What a hard, stressful and frustrating game.
Recommended.

On a more serious note, I originally thought this was a city builder, but it felt more like a resource management puzzle game. You have to gather coal, wood, steel and food in order to make sure that your population stays warm and fed. This might sound easy, but before you know it everyone is suddenly starving or ill (or both), and if they get too angry or lose all hope then they'll be coming for your neck (meaning game over).

The reason it feels like a puzzle game is that each scenario starts out being very challenging for the first couple of days/weeks, but once you "crack the code" and get off to a decent start, the game pretty much plays itself.

My only complaint is that in the game it is possible to send out scout expeditions to look for resources or survivors, however some of the locations that you come across have a 50/50 chance to either give you some much needed resources, or kill your scouts (meaning you also lose all the resources they were carrying). You can of course choose to ignore those locations, but on the hardest difficulty they're very much needed, and unless you're willing to risk losing the game on the spot there's really only one solution - save scumming.

Other than that I definitely recommend Frostpunk as long as you're NOT looking for a calm and relaxing game.

Frostpunk is a lot like being born. Once you start, you can’t stop until you kill yourself. I have played this game every single year since it came out, usually around Christmas when I am alone and the drinking gets bad and I feel my liver popping out of my right side like Ernest Hemingway. Frostpunk is my only comfort. My menthol cigarette. My gái ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in Khe Sanh. I would sooner kill a family of four behind the wheel of my 2005 Toyota Corolla than give up my Frostpunk habit.

I have spent most of my 25 years of life hoping against hope that I could be a tyrannical fascistic leader that would send children to work inside of a 150 degree celsisus generator. Frostpunk gives me what I’ve always wanted. To sacrifice children in the name of industrial progress.

Speaking of sacrifice, the fact that I can send five fathers to die inside of a wrecked piece of high technology, the likes of which humanity will likely never see again (as long as I am in charge), in search of a sketch of a flamingo or something like some New York yuppie really takes the experience up a notch.

One time, the game asked me if I would order a dying man’s arm amputated in an effort to save his life. I, of course, said yes, but insisted they amputate his legs as well. He died. Good.

If you are looking for a game that will transform not just your mind, but your very mortal soul in the image of George Nathaniel Curzon, this is the game for you.

5/5 The children yearn for the lumber mill.

balls shrivel because cold