Frostpunk is a narratively driven city simulator from 11 Bit Studios, previously best known for This War of Mine. It’s set in a steampunk universe where the world has suffered a snow and ice based apocalypse. It requires a player to manage resource gathering, advancing the story by exploring the frozen world and balancing the discontent or hope of their society through laws and policies as they try to survive in a frozen wasteland.
Rust is an online only, always active survival game where your player character is random and fixed and the world is full of other players who want to ruin your day. Yet it’s a game that I’ve sunk hundreds of hours into, and it is fascinating to play.
No Man’s Sky, from the comparatively small team at Hello Games, is a game balancing on a tightrope. It is both indie and mainstream, confoundingly huge and yet incredibly personal. The game is straddling the lines of two of the biggest genres that exist in modern gaming, and not quite managing to exemplify either.
You are a pilot running supplies to Antarctic Research stations. Your Plane goes down in a storm. You stumble out to try to find shelter. It’s -38C with the wind. You make your way into the nearest base. It’s abandoned. You’re Near Death. An hour and a half later, you’re using the rope lines you’ve been planting to guide yourself through the blizzard. It’s now -80C and you can’t see anything but the mild glow of the base’s wall lamps. You ran out of batteries for your torch when you left the last shelter. You need to reach a safe spot right now. Near Death was created by Orthogonal Games. (previously of The Novelist, a game which has been highly recommended to me) to paraphrase their own words, “it’s not a survival game, It’s a game about survival”. And it is great.
