spend resources to break through the frost a handful at a time. Combined with adjacency bonuses (and penalties) between districts, there’s a satisfying synergy game in how and when you place your tiles.