Frostpunk is a game I went in expecting to Not Like: everything I'd heard about it sounded like it was an 'artsy' game in that general group of 'games whose devs want video games to be taken seriously as an art form, and so undermine good gameplay in pursuit of pretensions of moral or philosophical depth', it's a 3D game that very obviously put an obnoxious amount of effort into the visuals even though the intended play experience will almost never get a close look at any of the art assets, and its nature as a civilization-building game... such games have a track record of failing to work for me.

To my surprise, I... kind of like the game?

Not a ton, to be clear. Frostpunk is not the kind of game I'd put on a Top Ten list or the like. Its core gameplay systems are deeply flawed and often downright insane in how they work and what optimal play looks like as a result, the game substantially designs itself as if it's a turn-based game and is perpetually shocked by its real-time nature causing those decisions to work out poorly, and its efforts at raising moral questions are cringe-y and mostly create annoying Guide Dang It moments where if you know what a scenario's full event tree looks like you'll know the Objectively Correct Decision to make.

But the core gameplay experience does have something compelling to it, and my response to Frostpunk is pretty heavily 'this could have been a great game'. If it had built itself as a roguelike sort of experience instead of rigid scenarios being its foundations, a lot of its current problems would wash away. If the game was simply more transparent about the true implications of various decisions, it wouldn't be so exasperating of an experience. If it had been more philosophically coherent out the box in regards to topics like 'abstract game design vs simulationist game design', a lot of its most demented design decisions couldn't have occurred.

So even though I'm a bit underwhelmed by the Frostpunk That Is, it's a game where I gaze longingly at the Frostpunk That Could Have Been. This, plus its frustratingly erratic documentation online, are what drove me to do a series on this game.

Next time, we start with Adaptation Laws.

See you then.