Frostpunk Review: Will It Leave You Cold?
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- čas přidán 23. 02. 2023
- Zee and Milla take a look at this epic survival game, based on the video game.
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BGG Link: boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3... - Hry
"The theme is very bleak..." Milla: 😃
Thank you so much for sharing your honest opinion of our game! We appreciate the enthusiastic breakdown and we are glad you enjoyed your experience overall. 💜
I was so excited for this game. Played it twice and was unsure. Played it a 3rd time and all the sudden a week later I had played it 12-15 times I’ve already lost count. It is one of those games you out your head down, pick it up 30 minutes later and it’s actually been 3 hrs
This has quickly become one of my all time favorite solo games...right up there with Mage Knight, Robinson Crusoe, Ark Nova, Cloudspire, etc. The first two games of Frostpunk were a slog to get through with the rules, but once you get it down, it plays butter smooth with the round tracking card (which also reminds you of where you are at in the round if you pause the game). I would never play with the generator smack dab in the middle lol. Also, placing your meeples and resources on the alternate side of the middle tile makes things easier anyways. Adam Kwapinski has risen dramatically to one of my all time favorite game designers. This guy is a genius and his games are so thematic and just plain fun. And this one has some seriously deep strategy. It took me approximately 12 tries to finally get a win on the FIRST scenario lol. I recommend reading some of the strategy discussions on bgg to enhance your gameplay...I promise you, you still have a very good chance of losing lol.
That feels too difficult for most people. I had it and decided to let it go after my first game…I have the video game, and this just felt like a long-winded way to do the same thing
If my wife looked at me the way that Milla looked at this game (00:17) then I don't think I'd be spending nearly as much of my time playing board games...
33:00
Actually, if you set the game up with the boards as outlined in the rulebook, you can play solo and remain seated.
Zee did well with his overview, very impressed how he and Milla conducted this review, they work well together.
Can't agree more, hopefully they will keep this duo for a variety of games.
Zee, this is not the same designer as This War of Mine :) This is from Adam Kwapiński and This War of Mine is designed by Michał Oracz. Unless you mean 11 bit studios and their PC games :)
Ah, yes, I misspoke. My mistake and my apologies! - Zee
@@thedicetower No worries, great video!
I would absolutely play this.
I've played the video game and it is one of my FAVORITE video games ever. The video game is the most stressful, nail-biting, #1 cause of lack of sleep game I've ever played....AND I LOVE IT! This game looks very authentic to the video game and I'm 100% going to get it. Whenever I see Frostpunk I ALWAYS want to play it because I want to beat, but I know how stressful its going to be so I usually don't .😆Seeing this game gives me that same feeling so I will definitely be trying to get the all in bundle somewhere. THE CITY MUST SURVIVE! Also a bit bummed you didn't use the music from the game, cause that music is AWESOME.
While here, no mention here, but the app adds Sooo much, helps with some the pacing, and sounds... if you play this, play with app. Will boost to higher score for sure if played using app.
Hey just a FYI, there’s enough room for all of the cards to be sleeved and for the upgraded wooded components. Great game.
I could tell from Killa's face 5 seconds in, that this game was going to be right up her alley. Thanks for the review!
Milla the Killa! Nice nickname. 😉
Fantastic game! I didnt back this but picked it up retail. Its all you need with maybe the frostpander expansion. Save your money and dont get other expensive non gameplay expansions as they actually get in the way of you playing the game.
BBQ and Frostpunk. The way to my heart.
I enjoyed this one. I was very excited to get it. That first game went long, we were doing well until we weren't. We got the hunger wrong for the first two rounds. It is not intuitive. I have been apprehensive about bringing it out and having to teach it to more players which is unfortunate. It'll come out soon though.
I'm really enjoying this game solo. I don't see myself playing this as a group.
The mass of mechanisms is appropriate for the game. It adds to the tension that you need to address everything with almost nothing.
Great solo too!
