History VideoGame / FrostPunk

* SteamPunk: The overall tech level of the game, featuring steam cores, coal-powered heat generators, and massive steam automatons.

* ''On the Edge'', the final chapter of the game, where you play as an outpost rather than an area with a generator.

* ''On The Edge'', the final chapter of the game, where you play as an outpost rather than an area with a generator.

* AnAesop: If you manage to save New London in the "On the Edge" DLC, a title card points out that this was only possible through [[TeamSpirit co-operation]].

** "The Last Autumn": Both endings, whether you sided with the Workers or the Engineers, invoke this trope. [[spoiler:While you successfully finished the Generator on time, [[ForegoneConclusion the British Empire is already falling into chaos as people fight over heat and food]]. Your people's fates are left uncertain, with mention of a raffle for places at the Generator, but they can at least take solace in the knowledge they provided a chance for some of Liverpool's citizens to survive.]]

* {{Brainwashed}}: The branches of the Book of Law on the Purpose tree give you several options for keeping your people manageable. The later options involve building a propaganda center or declaring yourself to be the bringer of God's will, and the final options on each branch involve executing dissidents. Once you take either of the Purpose branches to the end, your people will be completely dedicated to your order/faith, to the point where they will often go overboard of their own will on things like vigilante justice (tying people up and leaving them out to freeze for avoiding work) and book burning, and ''getting angry at you'' if you deconstruct the buildings of order/faith you use to enforce your rule over them. In "The Last Autumn" DLC, if you choose the union laws path and go all the way, the place will devolve into a mass-murdering communist cult (killing three people a day while chanting about the glory of the working class).

** "The Fall of Winterhome" has several of these for "A New Home". There are several events and occurrences that line up with what is discovered in ''A New Home'', implying that canonically the New Captain of Winterhome [[spoiler:didn't evacuate all the children onto the Dreadnought, allowed people to panickedly evacuate to the Freshwater Springs, left the Automaton on snow-sweeping duty on the bridge, sent a scouting team out towards New London in the hopes of spreading the word of Winterhome's demise, and so on.]] ''Yikes''.
** "The Last Autumn":

* ChooseAHandicap: In The Fall of Winterhome scenario, once you've fixed up the town and examine the generator that blew up and caused all the damage in the first place, your engineers tell you the generator is unfixable and won't last much longer until it completely shuts down, which kills your town's [[MoraleMechanic Hope]]. You have no choice but to set up a CitywideEvacuation, but you have two choices: tell the people you have no idea where you'll be going, which adds a permanent work efficiency penalty, or lie about another settlement you can go to and gain some Hope back. However, you'll later have to either [[HeKnowsTooMuch kill your engineers to uphold the lie]] or let the truth spill out and piss of the townspeople even more.

** Building chapels is a non-ideology law in "The Last Autumn", where it's all but certain that they're Christian given the name of the building and hosting of evening services. Which makes sense, given that these are people of Britain from before the Frost.
* ChummyCommies: ZigZagged with the Workers in "The Last Autumn", who are explicitly referred to in socialist terms (forming a Labor Union, London warning the player about "syndicalist" agitation, and eventually quoting Marx's "from each according to his ability") - on the one hand, they start off reasonable enough, protesting the unsafe and deprived working conditions, and when they organize a strike, they can be negotiated to pass new laws that benefit them (Hearty Meals, Comfortable Quarters, etc.), or [[FoodAsBribe simply gave extra rations]] or shorter work hours to end the strikes early. They also stand in opposition to [[EmperorScientist the Engineers]], who [[StrawVulcan coldly promote efficiency at best]], and turn the project into an outright PenalColony at worst.

** If, in "The Last Autumn", you sign the "Short Shifts" law but don't actually implement any in a very long time, you'll eventually get a message saying your workers are upset with you for making empty promises to get them to work harder and motivation will plummet.

