Frostpunk: The Board Game Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Frostpunk: The Board Game, a city building board game published by Glass Canon Unplugged. In Frostpunk: The Board Game, players are trying to guide their group of survivors in a frozen wasteland.

One of my favorite types of video games to play are the building ones. Especially ones like Planet Coaster or Cities Skylines where I can create massive amusement parks or sprawling cities. Yet a while ago I got sucked into the desolate world of Frostpunk. It’s a post-apocalyptic city builder where you were trying to get your fledgling tribe of people to survive in a brutal, frozen wasteland. It was punishingly hard, but I still spent tons of hours playing it.

Fast forward to 2022 and designer Adam Kwapiński (Nemesis, Lords of Hellas) brings us Frostpunk: The Board Game. Published by Glass Cannon Unplugged, this game seeks to recreate the rough life of a Frostpunker, but on your tabletop. Did he succeed? Let’s find out.

I could use up my entire word count just telling you how to play the game, so this is going to be a very, high-level overview. If you want the fun rundown, you can download a PDF of the rules here.

Frostpunk comes with several scenarios, but the basic one tasks you with surviving through the end of an oncoming storm (if you’ve played the video game, you know what you will be up against here).

This cooperative game takes place over 9 phases each round. Every morning, you’ll move the round tracker and draw a morning event card. Spoiler alert: most involve difficult decisions, usually a choice between one bad choice or another. Then you’ll need to check on your generator, which provides heat for your freezing people. Too much stress on its core and it goes boom.

After that, you’ll check on the weather,