Zee, I love the video game. I'm a board gamer. But, what what does the tabletop version brings that the video game doesn't?
For example, this war of mine the board game brings the book of scripts (stories) that the video game doesn't have. But this one feels like it's exactly the same game as the video game, but with a lot of upkeep that I need to take care of, so I might as well play the video game?
I've played both, and my feeling is that the only thing the board game provides that the video game doesn't is a sandbox experience, contrasted with the video game's narrative experience. But for me the narrative drive of the video game is part of what makes it really good. The board game also bends over backwards to try to simulate certain elements from the video game, and yet divorces itself in other ways that to me seemed very odd. For example, the entire hunger track operation (as explained in the video) is enormously convoluted and fiddly to try to mimic dealing with hunger in the game, while they took out steel as a resource because that was too much? In a game with 9 phases and at least 7 different state trackers? It's just a weird experience to deal with so much micromanagement for the sake of capturing some part of the theme and then in the next breath build mechanized automatons out of wood. Others might not mind how much upkeep is required to play the game, but to me the split seemed like 70% upkeep to 30% game, and all I could think while playing the board game was "I could just be playing Frostpunk."
Thanks for the response. I kept seeing people say they love it solo, but if I were to play it solo I'd just play the video game (which is also WAY cheaper). Seems to me the best crowd for this is solo non-video gamers.
That's what I thought... It's unfortunate because I love the game, but this sounds like just a (fiddly) simulation of the video game, not an adaptation.. 😔
@@BoardGameQC The whole idea of a video game is that it hides mechanics in the code, which gives you a feeling of "real life." A Tabletop game has to spell out every rule, meaning to mimic a video game it has to require a lot of bookkeeping, but even then it will never really produce the same experience. Tabletop designers need to understand that.
@@KissellMissile I'm not concerned with the bookkeeping itself. Many board games have a lot of bookkeeping and are amazing. The issue here is that the analog version of the game doesn't bring anything new to the table, except for the bookkeeping..
Using the this war of mine example again, it also has more bookkeeping than the video game. But the book of scripts (stories) is a completely different mechanism that is amazing and it's not available in the digital version. And that's a big difference right there. I actually prefer the game board version, specifically because of the book of scripts (regardless of having to bookkeep things around).
Does that make sense?
Box absolutely fits 100% sleeved cards, including Frostlander.
I wonder when Frostpunk digital will drop. Seems ready made for it, and as a bonus it could manage some of that upkeep and setup!
I dont see why they would make a digital boardgame version of a video game wich already exists... 😅
Not all board gamers play video games. Digital adaptations of board games that help manage tedious upkeep and complex rules are great.
@@mikeb2598 I totally get that, but i dont think that'd be worth it in this exact case. A good exemple for your point would be Gloomhaven. Videogames sometimes don't know there even is a boardgame 😅
Agree with you there. I did not know that a VG existed for this board game. Same with This War of Mine.
I can see folks' point , why make a video game of a board game which already has a video game -> but the difference to me is it's the actual Board Game, and I would Love to get it (I do already have the video game). I want the digital board game to learn the physical game and generally play all (with a board gamey feel) on my iPad (video game is not on iPad) whenever and wherever I want! SO, I totally agree with the original post!
It's a beast and hard to get played but man is it fun!
Correct!
I absolutely adore the video game, and I thought it could have the potential to translate really well to a board game version. So I tried to play it.
Tried. I feel like Zee and Milla are being verrrrry generous in this review. The game is the opposite of elegant. I felt the theme came through more in the attempt to play the game than the game itself (which I don't think was the intention). The game plays you more than you play the game. Draw a card. Do what it says. Now do this. Now move these markers. Where is that marker? Move it here now. Is that marker in this section? Do this. Now you can do choose something. Ok enough of that, go back to moving these cubes on this track. I was so disappointed given the potential for a great sandbox experience in a really fantastic theme, I just did not enjoy it at all. If you see the phase tracker and think "oh.... oh man that seems like too much" I would trust that feeling. If you see the phase tracker and think "bring it on" then it's probably offering your type of an experience.