* ExplosiveOverClocking:

* EverybodysDeadDave: The fate of [[spoiler:Winterhome, a nearby settlement with a heat generator. It means that the player's colonists are the only known humans left in the region, if not the world. In Winterhome, a riot broke out over food shortages and [[TyrantTakesTheHelm increasingly harsh rule by an Army captain]] before the generator exploded from lack of oversight. Either many of them perished from that explosion, the resulting chaos, or scattered across the region in camps. This news causes a major Hope decrease and the "Londoner" splinter movement in-game as a number of your citizens refuse to accept that London is gone and petition/plot to return to her.]] "The Fall of Winterhome" described its fate in detail, with [[spoiler:the city itself having suffered a massive upheaval that overthrew a tyrannical and incompetent Captain. The survivors then established order, cleaned up the deaths and damages, and began to inspect the generator. Eventually, a crisis occurs within the city when the engineers discovered that the generator was about to explode. They then decided to repair a nearby dreadnought to evacuate from the city, but the time and passenger capacity were too little. Thus, there were many inhabitants left behind. While the Dreadnought escaped with its fate and destination still unknown, the city of Winterhome fell into a desolate place with a destroyed generator by the time ''A New Home'' begins.]]

** "A New Home": [[spoiler: Survive the storm without descending into totalitarianism. If you feel like [[EarnYourHappyEnding going above and beyond]], there is even an achievement for obtaining this (Golden Path), where you have to beat the scenario without causing any death via harsh laws, overwork, or exposure, all while having saved everybody possible and welcoming every wave of refugee into your city]]. That being said, there are certain factors that do not count towards or against a New Home golden ending, such as [[spoiler:banishing people from the city or letting the Londoners leave, or signing specific controversial laws but not actually enacting them enough times to result in repercussions (e.g. Emergency Shifts can result in death from overworking, but only if used for several consecutive days)]].
** "The Arks": Save the seeds [[spoiler: and New Manchester]].
** "The Refugees": [[spoiler: Allow the lords into the city and peacefully resolve the class conflict.]]
** "The Fall of Winterhome": Though its ending was already sealed based on its title, [[spoiler: the closest thing to the golden ending is to evacuate as many survivors as possible from the city with the Dreadnought after the generator was discovered to be irreparable. The Dreadnought has to have enough food and cabins for all 500 passengers, and there must be enough engineers on board to help steer and maintain the thing.]]
** "The Last Autumn": Finish constructing the Generator, [[spoiler: along with the 3 upgrades that allow it to accommodate a larger population before you are shipped back to Liverpool.]]

** "The Fall of Winterhome" is a scenario that detailed the city that [[spoiler: players found in "A New Home"]]. At the time of the scenario, Winterhome had a massive revolt to overthrow [[TheNeidermeyer an abusive captain]] that destroyed half of the city along with many lives. In addition, the generator has been malfunctioning due to neglect by the said Captain and still under inspection on what is wrong with it. [[spoiler:Needless to say, [[DoomedByCanon the city's fate is already sealed]] and the only option for the players is to repair the dreadnought to evacuate the populace]].
** "The Last Autumn" takes place before the Great Frost, where you are in charge of the expedition constructing one of the Generators.

** In "The Last Autumn", there is an option to build a penal colony, which adds convicts to the workforce as forced labor, which you can add innocent workers to as well.

* TheNeidermeyer: The original captain of [[spoiler: Winterhome]] was such an unbelievable buffoon that, in some way, shape or form, he's almost singlehandedly responsible not only for the [[spoiler: eventual desertion, destruction and doom of his own town]] and essentially the challenge of the entire scenario [[spoiler: The Fall of Winterhome]], but for the near-collapse of [[spoiler: New London in "A New Home", too, since it's finding the ruins of Winterhome where there should've been a large and prosperous town that drives the Londoner schism and threatens to tear the population apart]]! How incompetent was the guy? After designing his city in the stupidest, least efficient way conceivable, signing the most inane and self-destructive laws in the literal Book, and installing a murderous dictatorship with a ZeroPercentApprovalRating, he proceeded to [[spoiler: repeatedly ignore all warnings that Winterhome's generator was breaking down]], eventually leading to the [[spoiler: generator's near explosion]] and resulting in a massive riot. The captain ordered the rioters be ''shot dead'', killing half of [[spoiler: Winterhome]]'s population and setting fire to most of the city in the process. Even after being removed from power and executed, the man's incompetence ''continues to haunt his former followers'', as it turns out that [[spoiler: the flaw in the generator, that could've probably been repaired if he'd simply acknowledged it sooner, has grown too severe and there's nothing that can be done anymore to save the town. Ultimately, no matter what the player does, the generator explodes, those who didn't escape Winterhome in time descend to cannibalism and eventually die horrible deaths, and New London's scouts finding what remained forces its own captain to embrace either Order or Faith (possibly turning into a maniacal dictator/self-proclaimed prophet himself in the process) in order to retain power.]] ''Wow!''

