Most gamers are familiar with Will Wright’s famous SimCity series. It created the city building genre and there have been many attempts over the years to ape it. But few developers have been bold enough to completely deconstruct the formula; at least until 11 Bit Studios introduced Frostpunk in 2018. What may look like a city builder on the outside is, in fact, a brutal survival experience and a deliberate obliteration of the genre.

中号 OST玩家所熟悉的威尔·赖特著名的模拟城市系列。 它创造了城市建筑风格，多年来进行了很多尝试来模仿它。 但是很少有开发者足够大胆地完全解构该公式。 至少直到11 Bit Studios在2018年推出了Frostpunk 。实际上，外面看起来像是城市建造者的就是残酷的生存经历和故意的流派消失。

What is Frostpunk, then? The concept is simple. The world is stuck in an endless winter that has led to the end of mankind. The people who remain alive have joined together to form expeditions in an effort to find safe havens as well as a massive thermal generator that will hopefully fight back the cold.

那么，什么是Frostpunk ？ 这个概念很简单。 世界陷入了无尽的冬天，导致了人类的灭绝。 仍然活着的人们为了寻找安全的避风港以及庞大的热力发电机而组成了探险队，他们有望抗击寒冷。

Although there are other modes and DLC available, the main experience is about the core scenarios. Each scenario requires the player to perform a particular task in order to achieve victory. Although the win state itself is very clear, surviving long enough to get to that point is another matter entirely. The ways you might go about surviving in this unforgiving environment are up to you, and that’s where the game gets tough.

尽管还有其他模式和DLC可用，但主要经验是有关核心方案的。 每个场景都要求玩家执行特定任务以取得胜利。 尽管获胜状态本身非常明确，但生存足够长的时间才能达到这一点完全是另一回事。 在这种不容忍的环境中生存的方式取决于您，这就是游戏变得艰难的地方。

在缠绵的寒冷中缓慢失败 (Slow failure amid the stalking cold)

A key design element of traditional city builders is the idea that the player will eventually reach a point of stabilization. Because city simulators function on predictable mechanical underpinnings, a good player will reach the point where they can literally get up and leave their computer and their city will be absolutely fine, humming along without major incident. Frostpunk runs a million miles from this happy state of equilibrium, plunging the player into a desperate battle for hard-won gains.

传统城市建设者的一个关键设计元素是玩家最终将达到稳定的想法。 因为城市模拟器在可预测的机械基础上起作用，所以优秀的玩家将达到他们可以站起来并离开计算机的地步，并且他们的城市将非常好，嗡嗡作响而不会发生重大事件。 弗罗斯特庞克(Frostpunk)距离这种快乐的平衡状态已行驶了100万英里，这使玩家陷入了为来之不易的收益进行的绝望战斗。

In Frostpunk, you aren’t supposed to thrive. In fact, every player is doomed to failure right from the outset. The reason for this is because there’s nothing fundamentally sustainable or self-buttressing about the cities here. Resources are finite — indeed, scarce — and your generator requires a constant diet of coal to remain operational and to stave off the frost-death of your citizens. As you might imagine then, running out of coal and having your people freeze to death is very likely to be the first fail state you’ll encounter. But it’s by no means the last. You might also run out of food, because you need to send hunting parties out every night to ensure there’s enough food to cook the next day. Oh, and your people can also get sick or injured while working. Every single able-bodied person is a valuable resource that can be lost forever if they become too ill to work or die.

在弗罗斯特庞克(Frostpunk) ，你不应该蓬勃发展 。 实际上，每个玩家从一开始就注定要失败。 这样做的原因是，这里的城市从根本上没有可持续性或自我支撑。 资源是有限的(实际上是稀缺的)，您的发电机需要不断摄取煤炭以保持运转并避免公民的霜冻之死。 就像您可能想像的那样， 用尽煤并让人们冻死很可能是您将遇到的第一个失败状态。 但这绝不是最后。 您可能还没有足够的食物，因为您需要每天晚上派出狩猎聚会，以确保第二天有足够的食物做饭。 哦，您的员工在工作时也会生病或受伤。 每个身体健全的人都是宝贵的资源，如果他们病得无法工作或死亡，可能会永远失去。

Let’s turn to the cold for a moment. Each scenario is built around a day and night cycle. As the days roll on, the environment around you will get colder. So you’re not only in a running battle to keep the furnace fed and food prepared, but you’re also locked in an entropic arms race, where you must outpace the deepening cold by upgrading your engine and setting up heating around your base camp. Bear in mind too that these upgrades I’m referring to require you to spend resources to research them in the first place. This can be tricky if your researchers and your educated among your workforce are unable to work. All of these different mechanisms are akin to war wounds that spread across your body, gradually whittling down your physical abilities as well as your mental resolve. There is no question that you will succumb to the injuries this world inflicts on you. The only question is whether or not you’ll achieve your objective before the cold brings you and your city to extinction.