I played this once and unfortunately it didn't work for me. The amount of setup, teardown, and upkeep required for this game erased the little fun I had playing.
Actually does this game work well multiplayer
Loving this game (I actually think it's much better solo)
This is also possibly the first Board game I have where I think it's better than the PC game.
I had it, and decided to let it go.
The setup is about an hour and playtime 3-4 hours. Because of the generator, I can’t pause and put it all underneath my game table. And I have to because my cat would eat and play with all the pieces. In fact I have to put my cat away for those 5 hours if I want to play it because my game table is also the dining table.
Overall, I don’t doubt this is a good game, but the video game is 20x more accessible for much the same experience.
It has some contradictory functions.
Such as the generator phase, even though you heat homes people still get sick if you don't heat it the whole way.
Your citizen cards get depleted and never replenish, which makes no sense cause where did these people go?
Your advisors or leaders are really under powered, they require you to exhaust hope to use a very weak version of an action that you can get from a building.
Also back to heating. How can you say a house with red level insulation can be warmer than the spaces directly next to the massive fricken generator. I had one game were it took me only 3 coal to heat red level buildings but took me 6 coal to get tiles right next to the generator to be heated.... how?
It seems that they forgot how certain things work
I love this game, it's a masterpiece imo. The choices to be made, the repercussions, the mental challenge, theme and table presence makes it easily worth the setup for me but I also agree with reviewers pointing out that this is definitely not a game for everyone.
Looks like you could mash up this and Last Aurora, so play this game, then when X happens, stop & play Last Aurora to effect what happens next in Frost Punk....
Is it me, or does anyone else find Paul's Rule book is the most confusing thing about the game., Leaving vital rules to a note section, or focusing pages on something easy and unimportant and then giving a single line to a complex rule.
Love the PC game and this does a great faithful recreation of it while being its own take separate from it at the same time.
Sure as some say the setup can take a moment but the gameplay is unique, each player has their own portion of the city to control and contribute too.
Great game and recommend if you can get ya hands on it!
My experience was bit ruined, becouse in czech translation there is quite major error in scenario card of the first scenario... but other than that... game felt maybe sometimes overly complecated. But at the end it is a good experience.
Highly recommend playing at 4, where everyone get one role, leader is changing, and you are just "presenting" your ideas to the leader who have to ultimatly decide. And since there is no perfect solution there its always amazing discussion.
We are sorry to hear that! Would you mind letting us know what the error is so that we might investigate this?
They did a great job implementing board game mechanics for this one but I still prefer the now 6$ computer game.
You lose if you have 10 deaths of well I guess can’t use my usual strategy from the video game 💀
Setup and teardown take FOREVER!!! And it's a puzzle game. Once you've solved it, you know how to win it every time. If you don't you'll lose ....every time...
This is not true, the social cards and difficultly changes with them adds hundreds of variables to a game. Sure the scenario path will be the same, but mix in the society's cards and finding ways to beat them in each scenario is a different puzzle.
Highly recommend the video game. Its like a city builder with this victorian steam punk post-apocalyptic overlay. Very thematic and desperate. Also very morally compromising. I've only won it by ending up with a fascist dystopian society. I wondered how it would translate to a board game. Sounds like the theme carried over. Still worried about the bookeeping/mechanisms. Anyone who loved the video game pick it up?
i own both, the videogame and the boardgame and i love both. The boardgame feels exactly like the videogame, but with more replayability and shorter play time to finish a scenario. Only thing bothering me is setup and teardown, so normally i dedicate a whole day to frostpunk where i play 2 -3 games of it. If you like the videogame you should at least try out the boardgame version if possible. The boardgame is also a great Sologame, and a scenario can easily be finished in 2h alone, for each player more i would add 1 hour of gametime.
