When I signed the “Food Adulteration” decree in the _Frostpunk_, the thugs of the London gang were burning supplies on the streets. In the cold wind of minus 60 degrees, the shadow of the energy tower covered the last human city, and my engineer just reported that three frozen corpses were found. “Is it worth it?” The game suddenly popped up and questioned in the center of the screen — this was the first time I was backfired by my own policy.
The game opens at the dusk of the Ice Age. As the manager of the last steam city, I am not facing how to develop, but how to survive for 24 hours. Before the first dawn, I had a difficult choice between “delayed shifts” and “child safety shelters”. Choosing to let workers work overtime can improve efficiency by 30%, but some people will be tired; protecting children will lose labor, but it can maintain the bottom line of human nature. When I finally signed the overtime decree and looked at the new work-related injury report in the hospital, the roar of the energy tower seemed to turn into a torture of conscience.
The cruelest test happened on the eighth day. The food reserves were exhausted, and I chose between “food additives” and “human meat factories”. The former can make citizens sick but survive the cold winter, and the latter can provide stable food but change the nature of civilization forever. When I was trembling to choose additives and witnessed the hospital full the next day, a protest banner saying “We are not beasts” suddenly rose in the center of the city.
The game’s presentation of extreme cold is suffocating. When the thermometer showed minus 80 degrees, I had to sign an “emergency shift” for workers to repair the energy tower at a deadly low temperature. In the headquarters late at night, the engineer handed in the list of casualties, and there was a loud noise of a building freezing outside the window. The most desperate moment happened on the eve of the snowstorm. I was forced to choose between “human heat experiment” and “faith purification” — the former may turn citizens into fuel, and the latter will burn the so-called “infidels”.
With the advancement of the code, the city gradually became what I didn’t know. When the scout team brought back the survivors from the ice field, the citizens held the slogan “Outsiders get out”; when I set up a surveillance tower in the square, the children stopped playing. The most ironic thing is that at the time of clearance, the survival rate of the city after the blizzard was 87%, and the game commented in a cold tone: “The city has not died out, but what is the price?”
Late at night after customs clearance, I stared at the frosted window glass in a daze. The most terrible thing about this game is not the difficulty, but that it allows you to experience how every seemingly reasonable decision encroaches on human nature. When survival becomes the only goal, how are we different from cold ice?
If you also want to face the ultimate paradox of the survival of civilization, _Frostpunk_ will give you the most solemn revelation. But please remember that when the snowstorm is over, what really needs to be thawed may not be the city, but the part of humanity you choose to freeze.