让我们转凉一下。 每个方案都是围绕昼夜周期构建的。 随着日子的流逝，您周围的环境会越来越冷。 因此，您不仅要进行激烈的战斗以保持炉子的温度和食物的准备，而且还陷入了一场军备竞赛中，在这种情况下，您必须通过升级引擎和在大本营周围设置供暖系统来胜过不断加深的寒冷。 。 也请记住，我指的是这些升级首先需要您花费资源进行研究。 如果您的研究人员和受过良好教育的员工无法工作，这可能会很棘手。 所有这些不同的机制都类似于在您的身体上散布的战争伤口，逐渐削弱您的身体能力以及您的心理决心。 毫无疑问，您将屈服于这个世界对您造成的伤害。 唯一的问题是，在寒冷使您和您的城市灭绝之前 ，您是否会实现自己的目标。

道德和道德困境 (Moral and ethical dilemmas)

Given the context within which Frostpunk places you, it should come as no surprise that morality plays a significant role here. The game’s developer, 11 Bit Studios, is no surprise to the concept if imbuing video games with moral choices (after all, they designed This War of Mine). Success in Frostpunk isn’t simply about clever resource management. It’s also about finding ways to keep up the morale of your people. During the game you’ll see two bars that track to highly important indicators: discontent and morale. If the former completely fills up or the latter is completely drained, you’re finished.

考虑到弗罗斯特朋克所处的环境，道德在这里起着重要作用就不足为奇了。 游戏的开发者11 Bit Studios如果在视频游戏中加入道德选择， 这并不奇怪(毕竟，他们设计了《 我的战争》 )。 Frostpunk的成功不仅仅在于聪明的资源管理。 这还涉及寻找方法来保持员工的士气。 在游戏中，您会看到两个跟踪非常重要的指标的栏： 不满和士气 。 如果前者完全填满或后者完全耗尽，则说明您已完成。

There are obvious conditions that impact the mental wellbeing of your population (sickness and death have a tendency to increase discontent and reduce morale, as you’d expect). But there are ways you can exercise influence on the situation. This is where the book of laws comes into play. It essentially represents a series of edicts that are dependent upon the scenario you’re running. There are two twists here that make Frostpunk’s morality choices different to other games, though.

有明显的状况会影响人们的心理健康(疾病和死亡有加剧不满情绪和降低士气的趋势，正如您所期望的那样)。 但是，您可以通过多种方法对情况施加影响。 这就是法律法规发挥作用的地方。 它实际上代表了一系列取决于您正在运行的方案的命令。 不过，这里有两处曲折，使Frostpunk的道德选择与其他游戏有所不同。

Occasionally a random event will arise and you’ll have the opportunity to appease your people. In this situation it’s critical to understand that it’s worse to promise something and then fail rather than making no promises in the first place. Many games with morality-based decision systems tend to allow the player to exploit the limited AI in the game by choosing an objectively “good option”. But here, a short-term attempt to quell discontent can have serious unintended consequences down the track.

有时会发生随机事件，您将有机会安抚您的员工。 在这种情况下，至关重要的是要了解，先做出承诺然后失败 ，比起先没有做出承诺要糟糕得多。 许多基于道德的决策系统游戏都倾向于允许玩家通过选择客观的“良好选择”来利用有限的AI。 但是在这里，短期内平息不满情绪可能会造成严重的意想不到的后果。

The second difference is that the book of laws features many edicts that will require a binary choice one way or the other. You can’t go back on these later. If you decide to have children work in your labor buildings, or if you choose not to provide housing for the sick, there’s no way for you to change your mind later if people get upset with you.

第二个区别是法律书中有许多法令，这些法令要求以一种或另一种方式进行二元选择。 您以后将无法再使用这些功能。 如果您决定让孩子在您的劳动大楼中工作，或者如果您选择不为病人提供住房，那么一旦人们对您感到不满，您将无法改变主意。

These choices work deviously within the rules of the game. Remember that your overall mission is to complete your goal. The settlement itself is technically there to simply facilitate that. This means that if you win the scenario with your people miserable and barely alive, this is not considered any different than winning if they were happy. But this reality isn’t communicated to the player in any obvious sense — as a result, Frostpunk does a fantastic job of presenting choices that might force the player to do the right thing for the wrong reasons for vice versa.

