Why Frostpunk Game Design Is So Good?
Genre-blending is at its peak these days, and it isn’t a surprise: the gaming world is fully packed with all kinds of games so it’s difficult to make something unique. However, the Frostpunk series, developed by 11 bit studios, made a breakthrough, combining the city-building genre with survival elements. And it isn’t a typical story about building a city. It’s a totally new approach for city builders. Frostpunk is an amazing independent story about keeping a community alive during a worldwide volcanic winter that almost destroyed human civilization.
How did Frostpunk do this? All because of blending a necessity to make morally and politically controversial choices to ensure the city’s survival with mesmerizing design and game art. Truly, the game’s filling is top-class. Storytelling, world design, environment art, UI/UX design — all these elements significantly highlight the new game Frostpunk 2 among other city-builders. But we’ll talk about this later.
We want to share with you that our RetroStyle Games outsourcing studio had an unforgettable opportunity to work with 11 bit studios on Frostpunk 2. We were responsible for refining textures for the buildings during the alpha stage. A small spoiler: the collaboration was amazing and we want to share all the details of it with you. But let’s talk about everything step by step. Now let’s delve into the history of Frostpunk artwork and how it was created.
Frostpunk Game Art: Building a Frozen World
George Elliot once said: “Cruelty, like every other vice, requires no motive outside of itself; it only requires opportunity”. Frostpunk 2 implements a unique survival game design, allowing players to be cruel.
But why? This is all about discovering human nature and how they would behave when the world is broken forever. Would they still be kind and try to save everyone or be rational and sacrifice hundreds to save thousands? This approach makes cruelty in Frostpunk 2 not just an amusement, but a conscious choice, created by a complex system of human values.
To be honest, we get used to cruelty in the games. For many players, killing enemies and live creatures is always okay. They don’t have a choice because of in-game rules. However, many games choose another path. They were inspired by the Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar (1985), the first game that introduced an in-game morality system. Being one of them, the Frostpunk series made a breakthrough in the city-building genre. Developers combined the usual for everyone process of creating a city with the opportunity to make dark choices.
Like Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar, Frostpunk 2 also has an in-game morality system. It is “the zeitgeist system”. This system is directly linked with Frostpunk’s core survival mechanics such as heating needs, health, food supply, etc. The main point of the gameplay is to keep all these mechanics balanced. However, it isn’t as easy as you may think. The zeitgeist system disrupts players by compelling them to negotiate the varying demands of different factions against one another. And that’s when the political component of Frostpunk 2 comes into play.
Factions, as you can guess, all want different things. The Evolvers disapprove of laws and technology upgrades that simplify life in the city if they hinder expansion, while the Faithkeepers reject improvements aimed at expansion. That means players can’t just keep all survival mechanics perfectly balanced. They need to distribute the different mechanics evenly according to the preferences of the different fractions which can be a very controversial task. Basically, Frostpunk 2 creates his personal political system and allows players to rule the world with its help.
In this frozen world, brutality isn’t just a gameplay mechanic anymore. It’s deeply rooted in a complex value system that challenges players to navigate conflicting ideologies and the political landscape of New London.
This is what makes Frostpunk 2 such a unique game. Everyone has the same zeitgeist system, but all players will perceive it by the prism of their personal views. And this approach forms the biggest difference of Frostpunk 2 from — as Stokalski called it — a “jackass simulator”.
Major Game Mechanics in Frostpunk 2
As an amazing survival game, Frostpunk 2 can boast several unforgettable gameplay mechanics. Some are resource management, city-building, politics and ideology, and exploration with expansion.
Resource Management
The game operates on a larger scale, with resources and population measured in the thousands and time tracked in weeks and months. Due to this, players need to keep track of a few important resources. First, there’s heat, which comes from the city’s generator. Then, they have coal, which is used for different purposes. They also need prefabricated materials to build things and cores that are essential for more advanced buildings. One of the most important aspects of the gameplay involves fulfilling the city’s demands for shelter, food, materials, and goods. Successfully addressing these needs is significant to prevent various issues such as cold, disease, hunger, squalor, and crime.
City Building
Expanding the buildable area in the game necessitates the use of Frostbreakers to clear frozen ground. Districts serve as the foundation of the city’s economy and can be expanded to enhance their scale and capabilities. Within these districts, players can construct buildings that not only improve resource output but also help mitigate various problems faced by the city.
Politics and Ideology
In the game, citizens form communities and factions that embody differing ideologies, significantly influencing the city’s direction (Zeitgeist). The Council Hall plays a crucial role by allowing players to vote on laws that affect the city’s Zeitgeist in various areas, including survival, society, and governance. Additionally, negotiating with these factions and making promises can be an effective strategy to sway their votes on proposed laws, thereby shaping the future of the city.