* NoRecycling: Averted in "The Fall of Winterhome" and "The Last Autumn" where you can retrieve wood from demolished homes and steel from abandoned factories.

* PreviousPlayerCharacterCameo: In "On the Edge", you control a small steel outpost built to redirect steel harvests to New London, the city in "A New Home". It also dabbles in RogueProtagonist as the city's demands in exchange for food supplies become ever more unreasonable, hence the need to find other settlements. This in turn angers New London and cuts off all contact. [[spoiler:Near the end of the scenario, they come crawling back, begging for aid, and it's the player's decision whether to send supplies to save the city or forsake it and deal with waves of refugees]].

** While the socialist Workers in "The Last Autumn" start out reasonable, they gradually start to become more and more extreme as you progress down their side of the Labour laws tree, culminating in them demanding a "[[KangarooCourt Revolutionary Tribunal]]" and construction of the [[PublicExecution Execution Place]], where one Engineer will be executed each day.
** Scouting [[spoiler:Site 120]] in "The Last Autumn" heavily implies this trope occurred - [[spoiler:the place is a deserted shell, with the buildings all purposefully ruined and corpses of numerous Engineers scattered all over the place or thrown into the wrecked Generator's pit, while the Workers are nowhere to be seen. Your scouts comment that it looks like a "violent rebellion" was what destroyed the site, all of which implies the Workers were responsible for the site's destruction.]]

** To ''Film/{{Snowpiercer}}'' -- while it's easy to draw comparisons of "[[SlippySlideyIceWorld world frozen over]]", the most explicit reference is made in "The Last Autumn", in a sub-plot found when scouting: [[spoiler:the team can potentially stumble across a French expedition to the region, where they intended to build a fleet of {{Cool Train}}s capable of plowing through the snow, with one of said trains being named the "[[BilingualBonus Crève-neige]]" -- unfortunately for the French, the locomotives are all completely wrecked by the time your team finds them, who can either break the sorry news to them... [[VideoGameCrueltyPotential or lie about being part of a relief effort to rob them blind]].]]

* ShutUpHannibal: During the Londoners arc in "A New Home", the Londoners will make public protests if your Discontent is high enough. If you don't use your Order/Faith workers to break up the protest, it results in more people joining the Londoners. If you keep letting the protesters speak freely, however, after the third time you get the chance to speak instead and ''dramatically'' reduce the number of Londoners.

* StrikeEpisode: In "The Last Autumn", workers will occasionally strike to demand better conditions, shorter working hours, etc. The player can either negotiate with the strikers (especially if they take the Worker's version of the Labor laws) or [[CrushingThePopulace violently break up the strikes]] (especially with the furthest points of the Engineer's version of Labor laws, where the end result is turning the project into a PenalColony relying on convict labor and watchtower guards).

** Also in "The Last Autumn", near the end, [[spoiler:you're told that the Frost is coming and London can no longer send you supplies. They'll send an icebreaker in a week to get you out, but you're on your own until then. Unless you finished all the work available to you, in which case you evacuate ''on the last supply ships'' and the game ends there. If there's nothing left for you to do, why stick around?]]

** In "The Last Autumn", [[spoiler: siding with the workers and empowering them to form [[TrainingThePeacefulVillagers The People's Militia]]]] eventually results in an event where [[spoiler: the militia takes [[PersecutedIntellectuals some of the engineers who they deemed most abusive]], and [[VigilanteExecution are planning to lead them away to an execution]].]] The player's three options: Option 1) [[spoiler: Let the executions happen.]] Option 2) [[spoiler: Organize a "[[KangarooCourt Revolutionary Tribunal]]", pass [[ReignOfTerror the "Terror" law]], and construct the [[PublicExecution Execution Place]], where one person will be executed each day.]] Or Option 3) [[spoiler: Promise the "Revolutionary Tribunal", [[ILied but never get around to passing Terror]], causing Motivation to drop, and Discontent to rise, but saving the lives of the Engineers who would have been killed.]]