这些选择在游戏规则内工作得很明显。 请记住，您的总体任务是完成目标。 从技术上讲，解决方案本身是为了简化这一过程。 这意味着，如果您在惨痛而勉强活着的人们中获胜，那与他们在幸福中获胜并没有什么不同。 但是，这种现实并没有以任何明显的方式传达给玩家-结果， 弗罗斯特庞克做了出色的工作，提出了可能迫使玩家出于错误原因而做正确事情的选择，反之亦然。

及时冻结 (Frozen in time)

Almost every city builder has some kind of limit around how much you can reasonably get out of it from a gameplay perspective. There are only so many ways you can build a self-sustaining city (or even just a theme/gimmick one). Due to the underlying mechanics, what works once will always continue working. This is a fundamental constraint from a design point of view — while the game starts off very difficult and mysterious, it can quickly become repetitive once you’ve figured out its quirks.

从游戏的角度来看，几乎每个城市建造者都会限制您可以合理地摆脱多少钱。 您可以通过多种方式来构建一个能够自我维持的城市(甚至只是一个主题/ gi头的城市)。 由于底层的机制，一旦起作用的东西将始终继续起作用。 从设计的角度来看，这是一个基本的限制-尽管游戏开始时非常困难且神秘，但是一旦您弄清了它的怪癖，它就会Swift变得重复。

Frostpunk has this issue, but it also has even greater constraints. Every scenario features a handmade map with pre-determined resources (though the events that arise are loosely randomized). When you combine set resources with a fixed goal, there’s typically a “best” or “ideal” way to win each scenario. Where other city builders have a more free form design (like SimCity and Cities Skylines), Frostpunk’s more restrictive framework means that tackling scenarios feels more akin to solving a puzzle rather than playing a more organic experience. From the word “go”, you’re on a timer to either winning or losing the scenario. There’s no adaptation or reactionary gameplay opportunities in Frostpunk — you must have a game plan going in, or you’ll fail every time.

霜冻朋克有这个问题，但它也有更大的限制。 每个方案都具有一个带有预定资源的手工地图(尽管发生的事件是随机分配的)。 当您将设定的资源与固定的目标结合在一起时，通常存在一种“最佳”或“理想”的方式来赢得每种情况。 在其他城市建设者拥有更自由的外观设计的地方(例如SimCity和Cities Skylines )， Frostpunk的限制性更强的框架意味着，应对方案更像是解决难题，而不是发挥更加有机的体验。 从单词“ go”开始，您将成为赢得或失去场景的计时器。 弗罗斯特朋克(Frostpunk)没有适应或反动的游戏机会-您必须制定游戏计划，否则每次都会失败。

Here’s an example. In the first scenario, a storm will always occur on day 4 of your playthrough. At that stage, if you don’t have access to heaters, several of your basic service buildings will become nonfunctional. And if that happens, you’ll run the risk of people starving to death and not having access to essential services. On the one hand, this concept presents the brutal nature of the world — but it’s not the kind of gameplay loop we traditionally see in city builders. I can’t help but think Frostpunk would benefit from an additional reward system — like a trophy system — to motivate players to learn and figure out the scenarios.

这是一个例子。 在第一种情况下，风暴将始终在您的通关第4天发生。 在那个阶段，如果您无法使用加热器，那么您的一些基本服务大楼将无法使用。 如果发生这种情况，您将冒着人们饿死甚至无法获得基本服务的风险。 一方面，这个概念代表了世界的残酷本质-但它不是我们传统上在城市建设者中看到的那种游戏循环。 我忍不住认为弗罗斯特朋克会从额外的奖励系统(如奖杯系统)中受益，这种奖励系统可以激励玩家学习并弄清楚场景。

I personally want to see more city building games that discard the genre’s traditional trappings. I’m interested in trying out Cliff Empire and Dawn of Man, titles that might scratch the itch. Frostpunk set a tough challenge for itself by walking the line between a city builder sandbox and the more fixed framework of this genre.

我个人希望看到更多城市建筑游戏，这些游戏摒弃了这种类型的传统陷阱。 我对尝试Cliff Empire和Man Dawn感兴趣，这些标题可能会伤痒。 弗罗斯特朋克通过在城市建设者沙箱和该类型的更固定框架之间走一圈，为自己设置了严峻的挑战。

It’s a difficult balance. Too much freedom and the game has no structure to it. Too much structure and the game becomes a fixed puzzle with little room for player improvisation.

这是一个艰难的平衡。 太多的自由，游戏没有任何结构。 太多的结构，游戏成为固定的难题，几乎没有玩家即兴创作的空间。

And now, a question for the reader. Do you prefer city builders that focus on a specific design (Frostpunk) or city builders that are more open-ended and sandbox-like (SimCity)?

现在，给读者一个问题。 您是偏向于专注于特定设计的城市建设者(Frostpunk)，还是更开放的，更像沙盒的城市建设者(SimCity)？

If you enjoyed this article and want to talk design with me, the Game-Wisdom Discord is open to all.

如果您喜欢这篇文章并想与我讨论设计，那么 Game-Wisdom Discord 对所有人开放。