Frostpunk {Solo Variant}: Discussion

0:07 thank you some viewers may find the following video disturbing viewer discretion is advised hey everyone welcome to the discussion for frostpunk and this is a discussion for the solo variant of the game and this is actually a very interesting uh discussion because I can almost say that if you like you can go watch my multiplayer discussion and everything I said about that applies here because at this game's core it almost feels like it was meant to be solo similar to this war of mine where it's kind of like yeah all right you can play with other people but there's not like individual player powers or anything like that so like you everything you're doing one person can easily do like the only multiplayer aspect is that it gives you like a roll so like one person kind of keeps track of the weather one person keeps track of the sickness one person keeps track of the resources and that's really it but at the end of the day everyone is just kind of dealing with the same thing um here's where the solo sucks like this this game really exacerbated how all over the place kind of everything is not in terms of like complexity or like too many pieces it's just like the way that they made this board like with you know the

1:37 weather board then the round board then the thickness board the building board The Hope and despair board the meeple board it's like it's a lot for one person to manage not like I said in terms of like mechanisms or understanding the game it works just like multiplayer but if you watch my run through like you'll notice that I was constantly getting up it's like okay let me do this oh okay oh nope now I gotta move the round track all right yep now I gotta move the weather track oh okay now next phase uh gotta you know gotta deal with the you know the sickness or the generator track and then gotta reach and move that and then gotta you're like you're honestly better off standing the entire time and it was I mean for recording purposes I tried my best to not be in the way it actually really bugs me if like the hats I wear like the bills are in like the the bill of the Hat are in the way or in or by hair even if it's like slightly there like even if it's not covering anything but just in the shot I don't know I mean it just kind of bugs me and it was not even remotely possible for me to not do that like I was even trying to use a pencil just to reach to try and like kind of like uh but I almost needed like one of those like Grabbers that like pizza like like uh like older people need to just kind of like reach and to knock things over because I was constantly getting up and like my thighs hurt my back hurts you're just

3:08 all over the place and since it's just you that can become very annoying in my opinion like I I was miserable and in a multiplayer game even with one other person you can just kind of be like okay this is what I can reach I can reach the the hope hope track I can reach the meeples and resources and I can reach the weather you can do the uh Expedition the sickness and the round marker and the death track and then or multiplayer like four people then you do give everyone kind of their roles but that's pretty much the biggest difference between this and a solo game or uh this like the solar variant and the uh multiplayer is that you actually want other people to be touching other because it was it was just so much uh now in terms of like the actual game like okay is it easier or harder uh with more or less people and I think in some ways it's definitely easier you obviously don't have anyone who wants to do something else you don't have to commune with anyone on how resources are spent or what buildings to buy or what laws to pass or what text to to start out with at all it's all just you and I think that's very nice like I will say the game is shorter with just you know just you as a person because there's no discussion there's no interaction it's just kind of streamlined and efficient

4:40 on what you're trying to accomplish I now I actually like that back and forth like actually trying to strategize with other players and because this game well doesn't have like an overall narrative it kind of does but it's more scenario based a lot of stories come from the dust cards uh and the morning cards and and stuff like that I like sharing that with other people but so I don't know if I would actually enjoy it if I wasn't recording it if I was just sitting down and reading it by myself I don't know if I would be as into it uh as I would with reading it to another person and you know oh hey man what should we do like what what route should we take how do we want to you know deal with this situation but I also do feel like you do get a lot more done like I I passed like way more laws than I did in multiplayer I passed six laws with just one like two of the different like the the random ones not being done didn't even really touch technology they got a lot of buildings out if I was doing relatively well but it it kind of makes sense it was just so much I was kind of like failing in every aspect uh like I was doing really well on despair but then hope went away once people started dying um like it was just like it wasn't like anything all at once it was just like okay yeah generator generator boom and then

6:11 you know kind of sickness creeping sickness okay now someone dies and it's like oh I happen to be a kid and I lost two of The Hope and I didn't put anything out or I mean I wasn't generating enough food to go to like the cooking house and increase hope again like this game is brutal it is just like this war of mine like I don't imagine most people win this a lot they have different difficulties for the so like for the scenarios they have normal hard and survivalist and I don't know who's doing hard in survivalist who's like wow we went all the time on normal uh we went all the time on hard so we had to up the difficulty it's like really like maybe people who play the video game like can take all that knowledge and put it here and be like okay this is what you do boom boom boom and that's how you win and they like the efficiency puzzle I've played the video game a couple times and I did not do well there either but I think it's okay like I really like how brutal this game is it's it's incredibly challenging you're just trying to keep your head above water the entire time but you have some control like you have ways to answer but you have to be extremely proactive uh but the game and the the dust cards and events are going to make you start to become reactive so you start off being very ProActive at the very beginning but then it's like oh this person is

7:42 doing this and then you like you put them in their place and then now that starts to make people mad and then now they start not working as much so you have less workers to deal with it's such a brilliantly designed system and like I've I've done the same I've done like the same scenario multiple times and I did do a lot better this time around uh so you do get better and that feels good like you do start to do well and be like okay now next time I'm gonna try this and I think that that's I mean but that's the way it would be in multiplayer so it's it this isn't one of those where it's like oh yeah no the solar variant is definitely awesome it's I mean if you love The multiplayer game then yeah I think you'll love the solo just keep in mind that it is you touching everything and it's not like a comfortable game to sit down it's too kind of all over the place or maybe maybe it was the way it was because I was trying to keep it uh organized for the camera maybe if I was just playing it I would just kind of have I'd have that track just right in front of me and everything else maybe kind of where it was uh or just I'd have like all the tracks just right in front and be like oh okay now I can touch it all but I wanted everyone to kind of see as much as they could I had a lot of stuff off camera that like resources and and the cards that you didn't really need to see