A sequel, ''Frostpunk 2'', was announced in August 2021, set in the same universe 30 years after the first game, following a new technological breakthrough with the discovery of oil. A release is not expected before spring 2023.

Unlike the majority of city management games, the game includes emotional and survival aspects with having to manage meagre resources and passing laws to prevent the populace crossing the DespairEventHorizon, which involves giving them hope to survive by working together, or by fear and terror and forcing them to do your bidding under penalty of death. The default scenario, ''A New Home'', has the player assume the role of a Captain who's in charge of New London (named as such if the city survives); additional scenarios (''The Arks'', ''The Refugees'' and ''The Fall of Winterhome'') involving other locations are unlocked after surviving for 20 days in ''A New Home''. Later on, an "endless mode" was added, with different settings: ''Endurance'', ''Builders'' (where players have to build a generator) and ''Serenity''.

* ''The Last Autumn'', a large story based prequel to ''A New Home'' where your goal is to create a generator for Liverpool's evacuation before the bitter cold sets in.

* AchievementMockery: You get an achievement for failing the Serenity version of Endless mode. For context, Serenity provides the basic resource gathering structures without having to research them, survivors are easier to come by (thanks to storm shelters having tons of them that periodically appear on the scouting map), and you start off with more survivors and resources in general. Basically the only way to fail is to do so deliberately by using overdrive on the generator for essentially no reason at all, or by not assigning the citizens anything to do for the first few days.

* BaseOnWheels: Dreadnoughts are large tracked steam locomotives that traversed to the Frostlands on the now-frozen sea, which can move on ice sheets but has the possibility of being trapped by collapsing ice sheets. In the game, the Dreadnoughts are found abandoned with salvageable parts when scouting across the landscape. This plays a major role in the ''Fall of Winterhome'' DLC scenario, [[spoiler: where one crisis in the story tries to get one of them restored when the generator is about to explode]].

** Taken even further with ''The Last Autumn'' DLC wherein you have to choose from two factions which are the engineers or the worker's unions. The advantage of the worker's unions are to keep your workers happy and to shut down strikes peacefully and cheaply (while later on if you decide to be a tyrant, you can force them to work in incredibly dangerous conditions and keep motivation up permanently with daily executions); but on the other side, we have the engineers, who by their very presence will make the workplace far safer and just a bit later make the work far more efficient (and if you're still having problems with striking then you can later basically enslave the workers, with enough supervision by armed engineers). Both undoubtedly help production at first for their own reasons but if you take them both too far, it will lead into cruel tyranny, which ironically both factions accuse each over of at the start.

* CataclysmBackstory: The Great Frost began in 1886 of the ''Frostpunk'' timeline, resulting in human civilization essentially collapsing and then having to rebuild. No-one's entirely sure what caused it, though it's confirmed that volcanic eruptions in the south played a role with [[spoiler:meteor impacts and a dimming Sun theorised to be contributing factors. Endless Mode further muddies the waters with reference to anthropogenic sulphur aerosols and an alleged DoomsdayDevice named "Saffron Cloud."]]

* CitywideEvacuation: In ''Fall of Winterhome'', this becomes the only option due to the generator gradually going critical beyond repair. Once the citizens find out, the Hope you worked hard to build up will plummet ''again'', and you can either lie about another city they can escape to (which will come back to bite you later) or suffer a work efficiency penalty. The only way out is to [[spoiler:fix up the nearby abandoned Dreadnought and get as many people in there as you can afford to]]. The bare minimum requires a lot of surplus coal. For the best case scenario, you need a ''massive'' amount of steel, nearly every Steam Core available, and enough food rations for the trip. You also have to stop the citizens from trying to escape on their own.

* GenreDeconstruction: This game is one of the few works that properly depicts the dystopian and punk part of SteamPunk where the downtrodden and never do'well attempt to escape the coming Ice Age in arks meant for the British Elite. The survivors are not typical upper class citizens with zeppelins and monocles but gin-addled workers and children who may be forced to work as they try to face an uncertain future as social upheaval pushes them towards fanatical/nationalism/revolutionary fervor and more often than not, TheNeedsOfTheMany comes into play with few if any satisfying outcomes.

