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Frostpunk: The Board Game

Created by Glass Cannon Unplugged

A city-survival, cooperative game for 1-4 players where heat means life and every decision comes at a cost. From the designer of Nemesis and story creator for This War of Mine: TBG. In Frostpunk: The Board Game you will take on the role of leaders of a small colony of survivors in a post-apocalyptic world that was hit by a severe ice age. Build shelters and resource gathering facilities, explore the frostlands, research new technologies, and introduce new laws. What decisions will you make to ensure your city's survival?

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Teasing Day
over 3 years ago – Tue, Oct 20, 2020 at 11:06:33 PM

Well hello there!

It is Saturday, time to let some steam out 😉 and a more relaxed update. We intend to show you that as any proper Cylon should we are great at hiding amongst actual people!

First things first. We are preparing long and hard to shoot a video from a playthrough using the physical prototype of the game - inhouse. The other playthrough of the physical prototype will happen during Spiel Digital by our German publishing partner Frosted Games. To prepare those prototypes we need every help we can get! We even introduced a new law in our households… it is called child labor 😉 These kiddos are just making first steps on their career paths but under our supervision they will soon be reaching top quality all in the name of our city! (Ekhm, yes honey you can go play with LEGO now…).

We’re going to need more chocolate covered jellies!

Obviously the grownups aren’t just sitting lazily on their bottoms! Hard, manual labor all the way 😉.

Meantime in our second location the printing of the cardboard elements and laser cutting of the tokens and board tiles takes place. Each of these elements must be cleaned of the charcoal dust residue. Each surface available is well used! Even the kitchen… the wet wipes usually consumed by our youngest ones are now used to 200% efficiency. The nimble fingers of our beloved ladies supported by the youngest generation work hand in hand to exceed all the plans!

The graphic design was issued a double shift and works at night! Preparing the elements of the prototypes for printing… we don’t have enough space in our shelters so that all our citizens can rest at the same time! So while the day shift is snoring the night shift makes room in the tent and shambles towards the drawing board! This system provides additional heating for the bed, making sure it always stays warm!

The finest minds of our engineers oversee our work. Making sure that no mistake goes unnoticed! 

Each typo will be pointed out!

The miniatures of the buildings are getting painted and printed at the exact same time and since there are so many of them we will probably finish when a dreadnought reaches us with some additional workforce on board!

The final effect will be magnificent if only we can survive the cold and the sickness along the way! Keep your fingers crossed!

And now for something completely different… a bit more serious and significantly more EPIC!

The Roles

The postulate for introducing different player roles was put forward on the first day of the campaign. We have treated this with utmost priority and on next Tuesday we will share the results. Why wait until Tuesday? Because there is a whole new module for the game that is being intensively tested by several independent groups of testers. All because we want to present you with a proven concept that we are certain of and that will bear the burden of your expectations.

Oh and by the way, Adam had a really fantastic idea to improve the mechanics and the approach towards… well… death. OK enough spoilers in this area! Here is an earnest of what is coming your way next week!

Food for the mind and nectar for the soul

And now to finish this update with a big bang!

Many of you know Poland because of the great games that our country is famous for (both digital and tabletop 😉) and it often happens that those games are made or inspired by amazing artists who support game dev with their talent and vision. We call ourselves lucky for the fact that these people often have wonderful hearts (matching their talent!) and are ready to join our campaign adding incredible artistic value to it. Below you will find a foreshadowing of what two absolutely breathtaking add-ons we will launch in the days before we finish this campaign. Both of these addons are of aesthetic nature and will not directly influence the board game... well it is partially a lie since the amount of theme and flavor they add is just over the top! So if you love art, beautiful things and Frostpunk – rejoice!

Tomorrow the shift pauses. We will spend that time with our families, taking care of them and showing them that we appreciate their patience and understanding. We’ve been neglecting them a bit lately (but that child labor was only a joke, you know?!). We owe our beloved ones a lot of gratitude for how they supported us so far! Thank you and we love you!

Our activity in the comments section might be a bit less noticeable tomorrow. We will get back to you on Monday with an amazing, new scenario!

Stay healthy and stay safe!

