{"id":56181,"date":"2023-04-12T08:33:06","date_gmt":"2023-04-12T07:33:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pley2win.com\/pc\/frostpunk-the-board-game-the-kotaku-review\/"},"modified":"2023-04-12T08:33:06","modified_gmt":"2023-04-12T07:33:06","slug":"frostpunk-the-board-game-the-kotaku-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pley2win.com\/?p=56181","title":{"rendered":"Frostpunk: The Board Game: The Kotaku Review"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n<\/p>\n
\n
I\u2019ve reviewed <\/span>a lot of board game<\/span> adaptations of video games<\/span> on this website<\/span>, and with good reason: it\u2019s the most intimate intersection of our board game and video game coverage. In nearly every case, the key consideration has been how does the board game feel compared to the original. What kind of concessions have been made, how does it differ, does it match the video game in terms of vibes<\/em>, if not exact mechanics.<\/p>\n
Frostpunk<\/em> is different. It\u2019s a hulking huge board game that seeks, in almost every meaningful way, not to adapt <\/em>the video game to the tabletop, but to bring it wholesale, warts and all. It\u2019s an ambitious undertaking if nothing else, but I\u2019m also not quite sure if it\u2019s worth all the effort.<\/p>\n
And it is an effort<\/em>. When I went to play the game for the first time I was at least 30 minutes into setting it up when I started to get the sweats. I had spent half an hour painstakingly punching cards, reading the manual and placing tokens on the table and it looked like I\u2019d barely begun. Was I doing something wrong? Was I just a very slow guy? After reading this Dicebreaker <\/em>story called \u201cI spent an hour failing to set up a board game and it made me question everything<\/span>\u201d it turns out no, thankfully I\u2019m fine, it\u2019s the game that\u2019s slow.<\/p>\n\n
<\/p>\n
<\/picture><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n
Photo: Luke Plunkett | Kotaku<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/figure>\n
Frostpunk is one of the most complex board games I have ever played, let alone set up (and that\u2019s not just me talking, it has a 4.32\/5 \u201cweight\u201d rating on BoardGameGeek<\/em><\/span>, which is very <\/em>high). There are a seemingly endless array of tokens, multiple decks of cards that look the same but aren\u2019t and loads of different rules that bend and sway for each player. Most maddeningly, there are eight boards you have to keep track of.<\/p>\n
Eight. Boards. That\u2019s too many boards.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re wondering why the board game version of a (relatively) straightforward city-builder<\/span> needs to be so complicated, it\u2019s because this edition of the game, for whatever reason, didn\u2019t want to vaguely recreate the spirit of playing Frostpunk<\/em>. It wants to recreate the whole damn thing, substituting tabletop components for mouse clicks. Nearly everything <\/em>you can do in the video game, from the politics to the resource gathering to the quest expeditions to city-building is here, and it works much the same way it does on PC. <\/p>\n
It is, in many ways, a staggering achievement. Once you (eventually) get on top of the game\u2019s vast array of components, boards and rules it really does feel like you\u2019re playing Frostpunk<\/em>, the pressures and nagging responsibilities of the digital wasteland transplanted perfectly to the physical world. Indeed some of those pressures are even better here, because Frostpunk <\/em>is a co-op game, meaning there can be 2-4 of you (there\u2019s also a singleplayer mode, but I didn\u2019t play that) taking on different jobs within the city, working together while at the same time arguing over every decision. If you thought the social and political stuff was cool in the video game, it\u2019s great <\/em>here since you\u2019re essentially acting out a lot of those debates in the flesh.<\/p>\n
Yet in other ways it all feels a bit pointless? The board game cuts so close to the video game\u2019s cloth that at times you wonder why you\u2019re bothering at all, since the video game does all this for you, without the arduous setup time or constant consultation with the rules. Sure, that\u2019s a more solitary experience, but there\u2019s a point where that trade-off can be worth it, and for many people\u2014myself included\u2014that point can come when you\u2019re hours into a single game and find you\u2019re not even close to finishing it.<\/p>\n\n
<\/p>\n
<\/picture><\/div>\n
<\/span><\/p>\n
Photo: Luke Plunkett | Kotaku<\/figcaption><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
<\/figure>\n
At least some of that setup is worth it. The game ships with an enormous plastic recreation of The Generator, which doesn\u2019t just look amazing on the middle of the table but has actual gameplay use as well, since players need to drop coal into it almost every turn as they play, an act that rivals Deep Rock Galactic\u2019s<\/em> robot mining<\/span> as one of the most satisfying physical actions in recent board game history. <\/p>\n
And, in a very rare occurrence for these reviews, I want to give a shout out to the game\u2019s documentation. For whatever reason most board game rulebooks in 2023 still suck, but Frostpunk<\/em>, despite the game\u2019s complexity and scale, never let us down.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a very specific type of person out there for this game. Someone who is into Frostpunk <\/em>but gets lonely playing it, or someone who has never played the video game but is intrigued by the density and politics on offer here. Sadly I was neither of those people, I found its setup time and length just too much, but like I\u2019ve said I can at least appreciate the exhaustive design effort that went into the approach taken here, if nothing else. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
![\"Image](\"https:\/\/i.kinja-img.com\/gawker-media\/image\/upload\/c_fit,f_auto,g_center,q_60,w_645\/9bbb5db5bff9a8041fa7184fc247377a.jpg\"\/)
<\/picture><\/div>\n![\"Image](\"https:\/\/i.kinja-img.com\/gawker-media\/image\/upload\/c_fit,f_auto,g_center,q_60,w_645\/92ec6fa04983ffec15edd7646b2eeb06.jpg\"\/)
<\/picture><\/div>\n