Frostpunk was released a year ago, how time flies, and has shipped an impressive 1.4 million copies in its first year. 11 bit studios also managed to fund 3 years of Frostpunk development in just 66 hours.
This War of Mine put 11 bit studios on the map and gave them a loyal player base on which they could build future success.
You can view the Frostpunk trailer below:
“Thanks to it (This War of Mine), we have a huge base of over 4.5 million players,” Feldman told GamesIndustry.biz. “They bought the game and they almost instantly were willing to try 11 bit studios’ next product… Now we can reach them directly with all our new products and it really gave Frostpunk something of a head start. This passionate community is very precious for us.”
“If you look closely, you’ll see there is a ton of inspiration from This War of Mine in Frostpunk. We didn’t want to just feed on our own success and recycle the same ideas, though. We wanted to tell a different story and highlight different kinds of problems, and to that end, I feel we were largely successful.”
Frostpunk is a city building sim with a stark difference. Set in a snowy apocalypse, not only do you have to deal with the usual city sim tropes such as managing resources and your people you also have to make some truly horrible decisions. Do you put kids to work to boost your workforce (risking them getting killed)? What will you do with the dead bodies that constantly keep piling up as the world tried to kill your people?
Every single decision you are asked to make comes with a serious downside and the upsides are often quite harrowing too.
There have been several updates throughout the year, each bringing with it free content which is a refreshing change to the usual DLC strategies of today. There are 2 other DLC packs in the works but it’s unclear if these will be free or paid for. Frostpunk is also in development for consoles and will be released later this year.
“We aim for a mixed approach to the content we deliver and diversification,” Feldman continued. “Free updates don’t have to be insignificant, and that’s why Frostpunk received Endless Mode and story-driven expansions like The Fall of Winterhome.”
“In the meantime, if we have something that truly broadens the experience and we feel its scope justifies the need of paying, we put it on the market as paid DLC. But we definitely don’t want to be the company that will monetize literally everything.”
If you would like to know more about the game you can check out our Frostpunk review.