** "The Last Autumn": Finish constructing the Generator, [[spoiler: along with the 3 upgrades that allows it to accommodate a larger population before you are shipped back to Liverpool.]]

** Many players will not notice the ability to upgrade by building over old structures (houses, hunter lodges, and resource gathering ones) rather than dismantling and building new ones.

** In ''The Fall of Winterhome'', [[spoiler: when the generator finally reaches its critical breaking point you are handed the decision to either evacuate immediately, force your engineers to stay while you evacuate under the watchful eye of Guards or Oathkeepers, or stay behind with your engineers to lead them to the cold and bitter end. Whether just your engineers or you and your engineers choose to stay behind, your sacrifices gains the city one final crucial day to evacuate as many people as you can.]]

* HumansAreWhite: Not only is every human in the game white, but almost all of them are British. The only exceptions are the handful of Americans who survived the fall of Tesla City and the Norwegian Fridtjof Nansen. Perhaps justified was that it was stated in the loading screen that the southern colonies were the first to fall, being unprepared for cold weather, though this leaves the question of what happened to the Inuit, Yupik, Iñupiat, Chukchi, and various other indiginous groups that live in the far north. Convicts hired in ''The Last Autumn'' are depicted as certainly ''not'' white.

* InstantWinCondition: Every scenario (except Endless mode, obviously) has one, usually time based. You can exploit this by giving promises that you have no way or intention of fulfilling, because the deadline for the promise is longer than the end of the game.

* RareCandy: Steam cores. They cannot be manufactured, only looted from very specific encounters, from dismantling the buildings or automatons that use them, or from Tesla City in ''A New Home'' if you choose to explore and set up an outpost there. Steam cores are extremely vital to the running of a healthy city, being part of almost every important upgrade in the lategame and the source of power for your automatons, as well as a requirement to even build some of the core structures like hothouses coal mines.

* RidiculouslyFastConstruction: Every building only take a few man hours to build, from cheap tents to factories. The only catch is you need to have free citizens available to walk up to the construction site and build it. Another thing is despite the fact much of the game involves managing temperatures and free time, your citizens will ''never'' complain about construction, even if you task them at the dead of night after an extended shift in the middle of an ice storm.

** In the same scenario, workers witnessing their comrades dying in the fires and explosions will make them go on strike since no one told them that the Generator is supposed to save people during the apocalypse, and they are not eager to die for company profits. On the other hand, serving them cocaine ensures their co-operation, but sooner or later it will affect their health.

* TooFastToStop: In endless mode one landmark in Frostland is the 'ice boat', a boat fitted with skates that could very easily build up speed across the ice flats on the frozen seas... and no brakes. Your scouts find it in pieces, presumably lodged in something it couldn't steer away from.

** Wood plays a role in early structures and is always needed in research. It can also be transformed to coal in a charcoal kiln.

* AmbiguousEnding: ''The Arks'' [[spoiler: ends before the storm strikes. The ending does not mention the ultimate post-storm fate of the arks other than "We did our best". Except when the player never finds New Manchester, then [[https://i.imgur.com/DhuDWqN.png the end message]] states that it was found frozen to death after the storm.]]

* DoomedByCanon: [[spoiler:In order to unlock ''The Fall of Winterhome'' you have to progress through ''A New Home'' to at least Day 20. Day 15 of ''A New Home'' reveals Winterhome has been destroyed if you haven't already scouted it, with the former scenario basically detailing the lead-up to Winterhome's canonical doom.]]

* EverybodysDeadDave: The fate of [[spoiler:Winterhome, a nearby settlement with a heat generator. It means that the player's colonists are the only known humans left in the region, if not the world. In Winterhome, a riot broke out over food shortages and [[TyrantTakesTheHelm increasingly harsh rule by an Army captain]] before the generator exploded from lack of oversight. Either many of them perished from that explosion, the resulting chaos, or scattered across the region in camps. This news causes a major Hope decrease and the "Londoner" splinter movement in-game as a number of your citizens refuse to accept that London is gone and petition/plot to return to her.]] "The Fall of Winterhome" described its fate in detail, with [[spoiler: the city itself having suffered a massive upheaval that overthrew a tyrannical and incompetent Captain. The survivors then established order, cleaned up the deaths and damages, and began to inspect the generator. Eventually, a crisis occurs within the city when the engineers discovered that the generator was about to explode. They then decided to repair a nearby dreadnought to evacuate from the city, but the time and passenger capacity were too little. Thus, there were many inhabitants left behind. While the Dreadnought escaped with its fate and destination still unknown, the city of Winterhome fell into a desolate place with a destroyed generator by the time ''A New Home'' begins.]]

