Hardcore Casual

The Forest has been on my wishlist for a long, long time, largely in part because the game has been in Early Access for a long, long time. It’s finally out of EA with version 1.0, and so I finally bought it. For $20 I got about 15 hours out of it, and I enjoyed most of those 15, so not a bad buy.

The odd thing about the game is that up front, its a survival game sorta similar to ARK or Rust or all those games. You run around, you collect resources, you build a base, you collect/upgrade gear. The big difference is that while Forest is fine in that regard, its the weakest part of the game and could be completely removed without it affecting my enjoyment of it.

The good stuff in Forest is the mystery, the exploration, and towards the end, the story. The game starts with a plane crash, and as you wake up, someone is taking your child while you hopelessly crawl to stop them. You are on a peninsula infested with cannibals and mutants, and seemingly everyone else is dead. Your main goal is to rescue your child, but a side goal is finding all the passengers of the plane. The area itself has had plenty of strange events in its past, which you uncover from picking up small clues like pictures, photos, and recordings. The setting/feel is kinda similar to the show Lost, in the best possible way.

There is plenty to find on land, but the real meat of the danger and mystery is found in the complex set of caves that run all through the area. Here is where the game truly shines, as exploring the caves is terrifying, both in the imagery you find and because the damn enemies can be really tricky and often kill you, leading to either a capture or a reload. Speaking of enemies, they are all rather unique and disturbing, and have some fantastically creepy AI. They really are the stars of the game.

I had two main issues with the game, one I fixed, and one that just is. The fixable issue is, at original settings, the caves are just too dark. Even with a light source, you can’t see much of anything, which is not only annoying, but you also miss out on the cool imagery you should be seeing. However the game has multiple light modes, and I found one that finally worked for me (its a bit too bright during the day, but not terrible).

The non-fixable ‘issue’ was the combat. Again its somewhat similar to ARK, in that its first-person and melee feels a little clunkier than it should. In other games that can be fine if the challenge ISN’T in surviving the enemies, but since so much of Forest is based on the enemies, the combat being a little clunky hurts. The other problem with combat is once you figure out that the optimal solution is to basically stun-lock enemies with fast weapons, combat goes from dangerous to a click-fest of meh. The bigger enemies you still need to be careful around, and large groups can pose a problem, but that’s about it.

Finally, the most surprising thing about The Forest is how much I got into it’s story towards the end. Piecing the clues together around the midgame was fun, and the last 10% or so of the game is a huge rush of discovery, change of pace, and one final and creepy boss fight. The ending is also really well done (the new 1.0 ending).

So my holdout on Frostpunk lasted all of a day.

Two things convinced me. The first was watching a stream that made it more obvious the game is a city builder at its core, and since I haven’t played a game like that since Forest Village, I was interested. The second was the streamer stating the game was hard. You tell me a game in a genre I enjoy is hard, and you have my attention (assuming its not a total garbage ‘hard’ game).

All of the below is based off beating the first scenario once, in about 7-8 hours.

I’ll get a bunch of the basics out of the way first. The game runs well, only crashed once for me, and has enjoyable and sometimes surprisingly great graphics and sound. It feels and performance like a finished product, and not a title still in development.

The theme of the game is its 1888, the whole world is frozen, and you lead a group of people to build perhaps the last city. Staying warm is critical, and the temperature will rise and fall as the game goes. You need food, you need to treat frostbite, and you need wood+steel to build things. You send out scouts to explore an overworld that has points-of-interest, and there are two tech trees (an actual tech tree, and a ‘laws’ system which is a different style of tech tree that also opens up new abilities and buildings).

The gameplay itself is really interesting. As mentioned, the core of the game is building a city, but here you build with far more purpose than in most such games. In others, you build to build a larger city, while here you are building to survive, both the initial rough conditions of the cold, and the ongoing problems the game throws at you. Perhaps for the first time in city builder history, the concept of ‘disasters’ isn’t an annoying tornado making you rebuild a few items, or triggering a volcano once after you save to watch it destroy things. No, here disasters fit the setting perfectly, and how you handle them has many long-term impacts. They shape the story of your city, and by the end had me really invested in its survival.

Another change to the typical city builder formula is how you place your buildings. Rather than a normal grid system, in Frostpunk you build outward, in rings, from the central heating unit. This does two things. One, it gives the city a unique look, and one that fits the theme very well. The other is more gameplay oriented; buildings closer to the core are generally easier to keep warm. Different buildings have different sizes, and before long building the city becomes a puzzle of trying to make the pieces fit without too much wasted space.

Frostpunk is made by the developers of This War of Mine, and the strength of the narrative and the emotions of the writing shine here as brightly as they did in TWOM. What is also nice is that the story and emotions aren’t told in page-length blocks of text; the writing accomplishes so much in short, precise bursts of text, which really helps to keep the pace going. Much like TWOM, there isn’t much happiness in Frostpunk, but there are plenty of great moments where the human spirit is shown in a positive light (and plenty of negative too).

Finally, no spoilers, but the ending of the game, both the final gameplay moments and the actual ending itself, are amazing. I can’t remember the last time I’ve played a game where the ending was this good. It has me wanting to play this scenario over again, because there are a lot of things I could have done differently. I’ll likely do that once I’ve completed the two other scenarios currently in the game (devs have plans to add more as well).

If you enjoy city builders, or just unique gaming experiences, Frostpunk is can’t-miss. It snuck up on me, but its a gem easily worth the current $30 price tag.