Frostpunk 2
Frostpunk 2 elevates the city-survival genre to a new level. Take the role of a Steward and lead your city through a cascade of calamities...
- Apple M1 chip or later
- macOS 14.5 or later
Description
Frostpunk 2 elevates the city-survival genre to a new level. Take the role of a Steward and lead your city through a cascade of calamities taking place in a postapocalyptic, snowy setting. Build large city districts with their string of endless needs and demands. Navigate through conflicting interests of factions that populate your metropolis.
As the needs of the city grow and factional power at its core rises, only you can steer the society towards an uncertain future.
The city grows
The world is overtaken by an ever present winter, which makes expansion of the city the only way for the survival of mankind. In order to grow, the metropolis needs resources like coal and oil, just like its citizens require food and warmth. In Frostpunk 2, it’s your job to tackle this never ending circle of supply and demand.
City districts
Your city is divided into zones serving different purposes, such as housing or extraction. It’s up to you to build new ones and make sure that those already existing work in perfect unison.
Special buildings
In time, you will have to build places like City Hall or Research Institute. Inside these buildings, you will put forth laws and projects to ensure that your city develops in the proper direction.
Colonies
To ensure that your city growth will not falter, you have to venture into the frostland. There, you can build extensive colonies that will provide all the necessary resources.
Perlis of human nature
The number of your citizens steadily grows, making the task of governing them and satisfying their demands all the more challenging. As the Steward you will have to maneuver carefully across the interests of many groups inhabiting the city.
New Londoners
Your citizens can form communities and factions, each with different ideas for the city’s future. In the Council Hall you’ll put forth laws and negotiate them with the faction’s delegates.
Council Hall
Support of every faction inside the Council Hall costs dearly, as one’s faction as
Editor-checked details
Recommended for Apple-silicon players who enjoy high-pressure city management, political negotiation and long planning horizons. An 8-GB M1 can enter the game but is better for smaller cities at low quality; large late-game cities favour M1 Pro/16 GB or better. Back up saves; verify 1.6.1/DLC/mods/SHA-256; finish the prologue without mods; build a low-quality test city; verify week progression and reload; observe memory/autosave after population growth; enable mods one at a time last. Compare Frostpunk for more direct survival, Factorio for production automation, or Manor Lords for medieval settlement management, after checking current Mac support.
Pros
- It expands city survival into factions, communities, laws and Council negotiation, requiring simultaneous management of heat, shelter, food, materials, trust and political promises. District-and-hub planning scales better to a metropolis than individual buildings, while Frostland colonies extend supply chains across regions. Story mode provides narrative structure and Utopia Builder supports long sandbox campaigns and mods. The Mac build is Apple-processor native and supports English, Simplified/Traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean interfaces, with Steam Cloud, Workshop and achievements.
Cons
- Hardware load is high: minimum M1/8 GB is intended only for very-low/low settings, while official medium settings already recommend M1 Pro/16 GB. Late-game population, effects and autosaves add pressure. Intel is unsupported and macOS 14.5 is required. Laws, promises, faction relations and resource crises overlap, and consequences may appear many weeks after a decision. Old saves, DLC and mod versions create compatibility risk, so patches need rotating copies. Breach of Trust and other expansions require separate entitlement; the base game is not the complete content set, and themes include violence and mature distress.
Installation steps
- This page is pinned to Frostpunk 2 1.6.1. Official Mac minimums are Apple M1, 8 GB unified memory, macOS 14.5 and 30 GB SSD space, intended only for very-low/low settings. Recommended is Apple M1 Pro or better with 16 GB, targeting medium settings. Intel Macs are unsupported. Keep at least 50 GB free for installation, patches, mods and rotating saves. Back up old saves and record 1.6.1, Breach of Trust/other DLC ownership, mod list and installer SHA-256. Start without mods and test the story prologue, Utopia Builder, district placement, Council voting, Frostland teams, save/load and week progression at low/medium defaults. Before growing a large city, observe memory, thermals and autosave duration, then raise graphics and population complexity one item at a time.
Uninstallation steps
- Quit and wait for autosave to finish. Back up story, Utopia Builder and Survivor saves, settings and the mod list separately. Label critical saves with map, week, 1.6.1, DLC, mod versions and SHA-256. Open a copy offline without mods, advance several weeks and verify Council, resources, colonies and Frostland teams. Never overwrite a DLC-dependent save while its entitlement is missing. For troubleshooting, disable mods and rename settings/cache folders rather than deleting the only save. Uninstalling does not revoke Steam/App Store ownership, DLC or Workshop/mod.io subscriptions; retain at least two rotating save generations until reinstall verification passes.
Common errors and fixes
- For boot or load crashes, confirm Apple silicon, macOS 14.5+, SSD space and SHA-256, disable overlays/mods and restart; compatibility mode cannot support Intel. For large-city stutter or memory pressure, lower graphics/resolution and close background apps; 8-GB M1 is only the low-setting minimum, while M1 Pro/16 GB is recommended. For old-save crashes, preserve the original, test without mods and use an earlier rotating save while checking DLC and 1.6.1. Deployment-base placement, map-title and specific-condition crashes are within the official 1.6.1 fix scope: verify the build and retry from a safe pre-fix save. For resource/population anomalies, pause, save to a new slot and inspect policies, districts, hubs, colonies and mods. Reset UI scale/audio device for interface or sound faults.
What changed in this version
- Frostpunk 2 1.6.1 is a post–Breach of Trust hotfix. 11 bit studios prioritised balance issues and multiple crashes, fixed many reported problems, and improved audio, UI and the New Edinburgh experience. Explicit items include removing the volcano tile from the NE sandbox, correcting deployment-base placement in non-frostbroken areas or on deposits, fixing titles for new sandbox maps, and resolving specific boot, runtime and subsystem crashes. This page remains limited to the 1.6.1 announcement.
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