Jakub & GCU Team

The Second Half
over 3 years ago – Tue, Oct 20, 2020 at 11:06:09 PM

Welcome!

We hope that you’ve had an outstanding weekend and gathered some strength to greet this week as a welcome challenge for achieving your goals and not just as a headache! We plan on presenting you the goal and achievement-oriented approach, especially that our campaign entered its second half. We have so many things we want to show you, to discuss with you and to introduce into the game, so that by the end of this month we can all say that we’ve created the best possible version of Frostpunk: The Board Game together. 

This week will witness the introduction of our solution to one of the core concepts that most of you have commented upon – the player roles having a more personal feel and deeper connection to the theme. We can now say that we have a proposition on how to solve this issue on the design level. What remains to be done? Dozens of playthroughs and tests, but the core is here and it works and for this reason we decided to share it at such an early stage. But this isn’t the only great thing we have in store for you this week! Enough teasing… for now. Let’s speak about today's merits!

The Fall of Winterhome

We were all put to a test, our entire kind, unfortunately so many have already failed. When our scouts finally reached the other generator, all they’ve found were snow-covered ruins… a whole city in ruins, like a dreadful, silent testimony to a tragedy that happened. Drudgingly we started digging, piece by piece the story of their fall and failures was uncovered.

Scenarios in digital Frostpunk and Frostpunk: The Board Game are all unique in how they approach the game’s mechanics and force you to rethink what you thought you knew, both about the world and about the game’s design. The Fall of Winterhome is no different in this approach. In this scenario the players are put in charge of a city that is on the brink of total collapse as a result of horrible neglect by its previous leader that was overthrown in a revolt which also seriously damaged the already doomed city.

The players are tasked with cleaning up the mess left behind by their predecessor. In order to have even the slightest chance of getting things on the right track again, players must tear down all the ruined buildings within Winterhome and drastically rework the general layout of the city.

But this is only the beginning of this story, you will learn the rest as you write it by playing this scenario. It is a dramatic tale with a surprising finale and it would be such a shame to spoil it to you before you get a chance to experience it yourselves 😉. This is the biggest scenario yet, with the longest narrative aspect added to it and has a completely different course and goals then those you have seen so far.

The scenario naturally includes new, strictly connected with its theme and story, components:

  • 18 new Ruins building tokens
  • 1 new Evacuation Center building token
  • 10 new Scenario cards
  • 1 new plastic miniature of Evacuation Center - for Deluxe pledge backers

A shelter from the storm

Throughout the campaign we’ve discussed many of the key aspects of Frostpunk: The Board Game and many more are still to be presented. This week we’d like to draw your attention to the expeditions, hunger, resources and citizen’s morality. Today’s spotlight shines on the shelters (as building types) that are very closely related to the story of the featured scenario. In the Winterhome all the shelters have been destroyed during the riots and must be rebuilt as soon as possible, stripping the vast sea of ruins of what little precious materials they still possess.

For starters, let's discuss why you should build shelter buildings in the first place! By the end of each round you inevitably approach the Night Phase, during which all the citizens of your settlement finish their work and can only hope for some warmth and a roof over their heads. Have their hopes been placed well? Or maybe you thought there are more important things to build first? If the answer to the latter question is yes, that is where the real problems begin escalating in an avalanche paste…

Each shelter type building provides enough space for 2 meeples to spend the night. Each meeple that is placed in a heated shelter for the night is considered safe against the biting cold of the night. However, should such a meeple (representing a group of your citizens) be left without a shelter for the night (forced to sleep under the open sky, the Generator being the only thing that is keeping them from freezing to death), it will result in 1 citizen (of the type indicated by the meeple) to fall sick. So if you lack the shelter for some citizens in your settlement, you are standing before a very tough decision – who sleeps under a roof and who gets sick. Lack of shelters lasting for more than a couple rounds will spread the wave of sickness to levels that will be impossible to contain and will eventually cause the fall of your city.

