We’re in the midst of the Steam Summer Sale this year, and Valve is doing something a bit different this time by creating a Featured Deep Discounts section. It highlights some of the best games discounted by 90% or more. While this narrows things down, you may still have some choice paralysis while deciding among the games included this year. If you’re a fan of PC city builders or games that force players to make difficult choices, I’d recommend snatching up Frostpunk for just $3, which is a 90% discount.
Released in 2018, developer 11 bit Studios describes Frostpunk as “the first society survival game.” It takes place in a postapocalyptic world, but it’s desolate in a different way than most of them. Rather than having the sandy barren wastelands of Mad Max or Fallout, Frostpunk’s world has frozen over, and the biggest threat to humanity is generating enough heat to survive and rebuild. It’s a game about rebuilding society in this snowy postapocalypse, but that’s easier said than done.
The first thing players do in Frostpunk is find coal to power the generator at the center of their city. From there, they have to continue building this society. Resource management is vitally important, and players must often make tough decisions and enact laws to ensure those resources don’t completely run dry, even if that sometimes angers the people living in this settlement. For example, some of the first laws players have to pass are about whether they want to use child labor to increase productivity or add sawdust to food to make meals more filling.
Each option has its own pros and cons — even the ones that are outright morally wrong. Enacting child labor can improve productivity, but it comes at the cost of Hope, a resource that keeps the people of this postapocalyptic society content. If the Discontent meter fills up too much, the people will protest and fight back, which in turn makes surviving even more difficult.
The main gameplay hook of most city-building games is managing resources as a city expands. Frostpunk stands out because it makes that core gameplay conceit more intimate and narratively poignant. It makes players feel bad about some of the decisions they must make to avoid a fail state. It effectively reinforces this feeling because it communicates it entirely through emergent gameplay. By making players masters of their own morality, it becomes more memorable from moment to moment when compared to something like Cities: Skylines, where the primary appeal for players is seeing their city grow on a more macro level.
Another great reason to pick up Frostpunk is that a sequel is on the way. Frostpunk 2 will pull the camera back and be less intimate of a city builder than the original, as players are tasked with expanding the society they create in the first game even further out into the harsh, snowy tundra. Still, playing the original Frostpunk on PC will familiarize you with the core concept of the franchise, its postapocalyptic world, and the complex dilemmas that 11 bit Studios constantly asks players to solve.
Frostpunk 2 was originally supposed to be released later this month, just a couple of weeks after the Steam Summer Sale concluded, but 11 bit Studios recently delayed the game until September 20. As Frostpunk 2 is a couple of months away now, it’s a great time to check out the original for an extremely low price if you haven’t had a chance to do so already.
Frostpunk is available for $3 instead of $30 until July 11. If you want its DLC, a Game of the Year Edition is also on sale for $10.65. The game is also available on PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Game Pass, and PS Plus Extra currently.