Frostpunk expansion On the Edge coming August 20th

“We survived the Great Storm but the path ahead is still marked with toil."

Ah yes, if global pandemic hasn't got you quite stressed enough and you feel the need for some critical life or death decisions to distract you from basking in the balmy summer weather, then fear not! The cheery folks at 11 Bit Studios have you covered for your mid-summer dose of wintry strife.

The next and final expansion: On the Edge, for their post-apocalyptic survival/management sim Frostpunk is coming out on August 20th and will be taking us back into the cold after the previous expansion let us off the hook a bit with an autumnal prequel campaign set before the volcanic winter had coated the world in ice.

Set after the great storm of the main game, this time the story will follow a scouting mission to a newly discovered army warehouse which has been exposed by the storm. You'll have to take over and attempt to rebuild, while juggling relations with New London. There will be the usual dubious moral decisions about how to balance your people’s happiness and survival but this time around there will be no hunting resources and no generator so you will have to rely on provisions from New London to survive. It looks like the push and pull of the supply chain from the capital set against their demands on your performance could be where some of the new diplomacy mechanics touted by 11 Bit Studios will come into play, along with some other new features and new areas to explore.

11 Bit Studios say that there will be “A brand-new map with unique structures, new methods to divide or unite your people and new mechanics to build economic and diplomatic relations.” And who can say they don’t have a delightful time causing division amongst their people.

Frostpunk was already an intriguing and sometimes brutal take on the city-builder genre with its emphasis on ambiguous moral decisions as you manage resources and implement laws to keep your people alive (but not necessarily too happy) during a post-volcanic winter. It’s a setting and approach that still manages to feel unique, if a touch bleak at times and although 11 Bit Studios say that this time the “weather is not so severe,” we can imagine they’ll still find a way to get us all squirming over some of our choices.

Frostpunk: On the Edge will release on August 20th on Steam, GOG and the Humble Store.