Various elements of this game are interconnected, the shelters are no different. You will see many Events and Laws, like Heated Shelters Request or the Shelter Heaters and Crowded Shelters laws, to pop up during your playthroughs. The mentioned Laws allow you to focus the heat distribution on the shelters or force your people to live in cramped conditions. The introduction of such laws will temporarily see the need for shelters or their level of heating solved, but like any decision in this game - it will bear consequences. In the longer run, Laws alone will not be enough to solve the issues connected with living conditions of your society, the weather is your worst enemy in Frostpunk: The Board Game and it never ceases its attacks.

We have described the mechanics of the storms before, but as a reminder to those of you who might have missed it – when the storm hits your settlement the tents (being the least insulated form of shelters) will no longer be enough to keep your citizens safe. A second coming of the storm will be even worse and will turn off the bunkhouses as a reliable source of heated shelter. Only the most advanced structures, like the House building, will see you through the coldest of nights. It is a bit like the story of three little pigs and the wolf that tried to get them. The weather is the wolf, you are the piggy. Which one of them will you be? The one who built the shelter out of straw or the one who built it out of bricks? Will you be able to make it before the big, bad wolf’s cold breath hits you straight in the face? It remains to be seen…

With these questions hanging we leave you, but only for a short while because tomorrow might be the most exciting day since the beginning of this campaign… tomorrow you will hear a wolf howling at the moon and see leaders taking responsibility for their citizens!

Motivated by your support and fueled by your positive energy.

Jakub & GCU Team

PS

Woohoo! Congrats on reaching the 1.4 million Euro Stretch Goal! The 2mm thick buildings’ tokens and counters are unlocked! <3

The Coming of the Storm
over 3 years ago – Sat, Oct 17, 2020 at 02:23:29 AM

Hello! Feeling frosty today?

Yesterday we saw the first snowfall in Poland and the winter is inevitably coming. We only hope it won’t be as harsh and long-lasting as the one in the world of Frostpunk… it is 2020 after all, so let’s get ready just in case! Today we would like to discuss the menace of the approaching storm, and one of Frostpunk’s most distinguishing aspects. So let us talk about the weather.

Brace yourself, a storm is coming!

One of the key aspects of the game is the mechanics of weather, and how it influences the condition of your settlement. The Weather mechanic in this board game has two major roles: first it causes the temperature in our settlement to drop and second it shows the progress of the impending threat of the snow-storm. This happens during the weather phase when you draw a card from the Weather deck. These cards indicate several things. The first information shown tells you how much closer the storm has moved towards you – it is represented by moving the Storm token on the round track. Once the Storm token meets with the Round token, the snowy blizzard hits our settlement! The effects are severe and felt throughout the city – the operating cost of the Generator is increased and the currently least advanced shelter type (Tents in the first place and then Bunkhouses) becomes unlivable! This can cause a sudden outbreak of sickness among the citizens if not addressed quick enough with more efficient Coal gathering and better shelters. What then? If your settlement survives, the Storm token is returned to the Round tracker and will begin moving again next round! Yes it is merciless and harsh, but depending on a scenario it will be more or less so.

The Weather card also reveals the exact temperature drop in the settlement itself, by showing you which heat range tokens to move on the Generator board. The higher these tokens are the more coal is needed to heat an area indicated on a token. The central tile that is directly under the Generator, the middle ring or the outer rim that is adjacent to the frozen solid walls of the crater. The Coal consumption that is increased as your game progresses is one of the key problems you will be dealing with. As your demand for Wood to construct new structures is high from the very beginning, your need for Coal will increase gradually – from quantities that are rather available at hand to unimaginable (if compared to the beginning). That is when the technology we mentioned in the previous update comes handy. First of all it makes your buildings easier to heat up (better insulated) and second it makes some of the ones responsible for gathering Coal more efficient. But the heating mechanics is a topic that deserves a separate update! Let’s get back to the Weather cards.

The Weather Card holds some more crucial information: it tells you how much food was gathered by your Hunters during the night (it is a passive ability that becomes active when you build a Hunters’ Hut and scales up depending on the total amount of Hunters’ Huts built in the settlement). The last but possibly not least information tells you how much distance your Scouts have been able to cover, and whether they reached their destination or are still stranded in the endless white. So the emotions connected with the Weather cards are aplenty, not your typical chat about the weather…

Even describing that gave us a chill, so to warm you up we would like to wholeheartedly thank you for your unending support and congratulate on unlocking another financial Stretch Goal – the double-layered Round track! With those thick, rich boards you will need some matching tokens! These are on us, we are really grateful for your support in bringing this project to life! So we’ve added these as an extra to the Frostlander expansion (free for all full pledge (Core or Deluxe) Kickstarter backers), we hope you will enjoy those custom pieces for the Round track along with the new Storm token! Even more good stuff & theme for you to enjoy while playing Frostpunk: The Board Game!

