History VideoGame / FrostPunk

* GreaterScopeVillain: [[DownplayedTrope A mild example]] in the former Captain of Winterhome. He is not responsible for the catastrophe that has enveloped the world, but as described under TheNeidermeyer, his tyrannical reign of Winterhome and [[DoNotGoGentle violent refusal to step down]] led to the eventual destruction of the city. The entire plot of ''The Fall of Winterhome'' revolves around cleaning up his mess, while the discovery of what happened to the city also leads to significant problems for New London in ''A New Home''.

* 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!''

* GreaterScopeVillain: [[DownplayedTrope A mild example]] in the former Captain of Winterhome. He is not responsible for the catastrophe that has enveloped the world, but as described under TheNeidermeyer, his tyrannical reign of Winterhome and [[DoNotGoGentle violent refusal to step down]] led to the eventual destruction of Winterhome. The entire plot of ''The Fall of Winterhome'' revolves around cleaning up his mess, while the discovery of what happened to the city also leads to significant problems for New London in ''A New Home''.

*** The end of the [[spoiler:superstorms]] has temperatures spike from -150 degrees to ''-30'' degrees in minutes. A great sign of a new hopeful dawn, if it wasn’t for the fact that such a jump in temperatures in real life would kill everyone from temperature shock. This was understandably ignored due to the game’s theme.

** Sometimes, citizens will refuse to eat rations because they're busy elsewhere, or in medical care. There's no way to give direct orders to individual people (save to remove them from employment if they're working), so the only option is to shut down or demolish the building they're staying at. This can get truly problematic in ''The Refugees'' where one objective is to feed all the people before time runs out.

* 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]].

** Having your foraging party looting the Lost Crates point of interest will award some minor but valuable resources...that were meant for Winterhome's generator, implying that [[ForWantOfANail had they received this shipment of parts as intended, things could have turned out much differently]]. Oops. The name of the achievement you gained from doing so basically spells it out in no uncertain terms.

* {{Railroading}}: Most of the scenarios have this. Using ''A New Home'' as an example, [[spoiler:you'll be forced into the Londoner arc by Day 15 at the latest, when a dying survivor from the area collapses at the gates of New London; you can trigger the arc earlier if New London scouts reach Winterhome earlier. The Londoner Arc is also resolved after 15 days at the latest; it's not difficult to resolve it earlier. After the Londoner arc, the end-game is near with the 3 waves of refugees, the preparation and then the Super Storm]].

* GreaterScopeVillain: [[DownplayedTrope A mild example]] in the former Captain of Winterhome. He is not responsible for the catastrophe that has enveloped the world, but his tyrannical reign of Winterhome and [[DoNotGoGentle violent refusal to step down]] led to the eventual destruction of Winterhome. The entire plot of ''The Fall of Winterhome'' revolves around cleaning up his mess, while the discovery of what happened to the city also leads to significant problems for New London in ''A New Home''.

* ApocalypseHow: While it is difficult to tell, it appears to be a class 2 or 3b. While humanity has not gone extinct there are only a handful of cities left, and the population of these cities ranges from a few dozen to a few hundred. [[spoiler: What's worse is that it appears there is a high failure rate for cities as half of the cities encountered in the game have collapsed.]] What we know for certain though is that a combination of volcanic eruptions in southeast Asia, the Sun cooling,[[spoiler: and a possible meteor strike in Patagonia]] have plunged Europe and North America into an endless winter and caused crop failure and chaos in the Southern Hemisphere. If one piece of information potentially found in Endless Play ends up being true [[spoiler: it could actually be a Class 3a, caused by a superweapon called "Saffron Cloud" developed by an unknown nation.]] However, this was considered malicious slander by the pre-Frost British government, who insisted that such information be suppressed to not cause undue political calamity or distract scientists desperately researching the causes in an already dire situation.

* 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. Many of them either 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: If the name of the scenario didn't tip you off, the fact that [[spoiler:you find Winterhome destroyed in ''A New Home'' indicates that you can't save it in ''The Fall of Winterhome''.]]

