11 Bit seemed aware of how cumbersome menu driven games could be when played with a controller in hand, and in assigning everything to two easy to use radial menus they actually found a way to remove most of the resistance. I needed to staff my coal thumper with workers, and by using the express menu I was able to do so with no chaff. The express menu allows players to highlight anything – and I mean anything – and pop up a radial menu with context sensitive prompts. Within the building menus alone I could easily build the structures I needed, construct roads, and even destroy them: all without having to dig through a maze of sub-menus. If I need to build tents for my populace I would be a simple three buttons away, with little downtown wasted to figuring out where everything was. Intuitively, the most important options have a face button assigned to them, so popping in and out of the command navigator is quick and easy. The command navigator is broken down into sub-menus that are cycled between with the shoulder buttons, but within the radial menus themselves are all the things you’d expect from the main game: the Book of Laws, research, building nothing has been cut. Instead of having icons in the UI to access the different tools available, there are two radial menus assigned to the shoulder triggers: the command navigator on the left trigger, and the express navigator on the right. The base menus function much the same, but getting to them is a whole different affair. Damn near all of it has been uplifted in some way to better work with a console controller. Once you load up the game up and start building your Last City, the alterations that were made become notably apparent.įirst thing players will notice is the new UI. The opening menu will be familiar to long-time fans, and the only notable difference is the controller resting in your hand. What menus would need to be cut, what information would be pared down or removed? Frostpunk gave players every graph, every statistic they needed to track the progress of their city and the contentment of its people, but could all of that be intuitively translated over to a couple of thumbsticks and buttons?ġ1 Bit Studios seemed to wonder much the same, and upon firing up the console version it seems that none of the game has been sacrificed in the move over to console. It’s this delicate balancing act of building, harvesting, and placating the populace that gives Frostpunk its Sisyphean edge, and there was concern that in coming to console too many concessions would have to be made to make the game playable on the weaker platforms. Do you force children to work the mines due to most of the adults being afflicted with frostbite? Are the dead to be respected or harvested for their organs? A constantly evolving Book of Laws has the tools you need to make an existing situation less terrible, but there are always ramifications further down the road. As the leader, you have to not only build and expand the city, but make difficult choices that can affect the overall flow of the city. The less hopeful and more upset your populace becomes then the more likely you’ll find yourself strung up and boiled to death. To make matters worse, the people have two dispositions that need to be maintained: Hope and Discontent. Food is scarce, resources are limited, and each day is a battle to survive the harsh new world. The temperature of your city has to be precisely balanced – with every passing day becoming colder and colder – to prevent illness and death among the populace. The secret sauce to Frostpunk’s recipe, however, is that it turns all these usually benign task on their head. You are the leader of this settlement, and you will be doing what most city-builders task you with doing: harvest materials, construct various buildings, and try and maintain the city as best you can. Survivors from London have ventured out north to find some sort of reprieve, and after discovering an abandoned generator within a crater they decide to call it home. The Earth has been consumed by a dramatic climate shift, with the entire planet becoming a frigid wasteland that would make Mars appear temperate. For the uninitiated, Frostpunk is set in an alternate history, taking place around the industrial revolution.
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