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Frostpunk is out on Nintendo Switch, and it's the best and worst thing that's happened to me since Skyrim came out on Switch. And I'm never going to delete it from this console, just like I'll never delete Skyrim, for better or for worse It's either yes or no with Kurt and Davina, the series where I can tell you whether a game is Kurt's game or not. And the good news is that it doesn't determine whether you play something or not. Instead, once you understand my perspective and what I value in games, hopefully it will help you form your own perspective and play things that might just not be for Kurt, but could definitely be for you. And today we're talking about a 2018 game that was
released on consoles in 2019, but now on the ultimate console it belongs on, Frostpunk on Nintendo Switch. And I have good news and bad news. This is the best way to play this game. So not only do I find this game absolutely fantastic, I also consider it one of the best city builders of all time. And, for that matter, the best city builder for survival. Urban planning is a special genre for a certain type of people. Many people like city builders because they give them the opportunity to relax, to create a vision of the world they want to see fit, whether it's zigzagging roads only on city skylines, which is what I do, or creating the perfect traffic system.
Frostpunk-that's not the case. That's the essence of Frostpunk. Set in a fictional London in 1886, which has survived a catastrophic ice age, a small group of survivors must now venture out into the icy tundra of the unknown and start a new London, a new world for themselves. Everything in the game surrounds the very idea of keeping warm. So the very center of your city is a generator that heats a small area around it. And then it falls on your shoulders to ensure survival. This means gathering resources, building new technologies, building houses, and then developing technologies to heat those houses, creating heaters to heat certain areas, and also improving the generator to heat more
camps around it. But that's not all, because you need to form a new government. You must create new laws for your survivors to adapt. And, let's say, creating a new government with new laws is not easy, because one thing sounds great in theory, but, of course, there is always a drawback that needs to be taken into account. There are other laws that seem really bad, but could very well be beneficial to your survival. Every choice you make in this game has a cause and effect, the consequences of some of which you won't even see until much later. Because it's not just about resources, it's not just about creating new laws, it's not just about creating a new London, it's about giving your people
hope to continue living. But that's the constant balance of this game. You must balance the survivors' dissatisfaction as well as their hope. And keeping them under control is, well, a very difficult thing, which taught me an extremely valuable lesson about myself. This game has a great system where people will approach you. They want the houses to be heated. So you have three options. Heat all the houses, heat some of the houses, or tell them to pack up, get out of their boots, and endure the cold for a bit. Because heating homes requires resources.
Resources require manpower, and manpower requires time. Time that you can control. You can create emergency shifts, such as 24- hour shifts, so that people can get all the coal they need to run the generator. But 24-hour shifts create dissatisfaction. They can even cause frostbite in people. This can even lead to death. This is not a game that cheers me up. I also started playing this game around the height of COVID, which must have been a strange catharsis for me. Yeah, I wouldn't say you should play this game if you want to relax, unless you want to relax in the cold. So the valuable lesson she taught me is that when I first played this game, I thought, you know what? I can please everyone. I'm going to heat all the houses. I am going to provide
enough food for everyone and save some of it. I will be able to maintain heat in homes for a long period of time I will make sure that the people in my city are happy, and most importantly, I will not.I will not approve of a child labor law. I failed all the items, including child labor. Child labor in this game is essentially a cheat code if you don't know what you're doing. This game has three campaigns out of the box, and the first campaign has you spending 30 in-game days preparing for another horrific catastrophic storm. This is cruel. You will feel despair. You will feel the weight of every choice you make, including those you must make to ensure your survival. Yes, this game came out a long time ago. It has been available on
other consoles and, of course, PC for many, many years. In fact, a few years ago we even got a sequel, which I wrote an eight out of ten review on gamespot.com. But why is it so important that it came out on Switch? Well, obviously because it's portable, and it's a great portable game if you don't want to stress about the laundry room, stay up late in bed, or maybe skip dinner like I did because this game is now on Switch, and it's very dangerous. This is a game I've wanted portable for a very long time. There is a mobile version of it, but it just pales in comparison to the game itself. Since it's on PC, it runs on Steam Deck, where I've played it on Steam Deck quite often. However,
despite the game being available on consoles, the PC version doesn't have built-in controller support, so I had to find my own quirky way to play on the Steam Deck, which wasn't very good, but it worked because I made it work because I wanted it to work . The truth is, the Steam Deck isn't as portable as this dude. There are some minor noticeable flaws due to it being on Switch. In particular, some of the 2D images are quite distorted, but it doesn't really affect me because the actual moment-to-moment experience of the game is exactly as it should be. This is cruel. This is perfect. So why is Frostpunk a game for K? Well, I look at games very holistically. I love seeing every part of a game, from its music to its visuals, design, and text,
and I love seeing how all of these things fall into place. Even when these individual things aren't necessarily great, if they add up to the overall experience, then I think it's successful. And for me, Frostpunk is a masterclass in creating a sense of despair while still maintaining a sense of hope and encouraging me to not only think of it almost as a puzzle, but also to challenge another part of my brain that I like to massage, which is strange to say, but it's true. The feeling that I can't overcome something, but then, despite all the difficulties, I can do it right at the last minute. That's why survival horror has stuck in my brain as the perfect genre, when done right, where I can balance that sense of tension and
payoff. I work very well under pressure. I do n't know why, but the doors of my brain open when it seems like everything around me is collapsing, and that's when it's like the lights go on and I start shooting at full power. Whether I succeed in the end is irrelevant. Personally, I think I like the idea of building cities and the concept more than the actual practice of playing them. I play them. I have City Skylines on Switch, and it will stay there forever, too, but for me it can be a passive experience, meaning I know I'm interacting with it to turn off my brain, to detach myself from something, and just enjoy playing around and experimenting with little things here and there, creating some kind of city idea or
experiment with a city. But Frostpunk forces me to make decisions and take ownership of them in a way that I just.I can't really point to another city builder that does that. It satisfies my curiosity about city builders while also developing another part of my brain, which is tension, friction, and combines it into one, and it's just like a beautiful mashup that I just can't stop playing. It's also so exciting because every time, even when you succeed, it feels like you did everything wrong. And I don't know what's wrong with me, but I like it. So why is this the best and worst thing that has happened to me since Skyrim came out on Switch?
This experience allowed me to play Skyrim whenever and wherever I wanted, and gave me the opportunity to truly enjoy the game in a way I couldn't before. I've always loved Skyrim, but having it with me on the road, in bed, in the laundry room, made me never stop exploring this world to the point that it actually influenced my work. Not exactly, but, you know, something like that. And in the short week that Frostpunk has been on Switch, I can already feel the same things starting to happen, and I don't expect to stop playing this game anytime soon or for
years to come, just as I still play Skyrim on my Switch to this day. I can't do anything about it. Anyway, all this suggests is that Kurt is saying yes to Frostpunk on Switch. If you like this and want to recommend games to me so I can see if they are Kurt games, or even challenge the notion of what you think a Kurt game is, please leave your feedback in the comments. I will play anything, and I will not play "yes" to the games you recommend to me. So do it. I've been doing this for a long time because I believe in the "yes-no" rating system. And of course, as a GameSpot reviewer, I rate GameSpot on a scale of 1 to 10, but that doesn't mean I can't offer a specific perspective on
something, because who knows? I may have been writing a review of a game I would have called a "no" despite giving it a normal rating. This is not true. Actually, yes, no. Harold Halibut, I gave this game a seven, but I think it's a no. It's not that it's a game I don't think is best for me. Anyway, thanks for watching.
