In addition to our main Game of the Year Awards 2024, each member of the PC Gamer team is shining a spotlight on a game they loved this year. We'll post new personal picks, alongside our main awards, throughout the rest of the month.
To harvest the seals or not harvest the seals? That is a question put to me as Steward of a newly-reforged city-state. Don't worry, I did not eat the seals. I did, however, do much worse—so are the horrid consequences of trying your best in Frostpunk 2.
I only dabbled in the first game—this might be why I'm immune to the complaints that some have for the second. If the first game is akin to viewing the world through a microscope, the second is more a wide-angled lens. I can see why that lack of locality might bother someone looking for more of the first, but you have to admire what 11 bit studios has sought to offer in a grander sequel.
The focus has lessened on individual narratives and instead lies in factions and districts. As acting steward, it's my job to balance the wants and needs of the people. Or at the very least, some people. Through my carefully balanced (horribly unfair) legislative agenda, I seek to ensure democracy (tyranny) is effectively established.
Factions develop from deep within the city's seldom warm burrows and districts can become restless and plastered in inflammatory graffiti. For example, if I'm mean enough—which I often am—to the Frostlanders they will erupt into a faction of hardline pilgrims that make more extreme demands and threaten to tear apart the fabric of this miserly civilisation. They deserve it, though. Damned NIMBYs.
I can choose to focus my efforts on ways to improve my workers' lives, or, as often is the case, try to maximise my technological advancement with little regard for the health of my citizens. They will come around to my way of thinking when the storm threatens to wipe out our reserves and it becomes a choice between poor working conditions or eating your nan.
Yep, life in the frozen tundra is rough. But New Londoners have it pretty easy compared to the scouts striking new paths through the snow and ice, or the inhabitants of the far-away settlements I now command. Those guys really have it bad. The precious oil they pump from ground leaves a thick trail of squalor in its wake, and they're often left to fend for themselves or deal with a lack of heat sources as I pump every last drop back to New London.
Frostpunk 2 definitely scratches my Civilisation itch in a way I hadn't quite expected. That's why I've lost days to it in the same way I would any good Civ game. Though there are still moments when the game can create a great narrative, as in the first.
My policy decisions led to a prevalence of gangs in New London. More specifically, gangs of children. To deal with debilitating child crime statistics, I could either try to quash the gangs or send the children to work with their parents on 'work experience'. Of course, I chose the latter. The children yearn for the mines. A policy worryingly adopted by others on PC Gamer's staff.
So, you might be thinking it says a lot about someone to pick a game for GOTY about sending kids to work, crushing biodiversity, and striving for unequalled tyrannical power in a time of great strife. But I'm fine with it. There are so few games in the past few years that I've picked up and not put back down again until Monday morning rolls around. I've happily lost hours to Frostpunk 2, and I'm still scratching at the snowy surface.
