The original Frostpunk puts you in all sorts of moral dilemmas, but replayability isn’t one of its strong suits—unless you take matters into your own hands and replay it with self-imposed restrictions. Thanks to official modding support, that’s about to change with Frostpunk 2.
The official modding tool was announced in an Aug. 28 YouTube video. The tool, called Frostkit, will ship with Frostpunk 2 as early as its launch on Sep. 20. It will let you “create custom maps, populate them with custom models, and set their new cities—whether ancient, cosmic, or differentiated in thousands of other ways from the original frosty-apocalypse setting—against custom scenarios,” 11 bit studios said in the announcement.
Modding support was one of the most requested features from the Frostpunk community for the 2018 original. But sadly, that didn’t become a reality due to technical limitations, mostly because the game was developed using an in-house engine. With the sequel being developed using Unreal Engine, this is no longer the case.
The beta version of Frostkit that’ll release alongside Frostpunk 2 is set to go through a closed beta period in the meantime, involving selected members of the modding community before the official release.
“With this tool, you’ll be able to build or modify practically everything inside your game. Imagine creating your own custom maps, models, or even scenarios,” 11 bit studios technical director Szymon Jablonski said. “All this can lead to the creation of worlds where the only limit is your imagination.”
As we saw with the likes of Skyrim and Minecraft, modding support paved the way for infinite replayability. Even within the city-builder genre, the original Cities Skylines thrived because of its robust modding support. Now, all eyes will be set on the Frostpunk 2’s modding scene and whether it can carry the torch into the post-apocalyptic volcanic winter.
Frostpunk 2 is releasing on Sept. 20 after being postponed to “guarantee the best possible experience at launch.”
