“At 11 bit studios we don't believe in just making a sequel,” says Jakub Stokalski, game co-director and design director. “It is something that has never fulfilled us creatively and we do not believe that it meets the wishes of the players. Therefore, we have always wanted to build on the foundation of the first Frostpunk while creating something new and exciting. The big question was how to do it. At the end of Frostpunk you survived the end of the world. “We believe that creating an even bigger snowstorm or bringing survival to lower temperatures would not be enough for anyone.”
To bring Frostpunk 2 to life as a sequel and at the same time offer something new, 11 bit studios has decided to change the scale of the game itself. In this installment, time passes in weeks and months and instead of building buildings you have to create and manage entire districts. Not only does the city grow, but so do the ambitions of the people, who now consider the great storm over. This can create conflicts that affect the unity of a population that now does not feel the need to have to work together to survive.
Frostpunk is a social survival game and the sequel increases its emphasis on the social aspect. In Frostpunk 2, whose story is set 30 years after the great storm has devastated the Earth, society begins to fracture and as time passes, communities can radicalize and form factions that try to influence the player and their way of managing the city. In short, the figure of the leader who directs the group with an iron fist disappears and people now want to have a say in how the city is administered. In this regard, the council building will play a key role.
Conflicts with factions will mark the development of the game. We are not necessarily talking about a physical confrontation, but rather an ideological one, since each faction has its own vision for the future of the city and the player must deal with it. As? It will depend on each one. In any case, no one should forget that Frostpunk 2 continues to take place in a frozen world, so facing the cold with all that it entails will continue to consume a good part of the available time and resources.
Jakub Stokalski advances that players will soon discover that the external enemy in the form of storms and blizzards is not the biggest danger in the game, but that human nature will become the main headache. As Frostpunk players (and other 11-bit studio games like This War of Mine) will already know, decisions have consequences.
Frostpunk 2 will be available on July 25 on PC via Steam and Game Pass.