Look: FROSTPUNK RAP SONG 🤩
Great review, very helpful to know the various pros and cons, and that this is not really for me.
I backed this at £1, got to the pledge manager later and found out that I wasn't going to get all the benefits that other people who could afford to up front the cash before the campaign ended were getting. That pissed me off so much that I basically just didn't commit and decided that I was just not going to get it ever. I wanted it to be bad because of that and now I am just even more annoyed :P
I have to disagree, I don't see the point of playing a board game to similar to a videogame when you can play the videogame that gives you the same experience, cheaper, and more automated other than the possibility of playing this cooperatively.
Some like video games, some do not. Some prefer board games, some do not. Same can be said of all games that cover both. Gloomhaven, solitaire, even old school games like chess... each to there own, and now whichever way some one wants to experience this ip, they can.
@@DarkChrisHour Yeah you are right, I'm just saying that Zee recommended this for people that like the videogame and I think this was mainly done for actually the opposite, people that did not play the videogames so they can experience it in board game, kind of like Darkest Dungeon or This War of Mine.
@Johan O. Sure... but video games is worse for environment in just as many ways, if not more so.
The entire world is currently built to destroy and use up as much as possible as fast as possible so a few can that do not care can live like gods among men.
Same here. Half the work was done by the gaming studio. I so have to say they implemented to mechanics very well so props for that. But man, why would anyone do all that setup and maintenance when you have an almost same experience with a 6$ computer game that does everything for you, has immersive music and nice graphics??!
MILLA MILLA! Re
The whole "make the board game as much like the video game as possible" thing doesn't make much sense to me. What I want is a good board game, with the same theme as the video game. Not mechanics that work best in one medium ported to a completely different medium to remind me that I could be playing the video game instead.
Which doesn't mean a game which does that can't be good. It just isn't a thing that makes a game appealing to me.
That is the thing, it works well in both. The complexity of the video game in a board game shows a mastery in game design on both levels. This may not be for everyone, but to see that it works and works so well, has to be respected in itself, even if not liked.
I agree. When they make these very close approximations, I think it's better to just play the video game version instead.
I mean, in This War of Mine, they didn't even make an effort to truly make it multiplayer; it was still a 1-player game and they just said you could play it at higher player counts XD.
I never understood making a board game from a video game. If I wanted to play a certain game idea I'd just go access the original platform. Considering board games like this are so much more expensive it's always a hard pass. I don't get it. I'd rather play a Lacerda than deal with all this upkeep and process.
Even On Mars does not have this complexity or story telling. Some people prefer board games over video games. Some like wine over beer. It is a good game, but it is not for everyone.
Oddly enough, my partner finds Vital confusing, and overwhelming, yet understands this clearly... where even playing both forms, I found this was way more taxing... mostly due to poor rules book. I liked the board game better then video game, but I prefer video games overall. Skylines and Europa Univeralis is common games on a screen. So I think this is less one to u derstand, and you just know if you will prefer it.
I hear you. I also fail to see why I would do an hour of setup and a whole lot of dull board management if I can just boot the computer game. I mean.. it's an almost exact implementation....
I'm surprised by all the hugely positive reviews because I found the amount of upkeep excessive and tedious.
The game is a master piece and your complaining about upkeep. Ive played it a few times now and I go through all the phases very quickly now mabe 3 mins. Of course the action phase takes longer but this is the fun phase!
Games like these are often better as videogames for a reason.
Some people enjoy and tolerate different levels of upkeep and fiddlyness. Sounds like you're just on the low end.
@@Draffut2003 As someone who is on the higher end of tolerance for upkeep and fiddlyness, I would say Frostpunk requires the highest level of tolerance possible.
@Johan O. Makes sense, it seams more like a thematic kind of thing like Nemesis.
Don't like the look of this one. Boards are just black with numbers, tiles are just white with some resources that are hard to see. Meeples bland, tokens bland, they took art right from the video game or they did nothing, not a fan.
The pc was ok...no idea how this got a bg