9:13 um yeah and I also I mean I do like the fact that it was relatively shorter so uh that's that is kind of a plus if you're wanting if you're playing a multiplayer expect like a three four hour game and if you're playing it solo expect a two to three hour game so it kind of cuts off an hour and I think that's that's pretty nice again I would highly encourage anyone to go watch my multiplayer discussion because everything we talk about there I I think is is applied here and it's it's just extremely fascinating like how this game works with all of the Just the yeah you have your laws you have your eight laws that are going to be the same you can only ever put four out of those eight out but then you have four random ones out of a pretty decent stack and that's going to kind of dictate what you're going to do and when you're going to do it do you have random texts that come out those are going to kind of dictate what you focus on for buildings or special abilities um it's just this campus and then the decisions you make like my this time around my the dust deck one two three four five six seven eight nine ten you love I have 12 cards in here these are decisions I made throughout the game and I have no idea what they what they put in here so that's just immense replayability and I like the fact that whenever

10:44 at least to me whenever like something bad happens it like whenever in in the run through I drew I drew a card and I was like oh did I just lose from a card flip that's really annoying but then it that wasn't the case I was like oh no I can choose this and it wasn't that bad but it's like well I knew the decision kind of I was making I guess you don't fully know you can be you can hope that the consequences are good but then like whenever I drew the social dispute card it wasn't at the opportune time I was hoping it came out earlier which funny enough by the time it did come out it would have been way more better it was like Hey if you have more if you just have more active hope tokens you can choose to remove four stress I had like I had nine stress at that time or gain food equal to the round level which I think the round was at five I'm like oh five food would be would be nice versus that card being the first one to put into the dusk deck is like oh that kind of sucks I have no stress and it's gonna be one food who cares but it didn't come out until way later and when I needed it and I didn't have any active hope and I'm like God damn it I could I should have just saved an act of hope I should have just tried it but it is what it is and I still even though I lost I still feel that I did well uh for the most part like I was doing all right uh

12:15 but yeah this game just has so many Avenues and ways to play just I mean the the first scenario alone if you're just doing like what the setup is for where it's just like new home Crags like that in and of itself just has so much replayability and then the scenario book where it's like no it's still new home but it now you're doing you're doing new home Frozen Grove you're doing new home uh oh Crags I guess is what that one is new home Flats New Home dreadnought new home Canyon and and then it just adds those are just all different ways to set up like the new home kind of rules but with a different map and different rules for that and then you go into the arc which has its own you know massive thing and in the fall of winter home that's it's that's its other own massive thing the ruins of Tesla City like this is just it's insane so I really really hope that glass Cannon unplug on the glass Cannon unplugged chooses to support this I think like expansions for more scenarios more laws basically just more cards more scenarios more laws more morning cards More Death Cards more buildings that would be that would be awesome so I'm hoping that that's that's the case but I don't really have a whole lot more to talk about on the solar variant like really it was just it's the multiplayer

13:46 game they're one and the same so if you have played in multiplayer but you're more of a solo gamer you could definitely play this just situate the the board to make it easier on you or stand the whole time and and yeah it's gonna be shorter those are the two major differences and oh I guess third you don't really have to strategize with anyone did everything you want to do you can do but no major rules change at all which is which is actually very nice like it's not like oh okay to play solo you have to do this this and this it's like nope I mean yeah you get that you get one uh one card to call the rise card which is like hey at some point you can use this get rid of it and get more citizen cards kind of to replace other players having uh citizen cards which I end up using all of mine which surprised me maybe not all of mine but most of them and they were actually very very helpful as they should be I guess I would I will say like I mean kind of to repeat like a negative in the multiplayer I wish there was more ways to get these like I like to call the rise card because it's like oh man the ones I have right now aren't that great okay well let's draw three new ones and see how helpful those are so far I haven't really found a new way to get a whole lot of Citizen cards but at the same time maybe I'm not I'm not doing Expeditions as much I didn't upgrade the beacon to be able to send more people out and maybe that's where

15:17 I'm I'm messing up I also was able to expedite a lot more and I like the fact that even those have some like story Little Snippets they don't have any like consequences of what you do because there's no way for their them to do that but at least it's still just better than you just flipping and be like oh you get too wood and too cold no there's a little event I really enjoyed that so on a scale of one to ten I'm gonna give frostpunk solo varied a 9 out of ten it's it's fantastic it's still just like the game I think a lot of my problems was because I was trying to keep it in frame and that is obviously going to be alleviated by probably not using this player mat and moving some stuff closer to me as a player but it's I love this multiplayer and I love it solo it's it's phenomenal this game is so good but that's my thoughts on the solar bearing for frostpunk let me know what you think of the game in the comments below other than that like comment share and subscribe and have a wonderful with every time of day it is for you hey everyone thank you for watching I really hope that you enjoyed the video if you would like to see more of my content go ahead and click that subscribe button and the bell to be notified whenever I upload any new content if you feel like supporting the channel you can go ahead and click that patreon link to be taken to my patreon and any help is truly appreciated other than that stick around for any any other run throughs or reviews or cool top tens or whatever I feel like putting on other than that

16:47 like comment share and subscribe and have a wonderful whatever time of day it is for you