Exploration and Expansion
Expeditions can be launched to explore the Frostlands, uncovering locations for harvesting resources and establishing outposts. These outposts serve as a permanent source of resources; however, they can be rendered inactive during whiteouts. In addition to outposts, players can develop larger settlements known as colonies. Their primary goal is to necessitate the relocation of both population and resources to facilitate their growth and development.
So, Frostpunk 2 decided not to stop on the key gameplay mechanics from the first title. In return, 11 bit studios changed focus from the continuation of the mechanics to the continuation of the story. Even before release, some fans from Reddit were already discussing the Frostpunk 2 future gameplay mechanics. Several thoughts have actually predicted the future, such as: “It isn’t surviving as a society, it’s surviving society”.
However, they would never understand the necessity of these changes without a game design prototype. Prototyping helps you understand what the game will be about. It's like a game preview.
So, if you’re working on your game right now, think about game prototyping services. They will help you define the game theme once and forever and save time and resources.
Frostpunk 2 VS Frostpunk 1 as a City-Building Simulator
When the talk is about city-builders, you understand that there are no two the same cities. At least small details always will be different. This is because of a unique human nature feature — thinking identity. 11 bit studios decided to go further and discover the questions of morality in their games. This is how original Frostpunk was created. Being a unique mix of a city-builder and a survival game, Frostpunk 1 made an important condition: or the player is making up how to make society survive in a horrible era of global ice, or he loses everything. In this case, only the player decides what future will wait for New London.
But Frostpunk 2 changed the game rules by adding cruelty. Unlike the first installment, where players took on the role of Captain, striving to save their citizens from extinction, the sequel casts players as the Manager, elected by the Council to lead the growing city of New London after the events of the original game.
“The city and its citizens went through hell to survive, so what now?” — Jakub Stokalski asked himself. And the answer is obvious — now the city should survive in a post-apocalyptic world filled with human values and cruelty.
And sometimes it’s even worse than hunger or cold. Players must carefully balance short-term solutions with long-term strategic decisions, particularly when it comes to allocating resources and prioritizing expansions. Every choice made has the potential to ripple through the city’s social fabric, leading to consequences that may trigger revolts from various factions.
Think about the trolley dilemma: would you kill one person to save five? Frostpunk 2 is based on this question, asking the players: will you sacrifice thousands right now to build a happy future for millions of people? Or try to save everyone? There wasn’t anything like that in Frostpunk 1. “It wasn’t obvious to us at the beginning, but we eventually realized that Frostpunk 1 was not a post-apocalyptic game at all”, said Łukasz Juszczyk, a Frostpunk co-director and art director. In Frostpunk 1, citizens tried to survive at the moment, but in Frostpunk 2 it’s about saving the nation and guaranteeing a future for the next generations.
So, Frostpunk 1 was just a simulator of living and surviving in the global ice age, but Frostpunk 2 is about building a foundation for the happy future of New London no matter what. It discovers the hidden secrets of human nature and its behavior in crisis time. Nowadays, this is definitely a new breath in the city-building genre. Maybe, in the furniture 11 bit studios will create something even more unique and unpredictable. And now let’s enjoy Frostpunk 2 and its amazing game mechanics!
Inspired by the Frostpunk series, we’ve also worked on city builder game design as our personal project Majestic Areas. This slot machine game has a special kind of art style called isometric concept art. With this approach, we made our game look addictive and lively, bringing the game to life in a whole new way.
Frostpunk Concept Art Design
All good game creation began with concept art development. Some companies make it by themselves, some use concept art outsourcing studio services. All that matters is that concept art helps to show how a future video game should look and feel and significantly influences the game’s final visual design.
11 bit studios also supports this approach to making video games and starts the Frostpunk 2 development by creating concept art for the game’s characters, buildings, and setting. We can definitely see how inspired and passionate they were while working on the game so it isn’t surprising that the released project turned out to be amazing.
This frozen world concept art doesn’t look like the final game but perfectly conveys the aesthetic and the atmosphere of the post-apocalyptic world. Grey sky, heavy looming clouds, and tired workers after a long shift create a very sad picture that perfectly conveys desperation and hopelessness.
Frostpunk 2’s character concept designs don’t leave unconcerned anyone. The man in the picture with a perplexed look on his face, one of the Hunters, is a key person in New London. Responsible for gathering food, he must find food every day while citizens stay and town and become more and more hungry.
Frostpunk 2 is a city-building game, so building concept art is also very important. In the picture, you can see a workshop, one of the most important buildings for the survival of New London citizens. Here engineers develop new technologies, ensuring people will be provided with everything from improvements in heating to more advanced medical facilities.
