The boss became a new god, and thus even the church had to pay tribute to the head of production. Industrialization could lead to more output from the same physical footprint as older-style artisan houses or craft guilds, and unlike those more cooperative spaces, an industrial factory was overseen and could be more strictly designed. This is the other way in which Frostpunk reflects the early industrialization of the European colonial era: the primacy of the city is not due to any inherent virtue of the form, but because the city is stratified, populated, and most of all controllable. The future, says Frostpunk, must have these civilizations. It is only through the overbearing moralism around who works and how work is assigned that each path begins to grow fangs. Faith builds churches, sanctums from the cold and spiritual rests for each citizen. Order begins with start-of-shift meetings in each workplace, to rally for the day.

The Faith path is concerned with the authoritarianism of the Church, of a belief system so omnipotent in daily life that Faith Keepers take the place of guards, and public punishments in the form of ritual harm become common.Д«oth paths begin rather harmlessly, as all fascism does.

Guardsmen wander the streets, laws are strict and punishments brutal. Order deals with the authoritarianism of policing, of the eventual panopticon state. There are two primary ideological paths offered in Frostpunk as the game proceeds: Order and Faith. It displays a Victorian perspective on the moral virtue of work, and the ideologies that flourish in a world where labor is virtuous. It is freeing in the way that only total war can be freeing.Д«y contrast, Frostpunk feels obsessed with the other steampunk, the one most similar to its cyberpunk heritage. They Are Billions plays to one fantasy of steampunk-the untapped wilderness, the wild and unknowable denizens that you have the power to slaughter indiscriminately. You were not concerned with the populace, but the constant war effort, the feverish expansionism. While I enjoyed They Are Billions greatly, it never felt like a game where I could indulge the interiority of the city. It is fascist in a boldfaced way, the fascism of survival, the fascism that is вЂњthe only good option.вЂќ It is refreshing in its honesty. Your position is not a war commander, as in They Are Billions, but the overworked city ordinator. Citizens are packed into the few tents or bunkhouses available, and life is a dull trudge of tightly regimented work and rest. Most of your settlements in Frostpunk rarely break a couple hundred inhabitants. Frostpunk is less about the conquest-driven expansionism that formed the backbone of They Are Billions, and more about the city. They Are Billions, in its constant colonization of zombie-ridden land, looks outward, but Frostpunk feels tight and inward-obsessed, with your settlement built out radially from a central generator, the only source of heat in a world bereft of the sun. The result is a strange half-child tied to the aesthetics of an imagined past but grappling with the adventurous technologies of a new and unknown future. Both games use the aesthetic in their own way to show a vision of post-apocalyptia, and both seem (either subconsciously in the former or consciously in the latter) to make a comment on its tumultuous historical inspirations.ДЄs I wrote in my piece about They Are Billions back in January, steampunk is an aesthetic movement with a weird mish-mash of varying inspirations, from Victoriana to the 1980s obsession with the neon future of cyberpunk. IвЂ™m not sure if we can say that weвЂ™re in a Steampunk Renaissance, but two recent strategy games, Frostpunk and They Are Billions, make the case.

Frostpunk laws