Frostpunk, in all its forms, is known for being a deliberately unforgiving and grueling experience, pitting players against the threat of freezing to death in its post-apocalyptic tundra, starving as they struggle to maintain their city’s vital supplies, or being torn to pieces by the steam-powered metropolis’ disgruntled populace as a result of their political decisions. (To be fair, it’s hard to argue against not thinking child labor is a great idea.)
The brutal difficulty of the original city management video game was brought to the tabletop in an official board game adaptation about a year ago, faithfully capturing the complex moral dilemmas and challenging resource management of its digital counterpart while adding the added weight of a massive rulebook and a box that you could probably rent in London for £2,000 a month.
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It's curious, then, to see that Frostpunk's next stop on its exploration of the tabletop world will be a relatively laid-back (at least, in terms of gameplay complexity) escape-room-in-a-box installment of the Side Quest puzzle series.
Side Quest: Frostpunk will apparently focus on a group of explorers (up to four players, or one solo player) venturing out of the city and into the wilderness in search of resources and potential settlement spots, much like you can send your citizens on exploration quests in the PC game. There’s talk of finding an abandoned generator and having to make it habitable within six days before supplies run out, providing the classic time constraint of typical escape room puzzles that will translate to between an hour and 90 minutes of real-world time.
Unsurprisingly, publishers Board&Dice and Lockme are staying tight-lipped about what exactly to expect from this escape room-style experience (puzzles and secrets are the draw here, after all), but gameplay footage shows cards arranged to form the familiar central city generator in the middle of the table, surrounded by a ring of cards.
While it's apparently only a two out of four on the publishers' scale for complexity, there's still some of that Frostpunk-esque combination of different elements to be had – temperature management, steam cores, food and more, all depending on the demands of the group. You'll need to use a combination of perception and creativity to survive the whole ordeal, with the promise of an intriguing story amidst the tricky puzzles and harder choices.
Behind the latest adaptation of developer 11 Bit Studios’ gruelling video game series are designers Jakub Caban and Bartosz Idzikowski, who are no strangers to turning other scenarios into puzzle games, having created the similar Escape Tales series and released Side Quest games based on the sci-fi board game Alien Nemesis and the swashbuckling tabletop RPG 7th Sea.
Side Quest: Frostpunk is launching at this year's Gen Con in August (thanks, BoardGameGeek), which means you'll at least be able to venture into its chilly escape room knowing that the summer sun is shining outside. Whether you make it out or not, though, is up to you…