Frostpunk: The Board Game is a commanding tabletop adventure – in dimensions, scope, and ambition. It relates to so much from players, but gives just as much back with its harrowing tale of survival inside a wintery post-apocalypse. Like the gaming that it’s adapted, the board game spotlights the struggle of humanity inside a world affected by harsh storms – but unlike the video game, tabletop adventurers must spend their time manually monitoring, analysing, and guiding their meeple flock as harsh dangers wait behind every card reveal.
The win conditions of Frostpunk: The Game are extremely strict, including on ‘Normal’ difficulty societies (which tend to be populous, less sick, and more able than their harder counterparts). The opening tutorial scenario, that is designed to ease players into the realm of Frostpunk, is extreme in the challenge. That’s part of what makes this board game so impactful, and thus satisfying.
Survival is rare – and the mission to do it will push you to your limits, in the same manner your societies are pushed. As the tension inherent in Frostpunk: The Game means playing it can feel genuinely stressful, it’s also so wonderfully designed and easy to learn that there remains joy hiding in every meeple movement, and every last-ditch grasp for glory.
Frostpunk: The Board Game – Setup
As mentioned, Frostpunk: The Game is a whopping big game. It also requires a significant amount of your time to set up. You will find multiple cards of different sizes, each with their own function, multiple boards for tracking rounds, generator warmth, citizen health, expeditions, and buildings (all pictured on the left), in addition to a main hex tile ‘playing board’ where you’ll deploy meeples to earn new resources, use buildings, and explore (pictured right).
Each token, card, hex tile, and board depicted in the image above comes as another piece, and you have to setup this whole array before you begin playing. For a first-timer, the setup (which is guided thoroughly by an instruction booklet) will take between 1-2 hours. This is because each card and token has a certain place – and there are hundreds involved in gameplay.
That said, as the task is lengthy, the setup itself is supremely easy – thanks to among the best-written game rulebooks I’ve personally ever come across. In excess of 40 pages long, it may seem daunting, but each instruction in Frostpunk: The Board Game is delivered having a crisp feeling of clarity, and descriptive examples which make learning the game incredibly easy.
As I’ve mentioned before, rule clarity is the most important part of designing a game. The action is determined by strict rules, and players must understand what to do all the time, or gameplay will crumble.
Frostpunk: The Game is exemplary in its approach to delivering rules. Details are disseminate evenly amongst its pages without being packed in, rules are concise and simple, and both main gameplay and setup processes are well-detailed. You'll need around 3 hours with the rulebook before you’re ready to play, but this the year progresses swiftly, and you’ll learn plenty in the process.
How To experience Frostpunk: The Board Game
In Frostpunk: The Board Game, you and as much as four players behave as ‘Advisors’ of the colony of post-apocalyptic survivors attempting to weather a variety of storms, and last through a harsh winter. Your society is populated by workers and children, and each must be protected, sheltered, and fed across multiple rounds, and multiple scenarios.
Your role is to monitor a variety of systems, such as the harsh weather, to help keep a towering generator powered, and thus keep the people safe.
In your pursuit for survival, your goals are determined by a distinctive scenario. There are many base game scenarios contained in the main box, and these task players with assorted achievements – simple survival, creating a certain technology, or reaching a set ‘end game’ state. Alongside firm goals, these scenarios also spice up rounds in the game, unleashing new events, storms, and other surprises that may rattle your resolve, and threaten the security of your people.
While some scenarios have alternate win conditions, for the most part, you’ll be spending your time with the game advancing through 15 rounds, each containing nine repeating phases. Following this time around – or prematurely – you’ll win or lose, according to your achievements.
These nine phases essentially encompass the following actions:
- Morning begins, along with a random event occurs.
- Players check the main generator and fuel it with coal if needed, to safeguard citizens in the cold.
- Coal is thrown in to the main generator statue, and any tokens that fall out contribute to a ‘stress track’ which might result in the generator growing.
- A random weather event occurs, impacting the colony or allowing advancement along some tracks.
- Players take various actions, allowing citizens to find out new regions, gather resources, establish buildings, or go on expeditions.
- If an action is ‘heated’ (in a warm area), citizens are safe. If they take a ‘cold’ action (like discovering new regions), they get sick.
- As night falls, social disputes are resolved. Then, citizens are fed with any food in storage.
- Citizens will be allotted to a pet shelter for that night, and also the phase loop begins again for the next round.
- Any citizen not in a heated shelter at night gets sick.
As these phases progress, players have a number of factors to watch.
