Game profile
Frostpunk
In a frozen end times world, a last city must be built around a generator and kept alive, while moral decisions about laws and survival constantly have to be weighed against each other. The cold is the true enemy and grants no breathing room.
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What kind of game this is
At its core this is City builder / Survival, set in a world after the collapse. Visually it is deliberately stylised rather than photorealistic, and the overall tone stays dark throughout. The structure is guided rather than open, so you are moved along instead of dropped into a map. Sessions of an hour or two sit at the sweet spot here.
It is genuinely demanding, and repeated failure is part of how it is designed. The narrative carries the whole thing, and the mechanics serve it. It is a single player experience from start to finish. It is available broadly, on 4 platforms. It sits in the budget bracket.
What stands out
- Moral dilemmas
- Survive the cold
- Oppressive atmosphere
This fits you if
- you want to live through a story, not just play a system
- levelling, looting and optimising a build is your kind of loop
- the writing matters more to you than the mechanics
- you want real resistance and are fine with dying a lot
- you play alone and want a complete experience without other people
- you are watching your budget
Look elsewhere if
- you want to relax and not be punished for mistakes
- you skip cutscenes and want to get to the gameplay
- you want something light and easy going
- you specifically want an open world to roam
How long is Frostpunk?
About 30 hours in total. At three evenings a week and two hours each, you will be busy for roughly 5 weeks, or 15 sessions.
How the rating ranks
Critics settled on 86 out of 100, which puts it above 66 percent of the 1276 games here and at rank 392 overall. That is mid-table for this database. Not a standout at the top, but solidly rated.
For comparison, City builder averages 81 points across the database, so this one sits 5 points above its own genre. The figure rests on 443 collected ratings.
Released in 2018, so it has 8 years behind it. Usually cheap by now and the rough edges are long fixed.
The facts
- Release year
- 2018
- Genres
- City builder, Survival, Strategy
- Playtime
- approx. 30 hrs.
- Difficulty
- Demanding, punishing
- Story weight
- Carries the whole game
- Play with
- Solo
- Setting
- Post-apocalyptic, Historical
- Visual style
- Stylised
- Price bracket
- Budget
- Platforms
- PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch
- Critic rating
- 86 / 100
Direct comparison
| Genres | Release year | Playtime | Critic rating | Price bracket |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frostpunk | 2018 | approx. 30 hrs. | 86 | Budget |
| Frostpunk 2 | 2024 | approx. 35 hrs. | 82 | Full price |
| Going Medieval | 2026 | approx. 40 hrs. | n/a | Mid price |
| They Are Billions | 2019 | approx. 40 hrs. | 76 | Mid price |
If you liked this, try these
- 82/100 Frostpunk 2 Shared: City builder, Survival, Post-apocalyptic
- n/a Going Medieval Shared: City builder, Survival, Historical
- 76/100 They Are Billions Shared: City builder, Survival, Post-apocalyptic
- n/a The Wandering Village Shared: City builder, Survival, Post-apocalyptic
- 82/100 This War of Mine Shared: Survival, Strategy, shorter
- 72/100 Arknights: Endfield Shared: City builder, Strategy, longer