Frostpunk 2 leans into "the human experience" of a city builder

gamedeveloper.com:

The original Frostpunk was a compelling blend of a city-builder and a survival game, all wrapped in a story about keeping a community alive during a global ice age. Unlike other city-builders focusing on cause and effect, however, Frostpunk's world offers no respite—either make things work or see the citizens slowly succumb to the elements and internal turmoil. This unorthodox, survivalist take on a city-builder presented a harrowing story of surviving the apocalypse, all defined by your actions.

It was a city-builder that put a keen focus on examining the very people living in the city that players built. For the upcoming Frostpunk 2, game co-directors Jakub Stokalski and Łukasz Juszczyk were interested in letting the community craft an even more compelling story with their societies in the decades after the original catastrophe. I recently got to see an extended gameplay demo for the sequel, and the developers at 11-Bit Studios broke down their view on focusing more on "the human experience" within a city-builder survival game.

Frostpunk 2 deals with heavy subject matter, asking what it takes to keep a city running in a bleak setting, and who should shoulder the burden over others. It's an incredibly dire setting, but according to Stokalski, the brutal atmosphere serves more to reveal opportunities for storytelling in a city-builder game. To the developers, players' choices in the context of their city will tell a unique story for everyone."The bleakness of the setting itself wasn't necessarily a core value of the game, but it did present a good opportunity for us—much like other fantasy and post-apocalyptic games—to examine and look at the idea of a blank slate after the apocalypse," said Stokalski. "The city and its