Frostpunk: The Board Game: The Kotaku Australia Review

There are lots of different kinds of board games: Ones that cause familial unrest (Monopoly, Risk), fun party games (Exploding Kittens), fun for the whole family (Carcassonne, Azul) and ones which take 6+ hours to play and require at least one member of your group to be neuroatypical and have it as a special interest. Frostpunk is a game that fits firmly in that last category.

Anyone who has played the Frostpunk video game knows that this is not a happy tale, and that persists in the board game. The world has entered a new ice age, and you must try and keep as many people as you can warm, healthy, alive and fed. Questions like “so, how many children should we sacrifice?” and “I think we should let the engineer die, do you agree?” are part of it. It’s a great time.

But, with so many board games based on video games sucking so deeply, does Frostpunk: The Board Game escape the curse?

Set up and pack down experience

You can say a lot of things about Frostpunk but “boy, that sure was a quick and easy set-up” is not one of them. There are so many pieces, and boards, and things that you need to keep track of, that all have to be set up in a certain way or you’ll get confused and all will be lost. But, and this is important, none of these boards are clearly marked with the name of what the instructions called them. This might be to avoid breaking immersion, however I found my immersion was most broken by having to frequently flip back and forth through the rule book to remind myself which board was which. Just write the name in a nice apocalyptic font or something. This could also be to make it easier to sell the game in other languages, maybe? Though, given the instructions and cards need to be printed in multiple languages, it would be worth printing the boards in multiple languages, too.

The first set up took an hour and a half, so you’ll need to factor that into your play time, or (given how obsessed with this game the right person could become), just have a dedicated Frostpunk table that’s set up at all times.

However, I like how much thought has been put into making the set up look nice. It takes up a lot of space (my 6–8-seater dining table was not big enough to fit it in perfectly), and there is an almost overwhelming number of pieces. Yet most of the pieces were explained well and earned their place in the game.

I do wish the box was better laid out, though, so it was more obvious where to put each thing to keep them separate between games. You kinda have to jumble up the cards a bit to get them to fit properly, which I did not enjoy. A more thoughtful box insert and a guide would go a long way to improve the pack down experience.

Frostpunk: The Board Game instructions

This is a game that was made with love and care. The instructions of a game set the tone for the experience, and make or break the game. The flavour text and instructions were well-written, evocative and emotional. There are also a lot of included scenarios, so you could get a group together and play each one repeatedly until you win each one and not have to touch another game for a year. Or you could play by yourself and have a (very depressing) ball.

My one complaint is that while the instructions were well written, they were poorly set out. You end up spending a lot of time unnecessarily flicking between pages. There are some sections where it will tell you which page you need to flick to in order to find that piece of relevant information, and other sections that expect you to guess. The publishers just needed to spend a bit more time on the layout to make them perfect. But, overall, the instructions and extra scenario book are both excellent.

Frostpunk: The Board Game play experience

Frostpunk could have been renamed “a set of difficult choices where there is no right answer, and you constantly have to pick between varying degrees of harm.” Though, I admit that that’s less catchy.

You by yourself, or with a group of friends, must work together to keep humanity alive in the face of overwhelming odds. You need to keep hope and motivation alive, and save as many people as you can while fighting against despair and discontent.

Within the game is a poignant message about the importance of hope and fighting through unsurmountable odds, and humanity’s will to survive in the face of almost certain death. Also that climate change deeply sucks and will only get worse, but that’s even more depressing.

Each round has a lot of steps to it, each laid out plainly, whereas a group you get to make decisions based on the information and resources that you have, and then draw a card with poetic flavour text and a mechanic that grinds you into a fine paste.

While mostly brilliant, Frostpunk is absolutely not a game for everyone. There are far more lose conditions than there are win conditions, and losing on round 12 after dedicating hours to trying to keep our group of survivors alive was disappointing. Players who see board games as something to win, and something to be fun, rather than just an experience with a story that can be shared or had solo, are not suited to this.

But as an afternoon with friends, listening to the Triple J Hottest 100, and eating lemon tart while deciding which of our citizens should starve, I actually really enjoyed it. “Enjoyed” is perhaps not the right word, but it was an experience that I’ll add to my treasured memories pile, and one that I would be interested in having again.

Another cautionary note is that this is not a game you buy to casually have a nice time with. Like, you absolutely can do that, but the experience would be much better if one person in your group was really into the story and had a firm grasp on the instructions and scenario before you start. Even though all of us had read the rule book in the days before we played, it really would have been better if someone had that passion for the game before bringing people in. While it’s not the kind of story I would get that level of passion for, it is a story I can see plenty of people getting super into (and I think one of our party is on his way to that now).

Would I recommend the Frostpunk: The Board Game?

If you are the kind of person who loves going deep into systems and games with a variety of scenarios, you are going to love it. It’s depressing as hell, and you will almost definitely lose, so if you prefer to play to win, then this is not for you.

Frostpunk: The Board Game is for people who get into games for the lore and the experience rather than the win. While it’s not perfect, it’s still so, so good.