I almost can't believe it, but Frostpunk 2 looks even more grim and bleak than the original game

Survival city builder Frostpunk 2 takes place 30 years after the massive blizzard that capped off the original game's campaign, but even though humanity has somehow survived the frozen planet for decades, things haven't gotten any easier. If anything, the situation looks more bleak, dire, and desperate than ever.

And speaking of bleak news: despite crossing our frozen fingers that Frostpunk 2 would release this year, it's actually coming out in 2024. Darn it! I was really hoping we'd get to dive back into the snowy world this year.

In the new Frostpunk 2 cinematic trailer (above) shown at today's PC Gaming Show we're given a look at the city, now powered by oil instead of coal, as it grows and evolves over the years. But that evolution is a violent one, and just like the original Frostpunk there's much more to worry about than just the frigid temperatures and blinding snow. The true threat is coming from inside the city's walls.

"The City is growing its potential, but be aware that all great civilizations fell under the conflicts between people, and that someone's utopia can become a dystopia for others," Jakub Stokalski, Frostpunk 2's co-director, told PC Gamer. "[Frostpunk 2] takes a lot from the real world, the situations we observe every day, where some people's ambitions can lead to others demise."

The new trailer spells that idea out clearly. As the city grows, and grows, and grows (it looks much bigger than the city I built in the original Frostpunk) it's hard to feel a sense of triumph or accomplishment because the grim pile of bodies in the snow outside the city is growing larger, too. I get the sense it's more than just workers who have had accidents and citizens who have gotten ill making up that frozen corpse pile. More like political enemies who have had to be removed from the equation to allow the mayor to remain in power.

"It's still struggling," Stokalski says of the city in Frostpunk 2. "This time with inner threats, strictly related to people who are capable of destroying it, and its painful legacy, from within."

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.