* ApocalypseHow: While it is difficult to tell, it appears to be a class 2 or 3b. While humanity has not gone extinct there are only a handful of cities left, and the population of these cities ranges from a few dozen to a few hundred. [[spoiler: What's worse is that it appears there is a high failure rate for cities as half of the cities encountered in the game have collapsed.]] What we know for certain though is that this is a combination of volcanic eruptions in southeast Asia, the Sun cooling,[[spoiler: and a possible meteor strike in Patagonia]] have plunged Europe and North America into an endless winter and caused crop failure and chaos in the Southern Hemisphere. If one piece of information potentially found in Endless Play ends up being true [[spoiler: it could actually be a Class 3a, caused by a superweapon called "Saffron Cloud" developed by an unknown nation.]] However, this was considered malicious slander by the pre-Frost British government, who insisted that such information be suppressed to not cause undue political calamity or distract scientists desperately researching the causes in an already dire situation.

* ApocalypseHow: While it is difficult to tell, it appears to be a class 2 or 3b. While humanity has not gone extinct there are only a handful of cities left, and the population of these cities ranges from a few dozen to a few hundred. [[spoiler: What's worse is that it appears there is a high failure rate for cities as half of the cities encountered in the game have collapsed.]] What we know for certain though is that this a combination of volcanic eruptions in southeast Asia, the Sun cooling,[[spoiler: and a possible meteor strike in Patagonia]] have plunged Europe and North America into an endless winter and caused crop failure and chaos in the Southern Hemisphere. If one piece of information potentially found in Endless Play ends up being true [[spoiler: it could actually be a Class 3a, caused by a superweapon called "Saffron Cloud" developed by an unknown nation.]] However, this was considered malicious slander by the pre-Frost British government, who insisted that such information be suppressed to not cause undue political calamity or distract scientists desperately researching the causes in an already dire situation.

* TooDumbToLive: Sometimes, the workers can exhibit this, such as demanding more food rations when the city is clearly short on food, or refusing to work extra hours to mine coal that's needed to power the generator that's preventing the entire city from freezing to death. In the game's canon, [[spoiler:The Winterhome Captain is so ridiculously incompetent that he irreparably damaged his own generator and it's a wonder that he wasn't overthrown sooner by his own people.]]

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. No exact release date is currently set (although it's slated for release sometime in 2024), though a closed beta test occurred in April 2023.

* TakeThat!: The name of the achievement for keeping every promise in a playthrough? "Bad At Politics".

* ArtisticLicensePhysics: In Endless mode, the fortnightly storm, instead of advancing on your city from one end of the map will close in from all corners of it. What makes this odd is that this is only in Endless Mode; in both A New Home and the Arks, it advances like a normal storm.

* FinalBoss: Despite not having any form of warfare or combat, this game still does have its own version of a "final boss" in the great ice storm at the end of A New Home.

** The Arks also had this situation, [[spoiler: regarding New Manchester, which the city next to the Arks had dire need of resources to survive the storm. Other than dealing with resource management for the players, the Arks' denizens will show discontent if the players keep providing resources to the neighboring city instead of focusing on preserving the Arks' seedlings, even if there is a surplus. Though there are many who sincerely felt [[HiddenDepths that New Manchester should be helped, but kept the feelings to themselves due to the prescribed mentality by the Arks' populace]].]]

* NoahsStoryArc: One of the three scenarios in the game deal with preserving the seeds of various plants inside the titular Arks until the winter ends, [[FlingALightIntoTheFuture even if the original inhabitants do not live to see it]]. The major issues are that there are a total of 45 Engineers and an automaton, which make starting a functioning colony difficult, and the Arks must be prevented from frost, as it will damage the sensitive seeds. [[spoiler: The late game also had the players having to decide on whether to aid the unfortunate New Manchester in preparation for the coming storm or not, but it required vast amounts of planning and resources to gain a GoldenEnding from fulfilling the needs of both the player's city and New Manchester.]]

* 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.

* ''On the Edge'', the final chapter of the game, where you play as a frostland outpost from New London in the aftermath of ''A New Home''.

* DayOfTheJackboot: In ''A New Home'', the city can be put under an authoritarian regime following either the Order/Discipline path or the Faith/Devotion path the to maintain control over the unruly populace, [[spoiler: once the Londoners faction starts forming to try and launch an expedition back there, in denial over the destruction of London]].