As we are on the topic of theme we have prepared another massive daily unlock for you! Another game setup! And yes - a matching scenario will follow 😊 but more on that on Monday. And now…

The Crags

Generator 049 was built in an alternate location, after rugged terrain and worsening weather made reaching the primary site impossible. The same rock formations that impeded the advance will now make city planning very difficult.

The Crags throw a completely new challenge at you and each time it will be a little different. In this setup the Generator is surrounded by five massive rock formations that significantly worsen the growth possibilities for your settlement and impede (especially at the beginning) your city planning options. To make things even more interesting, the crags also limit access to resources (besides one slot with a forest).

As you prepare for a playthrough, you discard 5 tiles (middle rim type - adjacent to your Generator) and place the crag tiles instead. Next you set these tiles around the Generator and uncover them all. The resources should be placed on the uncovered tiles, but not on the central tile.

This setup gives access to a lot of resources that are near the Generator and allow for quite a few buildings to be constructed next to it. So it isn’t as bad as it seemed at the beginning - it is just different. And that is the whole point! Playing the core scenario on various setups provides you with a completely different experience each time! Come Monday, we will have a brand new scenario for you!

Thank you 😊

Jakub Wiśniewski & GCU Team

PS

Tomorrow we will tease you… oh my we will tease you so much we should get a Dusk - consequence card shuffled into our deck! :P

The Steam Powered Technology
over 3 years ago – Fri, Oct 16, 2020 at 02:08:00 AM

How are you all doing? Great to have you here with us!

Today we would like to present you with the second add-on. It is directly connected with the game and its overall aesthetics. Once again we have listened to your feedback that comes to us through the surveys, comments, messages, and Social Media. Not to keep you waiting - the add-on is a set of beautiful plastic resources that match other plastic components in scale. It simply enhances the overall impression you will get if you pledged for the Miniatures expansion. Just like the play mat, this add-on is purely of aesthetic nature and does not in any way influence the mechanics of the game.

We dedicate it to those of you who pay extra attention to how your game looks on the board. Oh and this add-on won’t affect the shipping price of your pledge!

How to add the Resources expansion to your pledge? First, click your chosen pledge level. Then click on the Add-ons tab and simply choose to add it to your pledge. This expansion will be shipped alongside the main game box, so it won’t increase the shipping price. The expansion will also be available in the Pledge Manager, however, adding it to your pledge now will greatly contribute to unlocking some of the financial Stretch Goals we now have for the entire game!

The thing that saved us in the first place

We’ve mentioned here and there the possibility of advancing and researching your technology throughout the game. It is time to gather all that into one massive 101 update, and bring you all up to speed with what hides under this particular layer of Frostpunk: The Board Game.

The technology is represented in the game in four areas: upgrading buildings, technology advancement, production of automatons, and Technology cards. Let us go through these concepts one by one.

Building upgrades

The vast majority of buildings in our game are upgradeable. Each building is represented on a double-sided token, the building that is upgradable has two different sides of its token. Upon constructing a building, its token is placed on the board with its face up - where its action ability is presented along with the insulation level (represented by the color of the ribbon). The reverse side of such a building token holds its upgraded version that can be unlocked if you meet certain conditions. To meet those conditions you will need an Engineer meeple to perform an action in a previously constructed Workshop (for small size buildings and Factory for the larger buildings) and a resource that is consumed in the process – a Steam Core. Performing such an action results in a building becoming upgraded and you flipping its token to its stronger side, where the insulation and the action get better! 

Let’s see that in the example of the buildings that help you to nourish your citizens!