* ForegoneConclusion: The Fall of Winterhome is, well, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin about how Winterhome falls]] [[spoiler: with "victory" coming from evacuating the city, and trying to save as many people as possible]].

* IAmAHumanitarian:
** If the situation becomes [[NoPartyLikeADonnerParty dire]], the city can resort to this by passing the "Alternative Food Source" law.
** [[spoiler:The final entry of the Winterhome survivors simply reads "God forgive us, we're eating our own dead. There's no hope."]]

* NoPartyLikeADonnerParty: In ''A New Home'', you can find a camp where people ate each other to survive.
** If there's a mass starvation crisis occurring in the city, a series of events involving this causes your city to devolve into cannibalism if you allow it.
* NoRecycling: Averted in "The Fall of Winterhome" and "The Last Autumn" where you can retrieve wood from demolished homes and steel from abandoned factories.
* NotSoDifferentRemark: [[spoiler:Lord Craven's last words. If he's saved from the lynch mob, he leaves a note before leaving of his own accord; in it, he observes that power corrupts and that the player character will eventually become like him, both powerful and corrupt/evil. If he's left to die, he remarks that he would do anything to help his people, and that the PlayerCharacter would - and is - doing the same. How true this rings depends on you.]]
* TheNeedsOfTheMany: The Game. Players have to weigh carefully various options and sacrifices, including serving soup to stretch out rations or enabling child labour.
* TheNeidermeyer: The original captain of [[spoiler: Winterhome]] was such an unbelievable buffoon that, in some way, shape or form, he's almost singlehandedly responsible not only for the [[spoiler: eventual desertion, destruction and doom of his own town]] and essentially the challenge of the entire scenario [[spoiler: The Fall of Winterhome]], but for the near-collapse of [[spoiler: New London in "A New Home", too, since it's finding the ruins of Winterhome where there should've been a large and prosperous town that drives the Londoner schism and threatens to tear the population apart]]! How incompetent was the guy? After designing his city in the stupidest, least efficient way conceivable, signing the most inane and self-destructive laws in the literal Book, and installing a murderous dictatorship with a ZeroPercentApprovalRating, he proceeded to [[spoiler: repeatedly ignore all warnings that Winterhome's generator was breaking down]], eventually leading to the [[spoiler: generator's near explosion]] and resulting in a massive riot. The captain ordered the rioters be ''shot dead'', killing half of [[spoiler: Winterhome]]'s population and setting fire to most of the city in the process. Even after being removed from power and executed, the man's incompetence ''continues to haunt his former followers'', as it turns out that [[spoiler: the flaw in the generator, that could've probably been repaired if he'd simply acknowledged it sooner, has grown too severe and there's nothing that can be done anymore to save the town. Ultimately, no matter what the player does, the generator explodes, those who didn't escape Winterhome in time descend to cannibalism and eventually die horrible deaths, and New London's scouts finding what remained forces its own captain to embrace either Order or Faith (possibly turning into a maniacal dictator/self-proclaimed prophet himself in the process) in order to retain power.]] ''Wow!''

** The "Alternative Food Source" law allows you to cannibalise the corpses of dead citizens, providing food rations at the cost of potential penalties to hope and dissent when used.
** [[spoiler:The last survivors of Winterhome resorted to eating their own dead after the Generator exploded. All it managed to do was extend their lives a few more days before exposure and hunger killed them all.]]

* TheElitesJumpShip: Defied in ''The Refugees''. The elites of Britain were planning on doing this, but before they could the workers [[TheDogBitesBack seized the transport ship by force]] and left those elites behind.