* DueToTheDead: Anything involving desecrating the corpses, such as mass burial and fertilizer, will take a hit on Hope meter. One such event involves whether to give your people proper burials after [[TearJerker witnessing a widow crying and holding her dead husband's hand in the mass graves]].
* {{Eagleland}}: One of the events involves finding a camp and later a city manned by [[spoiler:an American expedition originating from [[TeslaTechTimeline Tesla Manufacturing]]. In general display very few stereotypical traits, due to being busy surviving. However, if you explore around Tesla City, you'll eventually find a group of American survivors who killed Tesla in a mutiny; they're armed with guns, proud of having killed a man they consider to be a tyrant, and are at first distrustful of your explorers. [[QuintessentialBritishGentleman You convince these survivors to return to your colony with you by starting a friendly chat with them]].]]
* EarlyGameHell: Setting up the right infrastructure is crucial and a bad start often puts you behind the curve for the rest of the game. It's very easy to make a mistake a few hours into the game that will doom you to failure 10 hours later, without the player even realizing it. Losing people early on is a serious hit, and it's possible to end up with all of most people [[PressStartToGameOver incapacitated or dead in the initial days]].

* 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.]]

* HiddenInPlainSight: Due to how the mechanics of selecting citizens to assign to a station, it's hard to tell if [[spoiler:the one man in ''Fall of Winterhome'' claiming to not want to be separated from his child/ren is really telling the truth. Normally, you can select individual citizens and the UI will tell you if they have any family in the city. Not helping the fact is if you do decide to ship this man off to the evacuation, some of your citizens will comment, "I wish I'd thought of that." After the man is evacuated, a mob will trigger an event, forcing you to either let them leave for the Dreadnought, or stop them at the cost of killing and injuring people.]]
* HistoricalDomainCharacter: The game, particularly ''A New Home'', had two characters: [[spoiler: [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla Tesla]] and [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fridtjof_Nansen Nansen]]]]. The former managing to [[spoiler: found a corporation that would build a city protected by an electric force-field against the ice ([[GoneHorriblyRight and also the inhabitants]])]] while the latter [[spoiler: not only scouted the Frostlands before the event of the game, but also survived to help refugees trapped in Frostland to reach the player's city]].

* NoahsStoryArc: One of the three scenarios in the game deal with preserving the seeds of various plants inside the titular Arks until the winter ends, [[FlingALightIntoTheFuture even if the original inhabitants do not live to see it]]. The major issues are that there are a total of 45 Engineers and an automaton, which make starting a functioning colony difficult, and the Arks must be prevented from frost, as it will damage the sensitive seeds. [[spoiler: Also the late game also had the players decide on whether to aid the unfortunate New Manchester in preparation for the coming storm or not, but it required vast amounts of planning and resources to gain a GoldenEnding from fulfilling the needs of both the player's city and New Manchester.]]

* 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 and coal mines.

** Fall of Winterhome has this on a massive scale: you have over 600 people in your city (including all the surrounding bases) and only 500 can fit onto a Dreadnought even after fully upgrading its capacity. Leave the kids behind and people will justly question you. Evacuate the engineers and there won't be anyone left to delay the explosion. Leave engineers to maintain the Generator and they will tell you that without them the Dreadnought will simply stall in the middle of nowhere.

** ''The Arks''' [[spoiler: crisis involving neighboring New Manchester]] has elements of this between the Arks' small academic population (represented by its Engineer-only population supplemented by automatons for labor) and [[spoiler: working-class heavy New Manchester]], which the latter lacking sufficient supplies and infrastructure from the start, let alone an upcoming storm. [[spoiler: A major issue for the Arks involved a segment of the population demanding the player to abandon New Manchester to its fate and a discontent penalty ([[HiddenDepths but a small Hope bonus in some cases]]) if the player decided to help. Though this got better once the player accepted to keep 6 automatons while delivering spare ones to deliver resources.]]

** One of the events involving Automatons is about a pedestrian whose leg was crushed after they stepped in its path. Want to avoid it in the future? Be prepared that slower movement means less efficiency.
** The Healing House, [[spoiler: an unlockable structure from Faith and Spiritual Strength path]], is good for providing hope but, being manned by clergy with little medical experience, may not actually help with the general health of the patients. [[note]]It heals patients more slowly than a proper Infirmary, but does not require a steam core or Engineers in order to function.[[/note]]

** In ''The Last Autumn'', [[spoiler:choosing to have any engineers on the Peoples' Militia should you side with the workers will result in either a minority engineer representation being harassed or brutalized, or a majority engineer representation attempting to pull a coup d'etat on you for depriving them of their privileges.]]

** The GoldenEnding to the Arks involves [[spoiler:saving both the objectives of the city along with nearby New Manchester, which involved vast amounts of planning and resources to pull it off]].

* 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.

