Frostpunk is a strategy simulation, set in a frozen environment. It has a very sombre tone, since you are controlling a group of refugees, struggling to survive in these horrible conditions.
You need to manage food via hunters and hothouses, manage coal by mines and thumpers, wood by sawmills, steel via steelworks. Most buildings need a minimal heat level to function, and will function better or lower risk of health conditions with higher heat.
There are three types of civilians that you can manage. "Workers" are regular working adults and usually make the majority of your workforce. They can do standard jobs, and are required for hunting.
"Engineers" are adults with more technical skills, so can be assigned to the more specialist roles such as the Workshop for research, or Medical facilities. They can also be assigned like regular workers and will perform the same way.
By default, "children" cannot work. You have a choice to put them to work in “safe jobs” or send them to a Care Shelter. Even with this latter option, they aren't just resource drains, because you then can make them Medical or Research apprentices which give bonuses to that area.
The game uses a day/night cycle so people go to work during the day and return home for free time, construction, then sleep. There is an option to extend work hours of each workplace but this can cause discontent. You need to make sure you have enough coal to keep the generator running through the night.
In the main story, you start off with an unpowered generator and 80 citizens. There are piles of loose coal, wood, steel which can be collected to get your base up and running. You will need to build a few homes, use the coal to fire up the generator, and start working towards better resource gathering. The better buildings will always require steel, your growing population will need food, and all buildings need to be connected with roads; which (strangely) requires wood. Pretty much everything requires to be researched which usually costs wood and steel.
There are a few set locations for the more advanced resource buildings like the Coal Mine, Steelworks, Wall Drill. These give you an infinite supply. Coal Thumpers also produce an infinite supply of coal. However, you need to collect these piles; so this option requires more workers than the other methods. Saw Mills need to be placed next to the frozen trees which expends them. You can upgrade the Saw Mill's range, or build another one to cover the denser forests.
Food is pretty hard to come by, but I guess the extreme weather does cause problems for crops and animals. You will send out hunters, and later create Hothouses but these require a rare steam core, and also a higher level of heat to function. Food is always received raw, even from hothouses. Raw food is edible, but more of a last resort. You can turn raw food into “rations” at a Cookhouse.
You can send scouts to locations outside your city. These will find other cities/points of interest where they can salvage resources, find rare steam cores, and rescue the stranded to populate your city. Some of the cities allow you to set up outposts which give you a stream of resources.
In the main story, you will discover a single Automaton. More can be created once you have the Factory. They are quite pricey and require a steam-core. Automatons can be put to work at most locations. They work 24 hours and aren't affected by the heat. They have to have exclusivity at the workplace, so you have to reassign anyone currently working there.
Passing laws increase/decrease the Hope and Discontent meters. At first, I thought the laws were always a last resort, but it's basically another tech tree, and unlocks new buildings and other effects. Some laws are a last resort, like if you are struggling for food, you have a couple of options which give you more food, but raise discontent,or cause health risks.
Random/Semi-random events can give you multiple choice problems which effect these meters. With a high discontent meter, people can refuse to work. Fill it all the way, and you will be overthrown and exiled; ending the game. With the choices, you can often promise your citizens something, like passing a law and putting it into effect, treating the sick, or heating homes. Following through on your promise will lower discontent and raise hope, but breaking your promise will result in the opposite.
When people are ill, they stop working and will pay a visit to your medical facilities. If treated, they return to work. Becoming gravely ill can result in them dying or just becoming a burden (i.e. as an amputee). Keeping your workers warm will prevent this being a problem, but you need medical facilities and adequate staff to run them. Infirmaries are the best medical centres, but you also need Care Homes to move the gravely ill out of them to free up space for treatable conditions.
You are given a forecast which tells you if the temperature is going to rise or fall. You can get dramatic changes in temperature so you need to make sure you are adequately prepared. In the early game, you can get away with just having a supply of coal and a few heaters. Later on, you need to make sure your generator is upgraded, and buildings have the upgrade for heaters, with the option enabled. You can also send the generator into overdrive which raises heat levels, but can only be done for a limited time; else you risk the generator exploding and ending the game. Steam hubs are mini heat generators which are great for heating up groups of houses or workplaces. They can be set to turn out during work hours or run 24 hours. You cannot make the area warmer by overlapping these hubs.
The game requires a few attempts to learn the mechanics. There's a lot to learn, and it is really tough to keep on top of things. There's so much to research and it's hard to keep up. I invest in production, but meanwhile I need to increase food production to keep up with the growing population. I start to research improved food, but then I realise I'm consuming too much coal and the forecast is telling me its going to get colder. I research energy efficiency but the hospitals are filling up fast...
I completed the story scenario on my 4th attempt, and it was amazing how much I improved on each run. Like many strategy games, it does take a big time investment to play, but it is great fun once you get the hang of it. Initially, I felt the game didn't have enough prompts. I would have liked more warnings highlighting potential problems. Having advisors like in Sim City could have been a useful idea eg "we are using more coal than we are producing, consider building another Coal Thumper, or reducing the range of the generator", or "your Sawmill is too cold, consider switching on the heating".
I found that the font size is small, which was very hard to read on my TV. My PC got extremely warm playing this game which seems a common complaint. I encountered quite a few hard crashes too; so make sure you save often. There is an autosave everyday which alleviates this problem.
If you like city building games, then Frostpunk is worth checking out.