* IAmAHumanitarian: If the situation becomes [[NoPartyLikeADonnerParty dire]], the city can resort to this by passing the "Alternative Food Source" law.

** "The Fall of Winterhome" is a scenario that detailed the city that [[spoiler: players found in "A New Home"]]. At the time of the scenario, Winterhome had a massive revolt to overthrow [[TheNeidermeyer an abusive captain]] that destroyed half of the city along with many lives. In addition, the generator has been malfunctioning due to neglect by the said Captain and still under inspection on what is wrong with it. [[spoiler:Needless to say, the city's fate is already sealed and the only option for the players is to repair the dreadnought to evacuate the populace]].

* NotSoDifferentRemark: [[spoiler:Lord Craven's last words, if the player prevent his execution. He leaves a note before leaving of his own accord; in it, he observes that power corrupts and that the player character will eventually become like him, both powerful and corrupt/evil. How true this rings depends on you.]]%%Kindly fill in the example if he's executed.

* PunkPunk: A frozen world crossed with SteamPunk.

* AmbiguousEnding: ''The Arks'' [[spoiler: ends before the storm strikes. The ending does not mention the ultimate post-storm fate of the arks other than "We did our best". Except when the player never finds New Manchester, then the end message states that it was found frozen to death after the storm.]]

* ApocalypticLog: If you fail to save the Seedling Arks and New Manchester in the Arks, the game over entry is one of these.

%%* TheArk: See NoahsStoryArc.

** Astoundingly, there is a unique ending narration for completing the ''A New Home'' scenario without ever turning the generator on ''once'', something that is almost certainly impossible outside of Easy Mode.

%%** "The Last Autumn": Both endings, whether you sided with the Workers or the Engineers, invoke this trope. Not to mention the knowledge of what is yet to come in the world, regardless of how well you do.%%Explain how this fits.

* ButThouMust:
** ''A New Home'' forces you to pick between Order or Faith to continue past a certain point.

* CuttingOffTheBranches: ''On The Edge'' takes place after the events of ''A New Home'' and have it canon that the City did survive with a certain set of laws (which they force upon the settlements, and [[spoiler: which is your first warning that New Home isn't very well run.]]). Considering that they have a population of about 550, the Captain apparently forced the survivors of the Frostlands to found the outposts for him instead, and likely did not get the GoldenEnding.

** In ''The Last Autumn'', [[spoiler:if you successfully complete the generator but your colony collapses before the rescue ship arrives, the rescuers will report back to London that you and your workers sacrificed yourselves to ensure the completion of the generator and will be remembered as heroes.]]

* ItsAWonderfulFailure: The game has a plethora of negative endings that result in the city's doom, or your personal death or banishment.

* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: One of the locations your scouts can find is a cairn with both people and supplies buried beneath it. Your scouts insist in their report that the supplies were not intended to be grave goods for the dead to use in the afterlife. If that were the case, then your scouts would be grave-robbers after all.

** The people will eventually come for ''you'' if you let discontent rise too high.

** For that matter, the "[[NoNameGiven first flying hunter]]" of Endless Mode most certainly volunteered out of a sense of adventure and most certainly did not [[Humiliating Wager lose a bet]].

''Frostpunk'' is a survival-based city-building game released on April 24th, 2018 by Polish developer 11 Bit Studios, the makers of ''VideoGame/ThisWarOfMine''.

* CosmicHorrorStory: While a very unusual take on the genre, the series of discoveries showing [[spoiler: mankind's desperation to find the cause for the endless winter, which ultimately fails]], has surprisingly many characteristics of it. [[spoiler: There is no comprehensible intelligence or intent behind the disaster which has brought the Earth to its knees. It's nothing human science can explain, nor is it something that could make sense on a religious or mystical level. It does not seem to be mankind's punishment, and there's no special reason to it. It just happened, and there's nothing that anyone can do about it.]] The theme of mankind facing not merely destruction but the realization of its utter ''insignificance'' in the great scheme of things defines the Cosmic Horror elements of the story more than any amount of tentacled aliens could've.

* AwesomeButImpractical: While the concept of Charcoal Kiln (a structure that converts wood into coal) is impressive, the infinite numbers of coal made by coal thumper made it more efficient than relying on wood to make fuel.
** The charcoal kiln however uses fewer workers than the coal thumber and with wall drills you will have an endless supply of wood to convert into coal.

