Frostpunk

A city-building survival game.

Frostpunk

If I had known this was the same developers as This War of Mine (review), I would not have played it. Still, it was fun for the 10 hours it took to see the first story.

Overview

Frostpunk is a game that tells a story of survival while building your base and exploring the world. There are a number of resources to manage and varied ways to manage them. The dropping temperature is a unique mechanic that informs how your base will evolve. 

Story

The story aspect of Frostpunk is strong. I tend to ignore story in favor of gameplay, but Frostpunk has numerous choose-your-own-adventure style decisions to make, and those decisions have a large impact on the story and the gameplay. I imagine the game would be fairly dull after one or perhaps two playthroughs.

Base Building

Not bad. The interesting temperature mechanic breathes some life into what would otherwise be a mediocre building game. 

Technology Tree

There are two different tech trees. One is very typical of the types of research we have seen a thousand times. The other is a system to write laws. It is interesting in that the effect happens immediately, with a waiting period before another law can be passed. At first it seemed the laws were neutral in that they provide both a bonus and a penalty. I expected it to be an interesting way to respond to emergencies -- for example you could set guards to patrol, which would reduce crime but require more labor. However in practice, laws have little downside and you generally want to pass new laws as quickly as possible.

Exploration

You can build scouts to explore the surrounding world. This is pretty neat, but really it's just one more option for resource generation. "Should I build another coal mine for coal or a scout that will discover random resources?"

Should You Buy It?

If you liked This War of Mine, then yes. If you want to see an interesting combination of survival, base-building, and storytelling, then yes. If you want to explore difficult moral choices in your strategy game, then yes. Otherwise, no. Frostpunk combines these elements in an interesting way, but doesn't excel at any of them.

Rimworld

Sims, survival, and base building.

Rimworld

Rimworld is a fun game of base-building and survival. Depending on your settings, it can be brutal and unfair. 

Gameplay

Rimworld is largely a sim type game where you give your dupes/pawns/sims do all the work. However Rimworld has a bit more micromanagement than most. Quite a few things have to be ordered directly. Also, there is very little automation in the game. The job priority system is pretty good, but there are many situations that are not covered so be prepared to frequently override orders.

Goals

There is a lot of sandbox in Rimworld. Simply surviving can be challenging and it's easy to make your own goals. The victory condition isn't especially satisfying but there is a lot of fun to be had on the way.

Compared to Other Games

Dwarf Fortress: Rimworld is very much like Dwarf Fortress but more accessible. The graphics are primitive and the interface is decent but not great. It's not especially noob friendly, but compared to dwarf fortress it's a piece of cake. There isn't as much depth as Dwarf Fortress, but there is as much "game".

Sims: If you removed graphics from Sims, it would have a lot of similarities. You build houses and manage pawns needs. You can do a lot of evil things in Sims, but nothing compared to Rimworld where you can harvest organs, get your enemies addicted to narcotics, and sell slaves.

Oxygen Not Included: ONI is nicer to play, a better sandbox, and much prettier. It feels smoother, like Rimworld has disjointed systems cobbled together. ONI also has a great system for automation of machinery and pawn. While I generally think Oxygen Not Included is better, Rimworld has more game to it. For the most part it's easy to survive in Oxygen Not Included but beyond that you have to establish your own goals. It's a whole lot of fun getting to those goals but challenges are self created. It's "fun" figuring out how to clean the carbon dioxide from the base, but it's your fault you got there in the first place. Rimworld throws periodic events at you that have to be dealt with immediately.

Recommendation

Watch someone play for a bit. If the art style is a turn off, skip it. I liked it a lot, but I burned out after 100 hours and that doesn't come close to Oxygen Not Included.