They need to ensure there's enough food in their storage to feed every meeple as directed (based on the round tracker). They must also monitor heat levels, and make sure the generator provides warm shelter for everyone – but it mustn't become too stressed, or it might explode. Additionally, players need to monitor social quite happy with the established laws and circumstances of the colony. They also must make sure that citizen sickness levels remain manageable, and that only few citizens die – if any.
Frostpunk: The Board Game features intense strategy
It’s essential that every gameplay factor is recognized as in every decision made, in each and every phase, of each and every round – because Frostpunk: The Board Game is positively full of ways to fail. If you forge too far into new territory on the map, all your citizens can get sick and die. If a lot of die, you’ll automatically fail the game.
If you focus too much on mentioning the heat from the generator, so that they can stop your citizens from getting too sick, you might end up overloading it. In the event that happens twice, you’ll automatically fail the sport. You’ll also fail if your citizens starve. A growing social discontent, or a sudden storm eliminating your shelters will even bring about a sudden, rapid decline.
There is chance involved in these circumstances – you can’t always predict whenever a storm will hit, or how severely it will impact your colony – but you can generally arrange for the end result, knowing intense weather is in route.
This threat, and the overall theming of Frostpunk: The Game means players must preference forward planning and strategy thinking. Creating a Beacon within the first rounds of gameplay may permit you to undertake expeditions to reveal new resources, citizens, or any other benefits – but it may mean some citizens remain without shelter.
Focussing on establishing shelters is a great first step – however, you can’t build these until resources are gathered, and you'll also risk throwing out good material by building on resource-rich ground. The way in which scalping strategies and choices interlock is complex, but also logical and easily understood. You need to simply spend some time thinking about the consequences of your actions, and just how one decision can lead to a rampant domino effect.
Arguably, this does make the action of Frostpunk: The Game marginally too hard, and not fast enough – as stated, wins are extremely hard to come by, and you’re more likely to fail a scenario than win it first go – however the thrill of the chase feels inspired, regardless.
The way your citizens move, and therefore are moved by their environment, is well-flowing and harmonious. The joy of adventuring comes from this gameplay, and from making clever choices – clever, a minimum of, until your plans are thwarted.
To solo or otherwise to solo?
I played through several scenarios in Frostpunk as a solo player – and in time, it had been hard to see exactly how multiplayer would actually benefit the action. Being an Advisor, each player is given the job of monitoring a single a part of society. One Advisor monitors the social situation, another is responsible for generator management, and so on.
As a solo player, you’re in charge of every aspect of society, and embody every Advisor.
This frankly makes more sense, as Frostpunk isn’t made to be considered a segmented game. You need oversight of each and every aspect of your colony, and an understanding of how each moving part functions. While segmenting gameplay by tasking individual players with certain responsibilities eases the burden of understanding how to play every aspect of the game, it also feels counterintuitive.
While it replicates the structure of real-life society – some players will insist their portfolio is more important than another, or their needs outweigh everyone else’s – this system seems designed to sow conflict which may not benefit the already-difficult nature of gameplay.
The flow and decision-making feels a lot more powerful like a solo player, as direction could be easier determined, and rounds become snappier. The game has already been meaty – the tutorial scenario ran for around 3-4 hours with slow, thoughtful decision-making – and having multiple players with differing goals will likely lengthen farmville to grating proportions.
Should players desire to play through scenarios with friends, it’s best to adapt gameplay to ensure that everyone is able to interact to create a more well-rounded team, by having an overall focus on keeping as numerous citizens alive as you possibly can.
Final impressions
As an adaptation from the award-winning Frostpunk video game, Frostpunk: The Board Game far exceeds expectations. It translates the action of this post-apocalyptic survival adventure phenomenally well, while adding its own fashion sense, and neat flourishes.
While the sport feels impossibly hard at times, and only gets harder with new society rankings and scenarios, this selection feels by design. It encapsulates raw frustration and terror in the same way Frostpunk does – even though this may alienate players who desperately search for wins and satisfaction in their tabletop gaming, there are many who will appreciate the struggle for any solid victory.
With new scenarios keeping rounds fresh, there are plenty of good reasons to hop in again and again, vying for any win by trying to defend against sickness, pursue new technologies, or re-strategise meeple placement. Although this will mean setting and re-setting the game’s massive, intimidating boards, the satisfaction from the Frostpunk gameplay loop, and the tantalising dangle of victory, make the whole experience worthwhile.
5 stars: ★★★★★
Frostpunk: The Board Game
Designers: Adam Kwapiński
Publisher: Glass Cannon Unplugged
See Frostpunk: The Game on Amazon
A copy of Frostpunk: The Board Game was provided and played for that purposes of this review. GamesHub has affiliate partnerships. These don't influence editorial content. GamesHub may earn half the normal commission of commission for products purchased via affiliate links.