** ''A New Home'' forces you to pick between Order or Faith to continue past a certain point. As some annoyed players have pointed out, that means that the ending narration will inevitably have ''some'' kind of imaginary atrocity to accuse you of by the ending, lest you not grasp the gravity of the situation.
** The player does not have to proceed through the entire Order or Faith path and can get away with only some of the early and milder laws passed. As long as you do not choose the last two extreme laws in the sequence, [[spoiler: you will get an ending stating that in spite of everything, you "didn't cross the line." However, in the Faith path, picking the ''Religious Denunciation'' law is considered "crossing the line".]]
** In general, it's flat-out impossible to withdraw a passed law, even when the circumstances change, the most egregious example being Child Labor vs. Engineering Apprenticeship. Extra working hands are sorely needed on the initial stage, while rapid research grows more important later, but nope, you're stuck with the former, and also branded as a child exploiter.

* AluminumChristmasTrees: For most players, the whole survival routine may seem like an artistic license, and the techniques used as a metaphor/fiction... Until you remember that nearly all of these were actually used during the ''Siege of Leningrad'' in real life in 1941-1944. Working around the clock to sustain infrastructure (plus produce weapons for the front), fighting cold and apathy, inventing ways to cook the inedible things (yes, these sawdust meals and growing lichen recipes were used... and corpse-eating too), sending kids to schools just to pretend that ''something'' is normal, not to mention church and guards trying to keep the situation under control and give people some sense of hope. The game is fiction, but it does not bring up anything that never existed in our own reality.
** ''The Arks'' are unintentionally based on a real event from the same Siege. The Seed Fund of Leningrad (tons of hand-picked grain and seeds) was opened after the war and found completely untouched, in a city without a single cat, rat or a bird left. Scientists kept the seeds warm (after moving numerous specimens from the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlovsk_Experimental_Station Pavlovsk Experimental Station]]), sometimes with their own bodies, but did not dare take any for themselves over the course of three years of starvation.

** In the same scenario, workers witnessing their comrades dying in the fires and explosions will make them go on strike since no one told them that the Generator is supposed to save people during the apocalypse, and they are not eager to die for company profits. On the other hand, serving them cocaine (no, really) ensures their co-operation, but sooner or later it will affect their health.

A sequel, ''Frostpunk 2'', was announced in August 2021, set in the same universe 30 years after the first game, following a new technological breakthrough with the discovery of oil.

** ''On the Edge'' is also a mild example. While it retains the same general mechanics of heat, construction, and healthcare, the standard resource gathering is largely replaced by trade. Three other settlements capable of providing food, coal, and wood are operating in the region as well as your own, which can provide steel and steam cores. To gain resources needed to survive, you must trade supplies with the other settlements outright or help them improve their conditions for a reward. Maintaining and managing your relationship with others rather then your own production is the primary gimmick.* UnproblematicProstitution:

* AndNowForSomethingCompletelyDifferent:
** ''Fall of Winterhome'' vastly shakes up the formula of the base game; you essentially play in reverse for a while, as you must dismantle or clear out half the ruins of your city, then spend the rest of the scenario trying to evacuate (likely dismantling more of the city as you go).
** In ''The Arks'', players only have access to Adaptation laws. The only manpower available are Engineers and Automatons, and there is no influx of manpower throughout the scenario.
** ''The Last Autumn'' takes things even further, with heating being a non-issue as the temperature will be hovering around a mild 10 degrees Celsius above freezing (until the Frost approaches eventually). Instead, the main hazard you will have to worry about is the working conditions for the Imperial Exploration Company's employees. Of course, [[FromBadToWorse when the Frost hits...]] Oh, and Automatons are not available as well.
** ''On the Edge'' is also a mild example. While it retains the same general mechanics of heat, construction, and healthcare, the standard resource gathering is largely replaced by trade. Three other settlements capable of providing food, coal, and wood are operating in the region as well as your own, which can provide steel and steam cores. To gain resources needed to survive, you must trade supplies with the other settlements outright or help them improve their conditions for a reward. Maintaining and managing your relationship with others rather then your own production is the primary gimmick.

* UnproblematicProstitution: