Frostpunk's new 'Survivor Mode' makes it likely that you won't

YouTube

For the iron-willed survivalists among you who think that Frostpunk's "hard" mode is too damn easy, today's 1.10 update introduces the new Survivor Mode promised last month. The mode, which I assume is named ironically, ratchets up the challenge by eliminating the ability to pause the game unless you open a menu, and only saving progress when you exit.

The core difficulty is also cranked up in Survivor Mode: Developer 11 Bit Studios didn't get into the details but said that "meeting the people's needs or balancing the delicate economy of your city will be even harder." The good news is that all the innocent people who will inevitably suffer slow, grim deaths because of your insistence on playing this way won't have died in vain, thanks to the addition of new Survivor Mode achievements.

On the technical side of things, Frostpunk now supports Nvidia's Ansel, which enables—among other things—"super cool high-resolution screenshots like this one." (That's 12672 × 6432, by the way.) There's also a new quicksave/quickload option (F5 and F9 by default), and multiple other changes and fixes that you can dive into below. And if you haven't already picked it up, Frostpunk is also currently on sale on Steam for 15 percent off, taking it to $26/£21/€26 until June 21. Read the patch notes below.

Smaller changes and balancing:

Constructed streets now more easily connect to already existing street net
Rebalanced amount of starting resources and resources on frostland for Refugees and The Arks scenarios in easy and hard difficulty setting
Hunters will now have to rest for a few hours after coming back from the hunt. It will no longer be possible to send them to other work immediately
Added blocking other panels by in-game menu Changed extraction rate value for all pickable resources - replaced potential value with all employees by actual value based on efficiency
It is now possible to bind keyboard shortcuts to “Fast speed” and “Very fast speed” commands
Increased precision of the gathered Steam Cores amount to 2 digits after comma
Added emergency shift trackers to pickable resources

Fixes:

Fixed certain endlog variations that didn’t display properly when Cannibalism law was passed
Fixed overlapping trackers on frostland (sites, expeditions, transports, survivors)
Fixed missing recurring consequences of Emergency Shifts. Watch out when you exert your workforce!
Fixed showing tutorials after loading save
Fixed a bug causing snow caps to accumulate on buildings that were just built inside heat zone
Fixed scrollbars in all expedition building selection panels
Fixed some translations
Fixed many UI show/hide animations
Fixed closing notifications on pause
Enabled notifications visibility on Frostland
Fixed queuing unlocked resources on resource bar
Fixed texts serializations - all texts will be in current language, even after changing language in main menu and loading save
Fixed calculating average discontent for expeditions
Fixed states (selected, pressed) for many buttons in selection panel
Fixed current research description text on workshop selection panel
Fixed displaying prohibited citizen groups on population panel
Fixed disabled people outside care house count
Fixed two crashes that occurred in rare circumstances
Fixed a bug causing upgraded buildings to overlap adjacent streets

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.