11 Bit Studios almost pushed back Frostpunk 2's release date to two months last year, but Jakub Stokalski (game design director) and Lukasz Juszczyk (art director) gave a very honest reason for that.
Stokalski and Juszczyk announced the delay and reasoning on Steam: “Based on the surveys we received after the beta test, the average rating we received was 8/10. We are very grateful for that! At the same time, this was only a small slice of the game that is still in development and is still evolving. Even though our backlog is large, this was a chance for us to hear what you guys liked and what didn’t quite work.
“This allowed us to better prioritize things and deliver the features and tweaks we were already working on. But we also realized that in order to ensure the best possible experience at launch, we needed more time to complete the development of Frostpunk 2. That’s why we made the difficult decision to delay the release until September 20,” Stokalski and Juszczyk wrote.
They also listed some of the things the team will be working on in the next couple of months: changes to temperature, heat, and proximity-based gameplay, including new, balanced hubs that add depth and impact to city building gameplay; more detailed and flexible workforce management; abilities that are more directly usable in the gameplay loop to respond more dynamically to crises; a new resource that makes city building and expansion more strategic and helps stabilize the city’s economy; the opportunity to reshape our neighborhoods after they’re built; faction behavior that better fits their story; and a more comprehensive and complex approach to dealing with protests.
The user interface is improved to make it clearer and more intuitive; A new building menu will be added to the game along with five new city nodes, and improvements to clarity, readability, and the appearance of the Tree of Thoughts and Frostlands are also planned. Zoom Stories isn't left out either: you can zoom in on specific neighborhoods to get a closer look at the daily lives of residents.
Frostpunk 2 will be released on September 20 for PC (Steam, GOG, and Epic Games Store).