Technology advancement and construction of Automatons

The Workshop has a second ability besides the one that allows you to upgrade other buildings. This second ability allows you to research new technologies and new buildings. The basic buildings are available to you from the beginning of your playthrough, however, the more advanced ones must be researched by your engineers. To do that you need to allocate a team of engineers (represented by an Engineer meeple) to a Workshop and remove the Technology token from the Buildings board, the token shows that a given tier of buildings is not yet available to you. Once the token is removed, the whole tier that holds buildings of a given cost (currently there are two such tiers one with buildings costing 4 pieces of Wood, and the other with buildings costing 5 pieces of Wood) is unlocked. In those two tiers, you will find the constructions that allow you to significantly address the harsh, unforgiving climate and a constant shortage of resources – like the Hospital or the Coal Mine.

The Factory, besides allowing you to upgrade the large buildings, enables you to construct Automatons. To bring this wonder of engineering to the life you will need a Steam Core and an Engineer meeple. What is it that you gain by constructing this mechanical beast? A worker that does not eat, sleep nor does it mind the cold. Of course, the Automaton needs some kind of fuel to operate – so for each action that you want it to perform it will consume 1 Coal. But this is a meager price to pay for what it brings to the table.

Technology cards

Hey but what happens with that technology token that you were supposed to remove from your Buildings board? A lot! This token represents the general level of technological advancement you were able to achieve in your settlement and allows you to power up one of the Technology cards that you randomly drew during setup. So when you begin a playthrough you draw 4 out of a deck of 8 cards and place them face down next to your main game board. You uncover the first 2 cards to see what technologies can be researched from the start. Each time you build a Workshop, you uncover another card until all 4 are visible. The token that you received after performing the action in the Workshop is placed on an uncovered Technology card, and its effect is considered to be active. Those cards can cause your Sawmills to produce Wood quicker, your Hunters to be more effective, and your citizens to construct buildings faster. You will be able to unlock 2 out of the 4 displayed cards in a single playthrough, so choose wisely and remember to adjust your strategy towards your technological possibilities.

Next to the Laws, the Technology cards are one of the basic tools in hands of rulers of the last city on Earth! To give you an even better chance at success, and to make the cogwheels in your heads run like a well-oiled Dreadnought, we are adding 8 more Technology cards to the Frostlander expansion (free for all full pledge (Core or Deluxe) Kickstarter backers)!

These Technology cards will greatly increase the possibilities you have for the technological advancement of your settlement. They will also have a very positive effect on one of the key features of Frostpunk: The Board Game – its replayability!

As always, grateful for your support and thankful for what we’ve already achieved,

Jakub Wiśniewski & GCU Team

PS

You have been asking for some additional photos of the citizens' miniatures, so here they are. One is painted - to show you how much aesthetic potential lies in a piece so small and why we decided to go for the mini-diorama look. This has been painted by a member of our team, a hobbyist not a propainter.

The Dreadnought, a Skeleton of Another Age. Oh and Group Pledge is Here! ;)
over 3 years ago – Thu, Oct 15, 2020 at 12:00:24 AM

Greetings citizens of the last city on Earth!

When a creator is to license a lovechild project to another creator mutual trust is of utmost importance. We treasure the relationship with 11 bit studios, the creators of the digital game and the whole universe of Frostpunk, and more so that we were given the permission to add value to this unique setting by creating new content. Today we’d like to describe to you how we used that power to expand this, already vast, setting. A new setup, not seen in the digital game, inspired by the second best-known engineering marvel from the game’s artwork. The Dreadnought. What a marvelous concept it is! Like a steel bullet piercing the snowy crust covering the world… a behemoth of the industrial age. Just imagine what could have happened if such a machine actually made its way to the Generator, what influence would it have on the future of your city? What potential problems could it cause?

Fear God and Dread Nought

The Dreadnoughts are immense machines, powered by the Steam Cores, created to safely deliver refugees escaping from the inhabitable cities in the south to seek shelter in the far north where the Generators were built. As the convoy traversed the endless white landscape to reach its destination it consumed the resources that kept it going – fuel for the machine itself and food (some of it might still be there, under thick layers of snow). Yet the steel beast is a treasure by itself, in its belly Steam Cores are hidden like precious organs in a carcass. This new setup introduces a brand new resource for the game! Steel.