Even if Frostpunk gaming concept art looks different from the final result, it sets the tone for the game and helps understand what kind of atmosphere the game should have. In the case of Frostpunk 2, it helped to focus on the steampunk aesthetic, allowing artists to experiment with various art styles and technologies to find the best style that resonates with players.
Frostpunk 3D Game Environment
The 3D game environment design in Frostpunk 2 plays a very significant role because it creates a gripping and bleak atmosphere that intensifies the game’s narrative and highlights the importance of moral choices. The architecture with towering structures ravaged by icy storms and frozen landscapes bravely demonstrates a sense of hopelessness and human struggle. From the smoke rising from industrial chimneys to the frozen textures of buildings, all elements create an unforgettable post-apocalyptic atmosphere. The attention to detail and realistic textures make the world feel alive, strengthening the player’s emotional connection to the game. Looking at the retrospective and evolution of the game’s environment from Frostpunk 1 to Frostpunk 2, it’s clear how the 11 bit studios has expanded upon the original’s foundation, introducing even more difficult moral dilemmas and a dark atmosphere.
In the Frostpunk series, the evolution of the game’s environment design reflects a deeper commitment to realism and emotional engagement. The way the city grows, with its expanding layers of industrial buildings, mirrors the tension between progress and survival. The use of cold colors, muted lighting, and towering structures reinforces the feeling of isolation in an unforgiving world. Small details like flickering lights, snow gathering on rooftops, and the gradual wear on structures from constant cold make the world feel authentic. These visual elements, combined with the dynamic weather systems and day-night cycles, constantly draw players into the game’s atmospheric setting. Is it worth mentioning that the developers used the services of a 3D environment design company?
Beyond just visual design, Frostpunk 2’s environmental storytelling elevates the gameplay experience. The placement of structures, the sprawling frozen wasteland, and the way the city’s heart — the generator — dominates the skyline, all convey a narrative of desperation and survival. The desolate surroundings constantly remind players of the fragility of human life in this world. This balance between aesthetics and functionality showcases how the game environment isn’t just a backdrop. It’s an active participant in the story.
Unboxing the Frostpunk 2 Gift Box from Developers
As a cherry on top of the cake, we received an amazing present from 11 bit studios as a ‘thank you’ for the unforgettable collaboration. We’re very happy to unpack it and share these amazing experiences with you!
As you can see, the gift box from 11 bit studios is a carefully curated collection of branded merchandise. It includes a high-quality knit beanie with the studio’s logo, perfect for braving cold weather (hopefully not so cold as in Frostpunk 2). A premium notebook with a minimalist design is included for jotting down notes or sketches, featuring subtle yet elegant branding. If we collaborate with 11 bit studios in the future, we will use this notebook for working on concept art related to Frostpunk.
The metal keychain, shaped like an iconic symbol from Frostpunk, is a practical and stylish accessory. Additionally, the box contains a set of eye-catching stickers, featuring game-themed artwork, perfect for personalizing laptops or notebooks, and some other accessories like pins for clothes or bags. All of these items are neatly packed in a custom-designed box, making it a standout collector’s item for fans of the studio.
We’re very happy to get these presents, and in the future, we will warmly look at them and happily discuss what a wonderful experience was this collaboration with 11 bit studios.
FAQ
Frostpunk’s game design stands out due to its seamless blend of survival mechanics and moral decision-makingin a frozen world. The game challenges players to balance resource management, societal leadership, and ethical dilemmas, all while maintaining a breathtaking atmosphere through its visually stunning 3D environments and dynamic storytelling.
Frostpunk 2 introduces unique mechanics like expanded city-building with multiple layers of infrastructure, more complex resource management, and dynamic societal factions. Players face new moral dilemmas, where decisions not only affect survival but also shape ideological conflicts within the community, intensifying the struggle for control in a frozen world.
Frostpunk 2 expands upon the original with a larger multi-layered city-building system, deeper resource management, and more intricate social dynamics. Unlike Frostpunk 1, the sequel introduces ideological factions, creating new moral and political dilemmas. The visual design is also more detailed, enhancing immersion in the post-apocalyptic world.
Frostpunk 2 requires a minimum of an Intel Core i5-3210M or AMD Ryzen 5 CPU, 8 GB RAM, and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 Ti or AMD Radeon RX 550 graphics card. For optimal performance, it is recommended to have an Intel Core i7-9700K or AMD Ryzen 7 CPU, 16 GB RAM, and an NVIDIA RTX 2060 or AMD RX 5700 graphics card. The game also needs 30 GB of SSD storage and runs on Windows 10/11 (64-bit).
