How Frostpunk Injects Harrowing Moral Choices into the City-Builder Genre

(There is a video version of this write-up if you prefer to watch rather than read)

In its purest form, the city-builder video game genre is epitomized by games like “Sim City” and “Cities: Skylines,” where your goal is to use the tools and resources at your disposal to design and manage an increasingly larger and more advanced city. Shaking up the visual style and mechanics but retaining the same core ideas, you have things like the smaller-scale, verticle “Project Highrise” or the chill and thoroughly de-gamified “Townscaper.” Reaching a bit further, you can find city builders that embrace alternative settings, like the ever-popular theme park management sim “Rollercoaster Tycoon,” the dinosaur park designer “Jurassic World: Evolution,” various games where you’re tasked with running places like hospitals, universities, prisons, and plenty more, and a deluge of period-piece and sci-fi takes on the genre, sometimes working in elements from the RTS, survival, or grand strategy genres but remaining mostly focused on city management and expansion.

I’ve played a bunch of games in this genre and mostly found myself bouncing off of them; not necessarily through any fault on the game’s part — just not quite…