** ''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.

** Very much averted in many scenarios. The ''House of Pleasure'' law allows you to turn the public house into a brothel and station five of your citizens as prostitutes there. Enacting this law will cause your population to lose hope, and some of your citizens will complain about it, but access to sex will lower discontentment, and then there is the event where a) [[spoiler: one of the prostitutes kills herself after one too many visits by an abusive customer]] and b) the game reminds you there actually is no free choice of work in the city. You forced these people into these "jobs", but it wouldn't be Frostpunk if it couldn't get worse: If you institute the New Religion, [[spoiler: one of your preachers [[SexIsEvil denounces a woman as a harlot in a sermon]] and she gets beaten up by a mob. If you turn to the faith keepers to have them punished, they shrug and reply that they won't punish people for doing what's right -- which, again, is beating up a woman for her being forced into prostitution by you.]]

** Going off of how you handle your child citizens, in the [[spoiler:Fall of Winterhome, you are denied the above options due to some of the laws already being picked out for you -- including the disdainful (and, given the starting population, redundant) Child Labor laws. Despite this, you can reward their hard work and help in rebuilding the city until the end by ensuring that all children are guaranteed a spot on the evacuation Dreadnought. It's the only form of special treatment your people won't openly argue with.]]

** In place of Hope in ''The Last Autumn'' is "Motivation." Every decision and law that raises motivation concerns raising the quality of life for the workers, from serving hearty meals that cost more raw food, to lowering the capacity of tents so that people have more personal space, at the cost of having to build more of them. You can also shorten the workday from 10 hours to 8, under the premise that well-rested people make less mistakes.

** The Engineers' path in ''The Last Autumn'' can dip right into this. You can sign up for penal workers, who don't take up as many rations per day and cost far less in terms of convoy orders. Then, you can arrest workers en masse and turn ''them'' into convicts! Convicts don't have a say in strikes for generator construction. There's even an achievement for ending the game with only engineers or convicts. Just be sure to have enough engineers on overwatch duty, or those prisoners could riot...

** Justifiable in that, if ''The Arks'' is anything to go buy, research isn't actually developing the technology, but reviewing blueprints to figure out how to put it together.

** "Hope" is how much people trust in you as a leader. When it bottoms out, you receive an ultimatum to give them a reason to keep you around, by raising Hope to 15% in two days. The Faith and Order paths have several means to raise hope. [[spoiler:The ultimate option is to become some kind of demagogue who turns your supporters into zealots, "hope" gets overridden with "devotion" or "obedience."]]

* YouShallNotPass: ''Fall of Winterhome'' provides an example, though in this case there's no literal enemy. [[spoiler: When the generator finally runs out, there's an event in which one of the choices the Captain can make is to stay at his post with the engineers to buy Winterhome 24 more hours. This will assuredly cost the Captain and his engineers their lives, but if the Dreadnought is only a few hours from being filled or even completed, then it will save lives.]]

* ZeppelinsFromAnotherWorld: Scouts and eventually Hunters can utilize hot-air balloons, the latter using zeppelins, to survey and acquire resources in Frostland. The opening cinematic for ''A New Home'' also shows zeppelins flying over London before the Great Frost arrived.

* VideoGameCrueltyPunishment: While the players are allowed to make sadistic decisions ForTheEvulz rather than from pure necessity, it will take a hit on Hope and Discontent that might cause trouble for the city.

* TheCassandra: ''The Last Autumn'' has Effie MacLachlan, an assistant engineer and member of the only group of survivors after the Core of the Site 107 Generator exploded, killing all the other IEC employees at the site. She foresaw the disaster, but due to her relative inexperience she was ignored by her superiors until it was too late.

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. No release date is currently set, though a closed beta test occurred in April 2023.

*** The one for completing the generator with only convicts and engineers left on your workforce by the end is called [[Music/JimmyHendrix "All Along the Watchtower"]].

* TheCassandra: ''The Last Autumn'' has Effie MacLachlan, an engineer and member of the only group of survivors after The Core of the Site 107 Generator exploded, killing all the other IEC employees at the site. She foresaw the disaster, but due to her relative inexperience she was ignored by her superiors until it was too late.

* GameplayAndStorySegregation: Once you have a Guard Station or seat of the Faith Keepers, you can use guards or Faith Keepers to break up protests and keep order. These options are granted regardless of how many people you actually have assigned to those jobs, as long as you have at least one active at the time such an event happens. When trying to impose the New Order/New Faith, you can have all of two guards/Faith Keepers in a city of 500+ people where about a quarter of them are opposed to the law and are determined to fight it, and you will still be able to force your people to submit or die.