Your citizens will be able to recover it from the dreadnought’s hull (along with Steam Cores) but this is going to be a very tedious process requiring a lot of workforce and planning – the dreadnought’s wreck is in some distance from the Generator. What is the benefit of this laborious task? Steam Core allows you to upgrade your buildings and build automatons (sending an Engineer meeple to your Factory building). But what about the Steel?

Steel is a new resource added to the game, it is exclusive for this setup. You can use it for construction – just like you would use the Wood resource. Should you use only Steel to construct a building it will be already upgraded! Saving you a Steam Core and an Engineer meeple. As those of you who already know how the game works know by now, Steel is a very precious resource! You are extremely lucky to have it near your settlement since it can significantly influence the future of your settlement… allowing it to survive.

The components added to the game, directly connected with this setup:

  • 4 new board tiles, depicting the hull of the dreadnought
  • 8 custom, wooden pieces to represent the Steel resource

Building the Last City on Earth

Frostpunk: The Board Game is a city-builder and this is what makes it different when compared to other survival games that usually are adventure-oriented. Here you are building an actual city and managing a living, breathing organism – a society of people with diverse needs and moods. Individuals are hard to notice in the body of people present in the city, so you will be sending a group of engineers or working teams instead of named heroes. The epic tasks are aplenty, raising a building or performing hard, manual labor when it is at least -30 Celsius degrees outside is heroic. Thanks to those efforts the general society can survive, maybe even thrive, and begin exploring the endless, white Frostlands.

So how does that look translated into the language of worker placement mechanics? When you send a meeple (representing a group of people) to the build action you can complete up to 3 constructions (providing you own the necessary building material – represented by the Wood resource). The buildings can be constructed (placed) on the board tiles that have been placed through the remove snow action. You can place your structures on top of the resources that can still be present on a board tile however this will destroy those resources and in the world of Frostpunk wasting something is a rare luxury. So providing necessary space for construction is one aspect but definitely not the only one! A lot of the buildings have some kind of possible interaction between them and if placed well will provide maximal efficiency (for example a Coal Thumper and a Gathering Post) but the buildings also have various insulation (represented by the color of the ribbon on their tokens) and while planning your city you should take into consideration how far are they placed from the Generator and if they will provide enough heat for people to actually work in them! The life of a city planner during a snow apocalypse isn’t an easy one!

Constructing buildings will require a lot of Wood that can be obtained in various ways. Gather it from the piles on the game board, use the Gathering Posts to maximize that effort, construct Sawmills to obtain it from the frozen solid trees, look for it while exploring outside the settlement or even excavate it from the walls of a frozen crater! The choices are aplenty and they all provide you with numerous ways of achieving optimal results on your way to progress and self-sustainment. Remember that not all buildings will be available to you at the start, you will have to dedicate time and your Engineers to research the technologies necessary for their construction – especially the most advanced ones! We promise to tell you more about it in the next update 😉… don’t worry it is tomorrow!

Bundle Pledge and Information Regarding Retailers

Many of you (really like a couple of hundred messages!) asked about the possibility of making a bundle/group pledge so that your local gaming group or club can enjoy the game. It is beneficial especially if you all leave near each other, saves you money and our environment – less cardboard is used to pack it and less fuel and electricity used to deliver to several locations. We are all in on that! So please check out the Bundle Pledge we’ve prepared for you in the pledge levels section. Both Core game and Deluxe pledge are available as a bundle. For pledging such a significant amount we would like to offer you a 10% discount on the whole bundle! The bundle will also have reduced shipping costs that will be exactly calculated in the pledge manager - it will depend on the number of bundles pledged for and the package’s destination. The shipping discounts will therefore vary and fit in the 10-20% bracket.

While we are on the topic of bundling and larger orders we would like to inform you that we won’t be doing special deals for retailers (shops and companies) during this campaign. If you are one such entity interested in Frostpunk: The Board Game please contact our publishing partners listed at the bottom of our campaign page. Regarding the retail version of the English language version of the game we are currently talking with distributors and will announce with whom we decided to cooperate sometime after the campaign ends.

Have a great day and an even better evening!

Jakub Wiśniewski & GCU Team